In the morning Angus and I recounted the night’s events over breakfast at Morrisons cafe. We couldn’t be bothered to cook and wash up and faff around when we had loads of miles to cover today.
We hit the road and blasted 2 and half hours south to a colleagues house in Dunblane. We had hoped to avoid pathetic fallacy, but as we headed south, the weather matched our mood; it darkened and started to rain. All hope of a tour of the castle was extinguished by the rain but my colleague provided belly warming pies from his local butcher. They were amazing; Pepper Steak and Steak Guinness AND a sausage roll as thick as a horse’s member. The hospitality was exceptional so we have booked to see them next year also.
We were passing that way so stopped in at another engineering spectacle, the Falkirk Wheel. This huge steel structure replaces the fleet of locks that let far too much water escape the upper canal network. Its basically 2 bathtubs on the rim of a Ying and Yang sign shaped frame. This rotates and swaps the top with the bottom and loses hardly any water doing so. I’ve been here before but its such a cool bit of engineering I love to see it in motion; a huge sculpture with purpose.
Carrying on south for another couple hours, my attention started to drift, as did the van. I had been driving for about 4 hours so Angus took over. We were both still tired from the night out but wanted to press south. There was a glimmer of hope of meeting old friends in Stoke and maybe even squeezing in some climbing IF THIS RAIN WOULD STOP!
The drive was long so we bet on how long it would take a mate to return our enquiries about staying the night. He is totally, 100%, don’t even bother, useless at keeping in contact. So we contacted his girlfriend who is basically his social secretary and organises his life.
We arrived just as they returned from a busy day helping someone move house using their van. They have a van too and also converted it into a camper. Although, at present its all in pieces as they have decided to redo it all with a proper full size 6ft bed. Hes almost as tall as me so I knew this would happen after a while. He had originally put the bed in across the van instead of lengthways. Now he has bought a very sturdy looking folding bed from Ebay and bolted it in. This, coupled with a futon mattress will be perfect for them and give him the space he needs as a taller than average human.
As always, when the meeting of friends is long overdue, much beer was consumed and chatting about all things went on long into the night.