Today is postponed..........well almost

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Tuesday 21st July
Today is postponed...........well almost
Today has dawned fine and sunny and it looks like we will get a great day for driving south to Newcastle,our overnight stay as we head back to England.
Through the MSN connection on our laptop we got to see and chat with Leigh and Cormac back home.This mode of catching up with our girls,including Erin when she has been at Leigh’s home,has been a nice addition to our trip.The wonders of the internet and a laptop with a camera and microphone!!
After a photo with Aileen and John we hit the road with the sun still shining and headed for Brechin and the A90 south towards Edinburgh.
One of the features in the landscape that has developed over our two weeks in Scotland is the change in what had been almost a uniform green countryside of crops to now a changing scene of light golden brown as the cereal crops matured.
The countryside we now drive through is a patchwork of golden and green with darker patches where there are stands of trees.
We have a need to find and purchase a kit for the car by the time we arrive in France to cover the requirements of having a fluro vest,emergency triangle and medical kit.So at the Tesco Superstore in Dundee we thought we might find what we need.Tesco seems to have anything you want but not at this store so we shall have to keep looking.
The break from driving was a good one and just as well we took it in Dundee as ahead of us the sky was clouding over and looking rather threatening and we got the feeling rain wasn’t that far away.
Sure enough and with the Firth of Forth bridge in sight the rain started and became steadier as we took the by pass around Edinburgh.
With the idea of taking in some different scenery we opted for the A1 which runs down the eastern side of Scotland and England to our destination of Newcastle.
We have noticed that many of the roads in the UK don’t quickly clear of surface water when there is heavy rain and we have put that down to the difference in camber that is incorporated into the road design between NZ and here.It makes for more spray and when there are trucks around more like sheets of spray.
We started to look for a place to stop for lunch once we hit the coast and turned south but it was also a matter of waiting until the rain stopped so whoever loss the toss and had to get out to get to the boot of the car to get the lunch didn’t get too wet.
There was no point in looking for a beachside stop somewhere with the heavy rain falling so pulled in to one of the many byways built into the side of the roadway.This one unlike many others was at least a couple of metres back from the roadside and I could open my door to get the lunch without the door being taken off by a passing truck or car!!!
The road was certainly easier to drive than the A68 we had travelled up to Edinburgh from the English border as it was mostly two lane in each direction with a median as opposed to the narrow twisting one lane each way road the A68 was.
We kept on driving south with views at times out to the sea when the road was more elevated and the rain wasn’t as heavy obscuring the view.
We knew we were near Newcastle when the truck volume built even more than it had been and we noticed more left hand drive trucks that had come off ferries from Europe into Newcastle.
Like most Travelodges the Silverlink was easy to find right off the A1 and had the benefit of a large shopping centre across the road including an M&S food store which made buying dinner to cook in the microwave a breeze.
The weather by now had cleared so we did some window shopping and took some exercise after a day of travel that had kept us in RR because of the wet weather.
It had been a day that apart from getting from point A in Montrose to point B in Newcastle we hadn’t seen or achieved much else.

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Comments

[Rin]

Mum...
Ma, you look like a *midget* in that photo! :-P