As I got outside of Congleton, and worked my way up into the hills, I found myself doubting the forecast, but pressed on, taking random turns to see where I could end up – it’s fun when the map doesn’t have the road you’re on, and all you have is a sense of direction to work out how to get back to where you came from. I could have turned around and retraced my path to the A54, but it wouldn’t be any fun.

The first turn of the day was towards Langley – as I travelled along the ridge road, I could see Jodrell Bank glinting in the distance (10 miles away), but no further due to the haze and greyness. Continuing on, a quick right turn had me running along the back of a farm, and down a 1:10 incline to Lower Nabbs, catching sight of a bird of prey on a fence pole – but it flew off before I could get out of the car (and I doubt it would have hung around as I got out anyway). Passed a very nice looking river, but the light was so poor that I couldn’t get the aperture narrowed down enough to get the depth of field I wanted for the photos, even with exposure compensation. Up past Crag Hall, and back on to the A54 I journied – and promptly hopped off about 500m up the road onto the road around Cut-thorn Hill. The views were fairly good, but again the grey clouds intervened, cutting down the light and generally making a mess of things. I did manage to shoot a macro photo without trying, so I now know that the camera can do a form of macro photography.