It’s confession time I’m afraid…
We recently went away for ten nights with Vince and I didn’t write a single blog post. I know! What am I like? It wasn’t because I’m lazy or because I don’t love you any more – it was more of a family thing than a travelling thing. Gill’s folks were downsizing from a big house in the country to a er…small house in the country in Fife, Scotland. I’m sure they’d be first to admit that they were a little unprepared for the trauma of shoehorning 23 years of hoarding spread over twenty-five rooms, into a two-bed cottage eek!
We drove Vince up from the Midlands on the Bank Holiday Saturday, breaking our journey in Kendal in the Lake District. A bit of research before we left turned up a cheap overnight stop at Kendal Cricket Club. They make their car park available in the evenings to weary travellers for a small donation of £3 to club funds. If you have a beer or two in the clubhouse they sometimes don’t even bother with the donation – what a bargain! The club is located only a short walk from the centre of town so we had an amble around before our evening meal. We saw enough to make a note to revisit Kendal in the future; it looked like a nice place to explore over a few days. On the Sunday morning we had a beautiful drive up through the Lakes to rejoin the motorway north.
After arriving at the in-laws on Sunday afternoon we simply didn’t stop working for nine days. A removal van was to arrive on the Tuesday but there was a ton to do before it arrived. I won’t bore you with all the details but the removal guys concentrated on the heavy things and large bits of furniture for the day we had them, but for days either side we were making endless trips to the recycle centre, the tip, the charity shop and the new cottage twenty minutes away. We arrived home exhausted on the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday and slept for three days, only waking up to let a surveyor in to complete our buyer’s survey of our house. Yes, fingers crossed our sale is progressing. Slowly. One benefit of our recent labours is to make us realise that our own move should be a doddle after shifting that lot!
So where are we now? Gill’s folks’ cottage is on a farm near Kinross in Fife, so we’re back for a follow-up visit. The farm owner has very kindly found us a corner on the farm beside the orchard and bee-hives, and we even have a hook-up to top up Vince’s batteries. Now that our house sale is progressing we plan to look at a few properties here over a couple of days, then drive down the east coast to have a look at houses in Dunbar and Eyemouth. After that we’ll explore a little bit of Northumberland on our way to the Saltaire Festival this coming weekend. We plan to spend three nights there meeting up with our older daughter and hubby then going to some of the music events they hold in the heritage village every Autumn. Somebody may even have mentioned that the Saltaire Brewery is offering tastings over the weekend. Hold me back…
We’ll keep you posted as we travel around – here’s hoping for a lazier Scottish visit than last time 🙂
Very nice, enjoy!