A morning mooch...

I was up with Sophie this morning as she went off to the gym on her first day back at work after the Christmas break.

Keith and I decided to go for a "mooch" and picked an area near to Thrapston to see if there were any good pubs about. We headed for Titchmarsh first and came across The Wheatsheaf, which we later found out is part of the pub chain who owns one of our locals. We hadn't intended on going into any of the pubs, we were just interested in seeing if there was anywhere good to go at the weekend or maybe one evening in the week.

From Titchmarsh we headed to Clopton but apart from seeing a horse and rider in the distance, the village was deserted with no pub! I had a feeling we'd been to Thurning before and I'm pretty sure we went to a pub there, but either I was mistaken or one had closed down as there was nothing.

The landscape was flat and empty, with hardly any hedgerows and just the occasional farm building. The roads were narrow and we only met a handful of cars so we had plenty of opportunity to slow down and look at the map before deciding where to go.

After Thurning, we headed to the lovely named village of Luddington in the Brook and then Hemington, but we were beginning to realise that this area is totally devoid of pubs! We did wonder where the farm workers went in the past, and it's sad that more and more pubs are going out of business.

From Hemington we drove towards Polebrook and found The Kings Arms, which looked promising. We weren't far from Oundle so we decided to go there, get a newspaper and see what the small market town had to offer.

On the outskirts we found a Waitrose so we had a coffee and a cheese scone each and bought the paper. We drove through the town and spotted two or three promising places, but I'm not sure it's worth the trip out, to be honest!

We'd arranged to meet Sophie at lunchtime so we drove over to her office, picked her up and headed down to Riverside to visit Next for a cup of coffee. I was after a big plastic crate to store our Christmas decorations as I wanted to put them up in the eaves of our garage rather than try to cram them all into our wardrobe, but Wilko's didn't have one so after taking Sophie back we went to Jones's where I found one of the perfect size.

Back home I hoovered and tidied up and before I knew it, Sophie was home! We spent an enjoyable evening watching Escape to the Chateau and then Luther after dinner. It was scary!