Emma Bridgewater - S-o-T is not surrounded by beautiful & enriching landscape

Hiya Dereth

If you have a read of her hubbies book, the lost city, Matthew Rice makes some very valid points about Stoke on Trent.

They are talking more damage done to the city by the bodged job otherwise know as renewal, and I could agree more with them. As I headed up to the Potteries Museum last wednesday, both my Dad and Myself commented on just how awful the junction below the new Tesco made the city look. One of the major routes into the city that many out of town folk would need to travel looks terrible. No effort has been made to hide the derelict buildings surrounding the new Tesco complex and road structure.

Some parts of our city are lovely, others are tired and run down, or knocked down.

There is now a drive in the council to provide everything in Hanley (sorry City Centre) and sod the rest of the area.

I've not the red the book myself, but if you are interested, from the comments about it, it raises some very valid points.

Is Stoke a joke? It has a bad name and tops the bill in 'worst places to live' lists. But it is, in fact, something strage and infinitely more valuable than the cheap gibes suggest. What other place is widely known for what it produces and actually still does it? This book is a song for Stoke: a fanfare for one of the great cities of the world's first Industrial Revolution...
The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent

Have a read of some of the discussion about the book here.
http://pitsnpots.co.uk/blog/2010/11/stoke-trent-sorry-merv-i-agree-mathew

I think you can say the same about most cities, that they are dumps, and a lot are small enough to travel to the country side easily. What Stoke did have was a economy that was built on manufacturing. What our City leaders are trying to do is spend hundereds of millions turning our local economy into shopping. We had a lead on the pottery inducstry which was lost to the east, but some have managed to cling on. But how can stoke compete with the likes of the trafford centre? With the bull ring? They are major city centres. THe last 20 years has been about knocking the crap out of our city, leaving us with vast wastes of rubble, and not much else to show for it apart for some nice looking flats down the back of shelton. Cameron said yesterday that recovery well be lead by business inovation. What business and what inovation is occuring in stoke?

I like to walk around Mow Cop castle. Also there are loads of canals to be walked along. I jump on the canal at Kidsgrove train station and pick up the south cheshire way.

There are several smashing paths scattered all over the place, which if you blink you'd miss them. You just need an OS map to find them, or look here
http://maps.the-hug.net/

M.

For an intelligent woman she did not look very far.
Mow Cop and the Gritstone Trail
Hanchurch Woods
Churnet Valley
Deep Hayes Country Park
Stanley Head
Biddulph Moor
Rudyard Lake
Knypersley Reservoir
Staffordshire Moorlands
Also Manifold Valley ( Yes it is in Staffordshire not Derbyshire)

To name but a few