Day 2 - Off to Scotland

We woke up to very different weather as it started pouring with rain around 6am. The mist rolled in from the hills and the viaduct looked black.

I turned on the heating from bed via our Adria App as the temperature in the van was a chilly 10 degrees. I also turned on the water heater.

Jonathan went off to use the pub outside loo. I made a cup of tea and got the cereal out. We had contemplated having breakfast in the pub but it was quite pricey.

We both had hot showers, dressed, packed everything up and drove out just after 830am. We put Tebay services into the satnav as it is John Robins’ favourite service station. John with Elis James is one of Jonathan’s favourite podcasts.

It was a 45 minute drive through pouring rain and mist covered hills, with an incredibly annoying alert going off every 30 seconds telling us the driver assist was not available. One problem with new cars/vans is all the automatic alerts! We have alerts for traffic signals, speed and speed cameras. The van will also fight you if you move outside the lane markings; really annoying when trying to cut a corner or overtaking! I usually disarm all that I can every single time the engine is switched on (apart from the speed camera chime - can’t remove that). For some reason the driver assist alert could not be turned off and because of the weather interfering with the camera we had a constant alert telling us it was unavailable. I spent most of the journey googling solutions.

Tebay Services were a worthy winner of the many best service station awards. All the food is locally sourced with even the coffee being roasted just 30 miles away. It was busy and we queued for about 15 minutes to order our breakfasts.

Jonathan had Butcher’s Breakfast with Cumberland sausage, bacon, haggis, black pudding, beans, egg, mushrooms and bubble & squeak. I had the Tebay breakfast with sausage, egg, bacon, mushroom, beans, black pudding (donated to Jonathan) and bubble & squeak. Both came with toast and we got a flat white each. It was absolutely delicious.
We sat overlooking the small pond with some miserable looking ducks hidding from the horizontal rain.

Afterwards we visited the farm shop where we got carried away and purchased two large chocolate and marshmallow teacakes, two cheese scones for tea tonight and a pack of biscuits for just the £20 😳.

Then it was back on motorway heading north for Scotland. Thankfully we were able to turn off all usual alerts for this part of the journey. Bliss to be able to listen to Jonathan’s podcast without the stupid beeping.

There was very little traffic on the M6 as we passed Penrith and around Carlisle. I was ready for the Scotland sign as we drove past Gretna but inconveniently had a big white van spoiling the view. The wind was whipping down the Solway Firth so Jonathan was fighting to stay in the lane at times.

It was at this time that we realised the petrol range was saying about 5 miles more than the distance to the Sainsbury’s at Hamilton we had earmarked for cheap fuel. At one point It was down to 35 mile range, with 29 miles to go. Then the range disappeared. We decided to come off at the next services and put a little expensive fuel in. The price was £2.09 a litre so Jonathan closed his eyes as we filled up with £20 worth in about 30 seconds.

We returned to the motorway and continued up towards Hamilton. We still headed for Sainsbury’s and filled up with fuel at the bargain price of £1.89 a litre. This was one of our best decisions of the day.

On returning to the motorway we found there was no traffic to merge with. Turns out there had been an accident on the stretch in between where we had come off and then rejoined, which had closed the whole road. So we managed to avoid the gridlock traffic and delays/

We then had satnav warnings that there was a crash up ahead just as an ambulance sped past. Just as we approached the stream of cars braking we realised we were due to come off this road and once again we missed the traffic jam.

The rest of journey was incident free and we arrived at Woods Caravan Park just outside Stirling just before 3pm. The receptionist was originally from Havant and told us we had the best pitch on the site. I have to say it is rather nice. Flat, with beautiful views to the hills behind. The site is full due to the Radio 2 Party in the Park in Stirling this weekend which we are attending tomorrow.

We set up within 5 minutes, had a cup of tea with a giant teacake each. After refuelling we went for a walk around the campsite and investigated the onsite restaurant. We booked for Tuesday night.

On returning to the van we had a couple of beers/ciders and watched a couple of episodes of Colin from Accounts. We had our cheese scones with a few crisps and listened to the Party in the Park via radio.

At 7pm we got the chairs out, wrapped up in our dryrobes, and enjoyed a few glasses of Malbec whilst watching the sunset. Then it was another Colin from Accounts before bed at 1030.Read more