The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Tuesday 21 February 2017

Halifax, Arnside and Orton

Tuesday 21 February

After two whole months of sitting at home, very little time was wasted, once we had Bertie-the-Motorhome's registration documents in hand, in getting him packed for his first trip away*.

Yesterday we set out northwards.
It was an interesting/scary first leg of the journey, to see Ma-in-Law in Halifax, as I was at the wheel. I've only ever driven left hand drive vehicles twice before (1997 & 2013) and both times they were automatics, and I was driving on the appropriate side of the road for the steering wheel. Driving a large, manual, left hand drive motorhome in the UK, in strong winds, left me feeling like a learner again. I'm sure I'll soon get used to it - probably to the extent that when we get home I'll get in the car and be reaching to the right for the gear lever.

Today we journeyed to Cumbria and spent a very enjoyable (and very well fed!) few hours with Conrad (conradwalks.blogspot.com), before continuing a bit further north to Orton. I didn't think we'd been here before, until we arrived and saw the 'coast to coast' footpath sign.

From the morning’s sunny start, it became wet at sometime during the day and by the time we parked up here the rain was fair lashing in the wind. I rued not getting out of bed earlier this morning for a bit of a leg stretch, as at around 4pm I still had four fifths of my daily step-count target to go. Resigned to donning full Paramo, it was Mick who tapped away on his phone and pointed out that if we ran the simple circuit he had just plotted then we would be out in the weather for less time than if we walked. A good point, I thought, and ten minutes later out we went into the weather.

After far more undulations than we ever get near home, it was two dripping people who arrived back at Bertie, to test out the effectiveness of using his shower room for clothes drying.

I believe there's going to be a bit of a lull in the stormy weather tomorrow so the question is whether to spend it driving or whether to go for a bimble somewhere. Maybe we can manage both, after all, the daylight hours are getting noticeably longer.

(*Yes, we could have packed him at leisure in the time he was sitting on the drive waiting to be registered, but, in an uncharacteristic attack of superstition I didn't dare make any plans or do any packing for fear of so doing provoking DVLA to reject our application.)

1 comment:

  1. Good to hear you found a destination for tonight. I am impressed with your random unplanned itinerary, but also impressed with your sumptuous new family member Bertie - he exudes class throughout. I much enjoyed our get-together, and I can report the new boiler is up and running and Phil is coming back tomorrow to do the fine tuning.

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