Why we went. In the video before this one we passed through Wigan, thought nothing of it, and found some of the nicest twisties we’d ridden. That got me wondering what else in the North West we take for granted. Glyn grew up round here, so I asked him, and he said Stoke-on-Trent. Not the Peak District, which everyone knows is there. Stoke, and the bit of Staffordshire round it. I said yes before I’d thought about it.
Ay up, duck. A Stokie can’t start a day without an oatcake, and I’m an honorary one now, so we started at Castle Oatcakes in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Newcastle-under-Lyme, not upon Tyne. It confuses everyone, every time. A Staffordshire oatcake is oatmeal, flour and yeast, cooked on a griddle the locals call a baxton, and filled with whatever you like. They used to be sold out of house windows all over the Potteries, and the last of the old hole-in-the-wall shops in Stoke closed in 2012. There’s even a National Oatcake Day, 8 August. Glyn had bacon and cheese. I ordered bacon and egg, no cheese, and got cheese anyway, because they won’t let you leave without it. It looks like a savoury pancake. I said that out loud and was told it was an insult. It’s really, really good.
Eddie’s tank. Eddie Hall, World’s Strongest Man in 2017, is from Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Glyn explained at length, with an oatcake in his hand, that Eddie owns a tank. Strictly it’s a Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicle, and he once drove it through a KFC drive-thru. That’s the level of local knowledge you’re getting from us.
A new perspective. Glyn said something on the ride that I keep thinking about. He takes me to places he’s been a thousand times, and I say “this is so beautiful”, and it gives him a new perspective. You get desensitised to your own roads. There’s enough negativity about; it’s nice to be the one who still thinks Stoke is beautiful.
He tricked me. Longton. We went right when we should have gone left, repeatedly, and it turned out Glyn was quietly steering us to Longton. It’s a proper pottery town, home of the Gladstone Pottery Museum and some of the bottle kilns the Potteries were famous for. I still don’t think the town centre is that interesting. He hasn’t disputed this.
Trentham. Free parking, a shopping village, a garden entrance, a lot of dogs, and a swing covered in flowers, which is where our main photo comes from. The estate goes back centuries: Capability Brown’s lake, the Duke of Sutherland’s Italian gardens, and a hall that was pulled down in 1912. And there’s a pickle the size of my forearm, which is in the video and which we will not be explaining.
Toby Carvery, obviously, and the first close one. Glyn would like you to know he took me for my first carvery when I moved up here, because a Hungarian who’d never had a carvery was, in his words, an injustice. Gammon all day. Turkey is dry. Then, on the way through Meir, a driver came up the inside of the queue and passed us as we turned. Close enough to swear at, so we did. While we were at it, a cultural exchange: in Hungarian, when people drive aggressively for no reason, we say they’re “waiting for their kidneys”. I’ll let you work it out.
Staffordshire twisty roads. Out past Blythe Bridge the town falls away and the lanes start. Nodding bikers start appearing, which is how you know you’re on the right road. Big houses, open lanes, a good surface, and then the drop into the woods towards Dimmingsdale.
Ramblers Retreat. The road down to it is something else: steep, narrow and twisty, into a wooded valley. At the bottom is a free car park that’s all loose gravel and potholes, and the surface where I put my foot down was slippery enough that Glyn was shouting before I’d finished stopping. I didn’t drop it. Not many bikers come down here, and I can see why, but they’re missing out, because the place is beautiful. It’s Dimmingsdale Lodge, a gatehouse the Earl of Shrewsbury built on his carriage drive to Alton Towers, rescued from dereliction and serving teas since 1981. Inside: broccoli and stilton soup, a cheese scone with a brick of cheddar (brilliant, far too much cheese, and Glyn’s IBS has views), nooks and crannies, a fountain that looks Roman, clay pots in the wall and a little waterfall. Dog friendly to the point of being a dog event. We left cheesed up.
The climb out. Uphill through the woods on a windy day, so the road was carpeted in twigs. There were deer somewhere, there was definitely a horse, and I said it looked fresh, which according to Glyn makes me a horse shit connoisseur. Seagulls too, about as far from the sea as you can get in this country, looking confused.
Maturity level warning: Wetley Rocks. Too twisty to talk, which for us is a review in itself. The A520 through here was on Staffordshire’s list of high-risk motorcycle routes in 2025, and once you’ve ridden it you can see why. Ride it sensibly and it’s a cracker. Also a field of enormous cockerels. We were as mature as you’d expect.
Leek, and the second close one. Leek is the Queen of the Moorlands, an old silk town where William Morris came to learn dyeing in the 1870s, which Glyn knew and I didn’t, so I let him pretend. Coming through, a driver went for a gap he didn’t have. Glyn’s spider senses had him hanging back; I had an emergency stop I’d rather not have had. Two in one day. We’ve said it before: they don’t see you. The vests are for that.
What we didn’t get to. The GPX carries on to Mini Beans on the Lake at Rudyard and finishes at Biddulph Grange Garden. We ran out of day, rode past Rudyard and came home a different way. We’ve been to both since, and the stops below say what we thought: Biddulph is always worth a stop, Mini Beans we’re going back to give a fairer go.
The verdict. A proper surprise. The roads between Blythe Bridge and Leek are the reason to go, Ramblers Retreat is the reason to stop, and the towns in between are what you pay to get there. The GPX is below if you fancy it.
