‘Where are we going again?’ asks the 11-year-old, lifting a headphone away from one ear in the back seat of the car. ‘Stoke-on-Trent,’ I smile. ‘World capital of ceramics’.
His sister, hunched over her tablet on the other side, looks up blankly. My mind scrolls through everything Google has told me about the Staffordshire city we’re about to arrive in.
‘Er, also famous for oatcakes?’ They stare at me, like I’m fully insane. I think harder.
‘Robbie Williams!’
A look of confusion from the 9-year-old, who mouths to her brother ‘who?’
‘Alton Towers?’ I offer, desperate now.
‘We’re going to Alton Towers?!’ they beam in unison. This isn’t going well.
I sigh. ‘We’re not actually going to Alton Towers, I was just giving you some examples of what’s in Stoke. We’re going to the city centre. But there’s lots to see. Pottery… pretty plates… er, jugs…’ I trail off.
The eldest fires me a look, nostrils flared, and replaces his left headphone in disgust. The youngest hunches further over her tablet, brushing Oreo crumbs off the screen as she scrolls.
While my Stoke-on-Trent sales pitch may be lost on the kids, I’m excited to pay this place a visit. For one thing, Google tells me there’s a big Emma Bridgewater factory here – and I’ve got my heart set on a fancy mug.
Pricey crockery aside, my pre-trip research has also unearthed The Slamwich Club, our destination for lunch. Their Instagram grid promises obscenely OTT sandwiches and I’m pretty sure we’re headed straight to foodie heaven.
But first, The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery. The kids are tired and grumpy from the drive, so this should be a good place for them to stretch their legs. I’ve bribed them with the promise of a fiver to spend in the museum shop if they can stop bickering for ten minutes.
We find a parking spot in Stoke’s city centre, Hanley, (Highview car park, if you’re interested), and walk there. While a pottery museum doesn’t scream ‘daytrip of dreams’ to any of us, we’re all pleasantly surprised with what we find.
Inside, there’s a big display about the Staffordshire Hoard that becomes infinitely less boring once the kids read the backstory: the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever discovered was found by a normal bloke with a metal detector back in 2009.
We take our time walking through a vast interactive natural history section next, then marvel at the life-sized set-ups of an old-fashioned schoolroom, pub and chippy in the local history zone.
We eventually find our way to the huge, glass-fronted Spitfire gallery – where the views stretch across the city – then spend half an hour dithering at the museum shop as the kids ‘remember’ that I owe them £13.76 and £9.41 respectively, from pocket money left unspent approximately three years ago.
Several hours and several pounds later, we wander across the road to find The Slamwich Club in search of a late lunch. It’s at the bottom end of Piccadilly, a pedestrianised street that runs through Stoke’s cultural quarter. The street itself is unremarkable, but The Slamwich Club is anything but.
Our slamwiches – oversized grilled sandwiches stacked with several meals’ worth of fillings – arrive soon after we order, and they’re as extravagant as Instagram promised.
I have a Porkie Pig, filled with BBQ pulled pork, sausage, potato and onion rosti, cheese and slaw. The husband has something equally gluttonous, and the kids opt for chicken, chips and milkshakes so big they’ll be sick before they ever finish them.
There’s booth seating over two floors inside, but the music is loud-ish and the kids are louder, so we sit in the sun to enjoy our lunch. We’re given doggie bags to take our leftovers away in, and set off, stuffed, towards our next stop.
We’re pushed for time now, but Google Maps tells me the Emma Bridgewater Factory is close by, so I lead us all through some decidedly dodgy backstreets as everyone repeatedly agrees that we should have just driven.
It’s 15 minutes or so before we finally pop out at our destination and spot the factory across a busy road. There’s a huge car park that confirms our earlier suspicions.
The factory itself is split across several buildings, and my favourite by far is the Seconds Outlet store. I waft past shelves of misprinted spotty teapots, imperfect floral plates and personalised dog bowls with presumably unpopular names on. Everything is still expensive, and I don’t have a dog called Gertrude, so I leave empty-handed and follow the kids to the gift shop.
It’s stacked with pretty pottery, aprons, tea towels and trays decorated in signature Emma Bridgewater style. And the lady at the till tells us there are regular factory tours, pottery decorating workshops and afternoon teas in the café and courtyard.
The bad news is, everything shuts at 5PM, and it’s now quarter to, so we see as much as we can before admitting defeat and heading back to the car – unintentionally saving ourselves a small fortune in the process.
The kids compare museum purchases as they walk, and we agree that the museum was our favourite Stoke-on-Trent stop-off, closely followed by The Slamwich Club, then the Emma Bridgewater factory, which was apparently only enjoyed by me.
‘The museum was actually pretty good though mum,’ says the 11-year-old, clutching the now-tepid milkshake he won’t admit he can’t finish.
His sister says something incoherent in agreement, between mouthfuls of cold chips.
‘But you know. I’d still rather have gone to Alton Towers’.
Leave a Reply