Not quite because it was only 1200 miles (Britain isn’t big enough for a decent mileage), and because there was only me driving. However all the other features of the BSOL were present, rain sun and cold enough for frost.
Last Monday I left home in Southern England for a single day drive to southern Scotland, a journey of just over 400 miles, or two tanks of fuel.
It rained. A lot. As it had rained the weekend before when I visited the Goodwood Revival, parking my E with others just outside the JLR tent. In fact I was still transporting mud from the grass field parking at Goodwood as I drive north, the rain helping to wash away West Sussex’s finest loam.
My destination and base for the week was a small apartment attached to a farm house in a small village near Peebles, in the Scottish Borders. From there we visited friends… one with a Jag,
… drove to Edinburgh to see the new cable stay bridge, and the two previous bridges, each of them famous engineering milestones when built…
We also visited some of the attractions of the area, such as Traquair which claims to be Scotland’s oldest continuously inhabited house, and Abbotsford, the last home of Walter Scott, who scribbled a bit.
Traquair had its own brewery. I’m looking forward to sampling their products.
We also visited an industrial heritage museum, which was free to enter, very informative, and thankfully not well patronised while we were there. Summer Lea is on the site of a former iron works in Coatbridge, just south of Glasgow.
I’d love to be able to publish photos of heather strewn mountains enveloped with moody weather systems, of open vistas of the rolling hills of the Borders, shots of driving through the Kielder Forest, of the lakes and tarns of Cumbria, of arrow straight roads following the lines of roads originally built 2,000 years ago by the conquering Romans, of the best driving roads in Southern Scotland, of videos of the bonnet of my car rising and falling at speed, or even at lower velocities, but I can’t. No such shots were taken. I was busy with the wheel and pedals and driving along unfamiliar roads, and SWMBO who, being Scottish knew the roads like the back of her hand, had other matters to be concerned with, such as why I had turned right when she wanted me to turn left. (Turn the map up the other way, and all will be clear!)
My car, just like BSOL participants’ cars, leaks when it gets wet. So I took precautions, a car cover and towels.
