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The next stage of our day after visiting the Wetherspoons in Rugeley was to go the random point that we had selected some weeks ago in St. Osyth. Unfortunately, these randomly selected points aren’t always as near to railway stations as we’d like. So far, we’ve managed to be at least a 40-minute walk from the nearest railway station.

This was the random location which we given by GeoGuessr and the chances of getting a pub visible in the image were pretty remote. But the fortune GeoGuessr Gods were looking down on us favourably and our location was The Wolseley Arms at Wolseley Bridge.

As can be seen in the first photo, the light had slightly diminished when we were about to walk to the final destination.

The second photo was taken using flash, which was exciting as it enabled us to see. We didn’t want to walk on the busy road as Nathan had confirmed it didn’t have pavements (we walked back that way using the pavements….) so we took a little short cut through some fields. It was a public footpath and it was sufficiently well signed, or at least, it probably was, but it was a bit difficult to see in the dark.

Anyway, we plod on down this track, which fortunately wasn’t too wet, although it had started raining. It was a little bit of a night hike arrangement and some pheasant things jumped about a bit to try and be frightening. As a man of bravery, I wasn’t put off though and I remained calm, measured and in control of the situation. But, picture the scene in your minds (like we had to since it was dark), this is a rural environment and we are dressed for an urban environment. Despite my walking with the Ramblers and the LDWA, I hadn’t thought to bring my walking boots, headtorch, spare socks, or indeed anything useful that I might need. But, we continued.

So, into the next field we go, led by the determined and fearless Nathan. Then we noted, primarily through the sense of wet feet rather than actually being able to see anything, that we’re stood in a little piece of mud. And by little piece of mud, I mean something more akin to a small lake. A small muddy lake. It’s fair to say that we didn’t really take to this field.

And then we hear the sounds of a herd of horses (I don’t know what the collective term for horses is, but herd works for me) charging across the plains of Staffordshire. As an aside, I don’t like animals in fields, and I especially don’t like cows, sheep, snakes or pigs. Horses aren’t top of my concerned list though, so it took me a little while to work out how concerned I should be.

Anyway, by this stage we’ve got torches on, or at least phone torches, and we are still on the public footpath going through a field we’re legally entitled to do. However, given that two horses (the rest of the herd either didn’t exist or were elsewhere in the field) are galloping towards us, or at least a mild canter, we move around them to try not to scare them. Although they didn’t look very bloody scared, indeed, I think it’s fair to say that we were a little more perturbed than they were. This was also the field that the owners have felt the need to warn about bee hives, but not the horses that were running free.

Then, there was the sound of more mud as we’d found another puddle, although this one made a slightly louder noise when trying to escape it. The horses had stopped galloping though by now, so it was easier to hear what was going on across the field. And then we heard the clank of a gate, which pleased me as it showed that there was another human in this part of rural Staffordshire. The owner of the horses had turned up to tell us that we might have scared her herd of roaming beasts. To be fair, her horses had scared us and I’ve never seen a scared horse come meandering up looking for food, so they didn’t exactly seem to be a state of imperil. However, I decided against arguing about the matter and the woman points us towards where the gate was, then tells Nathan he’s got the wrong gate, before we then exited the field of horse hell onto what Nathan reliably told me was a road. So, we walked along this muddy track for half a mile before finding the eight metres of paved road. Fortunately we only had to skirt around two large puddles on this part of the adventure, although the water might have helped clean the mud off our shoes.

But this little bit of paved road meant one thing, we had reached the main road that we wanted and thus civilisation.

We’re here   🙂

And this is about as near to the original image as we could get, given that when Google cars record the images they tend to be in the middle of the road, and we didn’t quite fancy that on the busy road.

And so, that was that and location number two was reached. And since we were at a pub, we went in it. How lovely. And what a marvellous idea this all is.

GeoGuessr two is now underway, our pointless plan to visit whichever place we randomly select on the Geoguessr web-site.

The first part of the expedition today was the four-hour bus to Birmingham, although due to traffic accidents outside the city this went up to five hours. Not a great deal went wrong with the bus journey, which is good, although it meant that there isn’t much to write about…..

The start of the journey was at Norwich bus station and there was a passenger who faffed about outside the Megabus coach which was going to London. The driver started to get ready for boarding and only then did she reveal that she actually wanted to get on this coach. The driver huffed and puffed a bit, then the passenger faffed about even more and left her big heavy bag by the luggage compartment whilst looking confused. A passenger waiting for another coach went to help, at which point the driver got out from the driver’s cab to offer assistance himself. Then the passenger boarded, the coach started to set off and then it stopped before the doors opened and the problem passenger got out and realised they were on the wrong bus. The driver looked thrilled.

That was really the limit of the journey’s excitement, other than when Nathan and I helped a lady into the toilets. Not physically, but we realised that the door had locked itself and so we weren’t much help, although fortunately at the next stop the driver was able to unlock it. It was an element of drama, but fortunately the other passenger told us she had strong pelvic floor muscles. Good to know and lovely lady though.

The other highlight, my half price sausage roll from Tesco. Maybe not to the standard of Greggs, but perfectly acceptable.

So, just over an hour later than planned, we’re in Birmingham…..