Well, I guess it's make-your-mind-up time.

Stockton was the early front runner - with several later supporters - and I followed various links to Ron Angel's site - nice tracks! great voice! - seriously tempting! - but defeated by the geography in the end (I'm starting west of Edinburgh and ending west of Oxford; I laid a pencil point to point on the map and it was freakily close to the M6. (BTW, supporters of the Sun Inn might like to google it (link to beerintheevening.com - you wouldn't go there if this was all you knew! Some counter-posting needed I think.)

Strongly tempted to ignore the family summons and stop off at Swinton for the whole weekend!

Liked the sound of the Shroppie Fly - particularly its waterside location - but could find no trace of local accommodation.

So it looks like a toss-up between Newburgh (music, food and bed under one roof - established club - my former "home territory" - but the whole of the worst part of the M6 to face the following morning) and Leek (harder to get info on the web, but when you do it sounds like a great pub - and its "own" brewery - food and bed a couple of hundred yards up the road in the Peak Weavers and closer to home the following day - but all the web info was rather old.)

It might just come down to availability of a room on th day.

Thanks for all the posts - I'll let you know what we did and how it went.

SJ