Ziggy and I set off today to find the elusive 'Withington Milestone'. I'd heard of it's existence from tales of yore and was confident that it's location was slap bang opposite the The Turnpike public house on Wilmslow Road. We meandered down Tatton Grove, which runs alongside the Red Lion pub and came across another red bloodied beast foraging in the undergrowth..... "Get back Ziggy..... this beast may be aggro"..... but it wasn't aggro. It was a graffiti stencil of a giraffe making cow noises. Ahh the thrills and spills of Withington.
We rocked up at the Turnpike pub and before our very eyes, there she stood, half hidden in the foliage....The Withington Milestone. The Withington Milestone is merely an old stone that marks the distance from it's point to the centre of town (4 miles) and Wilmslow (8.25 miles). Wow!
As the miletone sits directly outside the Turnpike pub, I guess it provides a welcome compass to the pissed-up, old blokes that fall out of the pub, pennies falling from their pockets and beer farts slipping from their wrinkly, slack bottoms. No complex map-reading needed here old boy!.... Where do you live closest to? Town? Or Wilmslow?...... who needs Sat Nav.
In hindsight, this wasn't my most interesting of finds but I consider this a site seen and a box ticked and at the very least, if I am drinking beer in the Red Lion and someone asks me how far it is to town, I can tell them it's 4 miles exactly. I generally prefer to judge distances in the time it takes to drink a can of lager. The journey from the Red Lion to Town may be 4 miles, but for me it's a 2 shicker bus ride.
We were getting pressed for time, so Ziggy and I hot-footed it back down Wilmslow Road to get a quick snap of the road sign. Ziggy even managed to raise a smile for a change.
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