Days 4 and 5 the UK tour 2021

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Yesterday (which seems like about ten years ago) mostly involved not getting covered in food, spending all our money on a couple of sarnies, not getting married and getting very judgy.
After a swim and pushing up, we drove to Gretna green. In part so Seth could tick Scotland off his list of countries but also to see what it was all about (not to get married!) In short... It was less tacky than I expected, the food was soooooo expensive I could have done with a second mortgage and some of the people were.... interesting. One old guy ruffled Seth's hair (Seth's was quite taken aback but proclaimed it was his first time having his hair ruffled by an old man ?.) We were also sat by the bar and this bloke ordered 4 double vodka and cokes for the four adults in his group. It was barely twelve. And each of his group snaffled then up in about half an hour as the 3 kids with them amused themselves. Then they had 4 more.... So 4 vodkas each before 1. Each to their own but..... (Side note, we think two of them had just got married but I don't think you'd ever see such a less bothered pair of newlyweds!)
Post lunch / judging, we headed south, stopping only for two very overpriced teas ending up at the worst soundproofed room I've ever stayed in with a family of baby elephants staying in the rooms above, none of whom went to bed before eleven (even the kids) At least the bed was comfy....

This morning, after ash 'accidentally' shut the doors very loudly and had a have to set if he could touch the ceiling with his first ?) and after a nice breakfast (eavesdropping on the family of elephants who seemed baffled as to why their two year old child, having been up still at eleven, was sleepy....stop judging fay....) We left for the port at Liverpool. The long wait in the car was made infinitely worse by the, mercifully temporary, fear that our whole two days on the isle of man would be in quarantine as we hadn't realised we needed an approval code from the Manx government not just our vaccine passports for quarantine free travel. Fortunately as we were loading onto the boat the emails pinged through.
The crossing was....bumpy and both of us had moments of slight fear for our stomachs. Me in the slowest sandwich queue of all time and ash just sitting listening to the film the family fifteen foot away had kindly put on (a start is born), full volume.....Seth coloured and ate and eavesdropped and got infuriated with the lack of internet mid Irish sea!

Paperwork checked, vaccine status approved (yay for the NHS) we headed to our annex in someone's garden for the night (I love air BnB), only getting lost once, then straight back out to find a tram (of course, we've not been on enough trams in our lives....)

The tram goes(slowly) from Douglas to Ramsey and is very lovely but very very long. Tired out from a day that felt like twelve, Seth slept most of the way there but at Ramsey we decided that, rather than head straight back, we'd eat tea there. But no one wanted to feed us, fully booked, shut, and one place fully open, we walked in but no one came, despite us being able to hear voices and Seth shouting hello several times. Pretty sure it was personal.... Finally we found the Swan pub but with a tram at five forty, a fine minute walk away and the food arriving at five seventeen, we had to start making other plans. But . . .we ate fast, ran and somehow made the tram. Milk horses, wool dogs and rabbits, goats on the track but no Manx cats in the fields. (Seths only aim is to set a no trailed cat) and another day done.

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