We were glad when morning arrived on the ferry. The night was an experience which we escaped with no more than lack of sleep.
I did manage to look at the complimentary Shetland Times and it was good to see 3 pages devoted to wool week …and that was before it started!
We still needed to hold on to walk even when docked. We decided to forgo our complimentary breakfast.
Aberdeen from the cabin window, plenty of spray there
For the first time I drove the motorhome off the ferry and we took the decision to park up for a spell at the terminal rather than drive on. This was sensible as we got our legs back and made some decisions. We would just drive onto Perth, a campsite that we liked at the racecourse and would thus have a restful day. We would then drive onto Hoddam Castle for another night and go back down the west side of the country staying a further night in Cheshire before arriving home on Thursday. Fortunately, little did we know that the journey was still to be our most challenging drive home!
So on Monday morning we drove along leisurely to Stonehaven and made tea and had a bite to eat.
The sea was still rough here, but it was a lovely morning.
Next stop Stathco where we had a lovely egg roll and we were beginning to feel human. The day turned into a series of stops as we got tired! The next was at Sterling Services. Usually we don’t stop here, the parking is tiny! However even the car park was virtually empty. Costa Cappuccino coffee was over £4.00 which seemed even more ludicrous as we got a couple of meat lasagne meals for £6.00 (not our usual way of eating but we didn’t much feel like cooking currently !) We made another stop at Glendoik garden centre for an early lunch and buying of bulbs for the garden.
Spring squill, these did grow but were tiny! Looking at this picture again I wonder if other people knew this.
We arrived at Perth (about 60 miles of the journey home completed) early afternoon and slept. It had been much better day than we had envisaged during those long hours in the night ! The weather was back to warm and we began to wonder if the ferry journey had just been a bad dream.
On the Tuesday we drove over to Hoddam Castle, and by the time we reached Happenden, our favourite stopping place for this part of the journey, we had heavy rain, making driving difficult. But it brightened up as we got to Hoddam.
Always a lovely spot to stay the night
Hoddam Castle
Wednesday would get us back into England. We drove to Penrith and decided to go into Rheged for breakfast. There was a lovely exhibition on, a retrospective of a Lake District artist , Libby Edmondson ‘A life full of colour’. I really liked her work and we spent more time there than we planned.
Herdwick inspired
Although not the sort of weaving I do but I loved this weaving.
I drove from there and we decided we would not stop at Killington Lake. This turned out to be a bad decision! I thought we could stop at Lancaster Services but that was very busy and being in there was not a pleasure, so we decided to drive on to Charnock Richard. That felt worse when a small works van drove in next to us and we could not get out of the left hand side, even with the sliding door. These north western service stations need more parking. It felt dangerous. But as we were in Michael’s home territory he thought he could navigate us to a spot in Standish, but that has changed beyond all recognition and all the quiet spots are no more. What was a fairly small village felt like a big town. But we still had the option of Wigan, the approach from the north had big houses set back and wide roads. However, these now all had yellow lines, cycle lanes or bus lanes. We were needing lunch by now and eventually M found us a lay by on a side road out west where we made a sandwich lunch.
We now only needed to drive down to Cheshire and this should have been easy but we got caught up in the remnants of storm Agnes. It got very windy and very very wet, worse than it had been yesterday. We were hoping to stop at a favourite campsite beyond Nantwich towards Shropshire but abandoned that for one much close to the M6. As we arrived we noticed the temperature was about 20, which was high for late September. It is a super site surrounded by trees, but as soon as we parked the van there was an all mighty thud as a branch came off a tree and hit the ground, some slight adjustment to the parking spot was needed. One of the good things about being there was the good reception, but this told us the wind was going to get up in the night…this was feeling like being in Shetland. We decided the van was as safe as it could be and in fact the highest winds were about 22.00 before we went to sleep.
The following day should see us home! It should have been a straightforward journey, one we had done many times before when we lived in Cheshire and visited family in Norfolk. We hadn’t gone many miles, only to the Stoke turn off when there was an accident at the roundabout feeding back for many miles, so virtually not moving for some time. Once through this we hoped it would be easier as we were going to use the Toll Road. We stopped at Norton Canes for coffee and picked up messages that the M6 was closed lower down and that traffic would be at a standstill for many hours due to a police incident. Initially we had no worries as we thought we were missing the problem by using the Toll Road, but the problem was just past where the toll road fed back onto the M6. So we made a plan to leave the toll earlier and divert round this, along with everyone on the toll and much of the traffic on the M6 going south! There were few cars and lots of lorries on roads not build for such a heavy volume! So I used my phone to navigate and Michael drove, the relief being that we were taken around small roads through the outskirts of Nuneaton unsuitable for lorries. At last we reached the A14 which seemed quiet by comparison. One last stop for refreshment and we would, we hope be home. We walked in at 16.30, very, very glad to be home.
Was it all worth it, absolutely without any doubt!
