Tuesday 5 May to Thursday 7 May - Scotland

Tuesday 5 May

Where was Bertie? He spent another night in the pull-in near Shap that he has used many times. 

After a somewhat frantic morning of packing Bertie and running some errands, it was early afternoon before we got on the road and then we needed to stop for fuel and at a supermarket. There was still plenty of time to make it up to Shap at a reasonable hour, and the traffic was kind to us.

It was as we were approaching the M55 junction that we belatedly realised that there were people we could see on our way north and that in the midst of our disorganisation, we had contacted none of them. A quick phone call and Al & Nicky didn't seemed fazed at the prospect of visitors appearing on their doorstep at half and hour's notice, the day after they got back from a holiday. Thus a detour along the M55 was made.

Retracing tyre tracks back to the M6 a couple of hours later, we reconsidered our overnight options. The problem with where we park near Shap is that it's busy with HGVs and there was the danger that by arriving at nearly 8pm, there wouldn't be room for us. There's another spot near Tebay that's good, but it requires a bit of a detour and backtrack from the motorway junction to reach it, so I came up with a fall-back to the north of Shap and we aimed for our usual spot. There was a HGV already in residence, but we were small enough to fit in front of him. A short while later, a Dutch HGV arrived, who tried to park next to the original occupier of the spot. Many words were exchanged, some of which we caught and few of which were friendly "You're not parking next to me - go and find somewhere else!" was the final bit I caught and soon after the Dutch vehicle departed again. The rest of the night was perfectly quiet until our neighbour started his engine at 0530.

Wednesday 6 May

Where was Bertie? He spent a night in the car park in Broughton

We nearly topped up Bertie's LPG tank at the start of the day. A detour from the motorway at Penrith, and a search around took us to a pump hidden amongst some industrial units, but there we found a sign saying that if we bought less than £10 worth of gas, we would have to pay an admin fee of £5 (so if you can only fit £9.99 in you have to pay £15, rather than there being a £10 minimum charge? Seems a bit odd!). Ordinarily we would easily spend £10 on gas, particularly at the price they were charging here, but this was only a relatively small top-up just to be sure that we could run the heating without worrying this month (there being few LPG stations in rural Scotland), and our tank gauges aren't fantastically accurate, so we couldn't be sure how much we could fit in. So we passed and will just have to hope that our supply lasts out.  

Excuse me if I now introduce the rest of the day by repeating what I said in a post on my walking blog: 

In our hasty packing for this trip, whilst also trying to decide on where we would be going and what we would be doing, I belatedly decided that I needed to include my mountain bike, to ease access to one particular hill in the Braemar area[...]. Other than 'a few hills in the Braemar area', we left home without a plan, so this morning over breakfast [...] I found there were a few hills along the A701, between Moffat and Edinburgh that I haven't visited yet, and as the first one I looked at lent itself to being accessed by bike, it became my objective for the day. It was a bonus that it had such an excellent name - Gathersnow Hill.

The hill was duly bagged (it was a lovely glen that I cycled along, and the top was a good viewpoint), thence on to the village of Broughton we went for a late lunch. I'd identified an overnight spot quite a few miles further along the road, but I'd also become aware that there was another Marilyn not far away from Broughton that I could easily access using the bike. I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about going out for the second time in the same day, particularly after a 6.5 year gap since I last used a mountain bike, but it also seemed too good an opportunity to miss, as I so seldom pack my big bike. 

It was tea time by the time I got back, and I'd passed a wood-fired pizza van in a layby on my way into the village. I wasn't in the market for a pizza, but I knew that Mick would be, and thus the decision was made that rather than continuing up the road to the park-up I'd picked earlier, we would stay the night in the village car park. Had the location been in Park4Night, I probably wouldn't have been willing to do so, as it's the sort of location that could annoy locals if it was overused (as places in Park4Night in Scotland often are, although I don't think the A701 is on most tourists' radars), however, as we weren't within sight of houses, it was just us, and there were no prohibitory notices, we decided to stay. Nobody scowled at us. Some waved in a friendly manner. 

Carelessly, I didn't take a photo of Mick's pizza (and typing this reminded me, two days later, that we still had some of it left in the fridge - that has become tonight's starter course), but it was good. 

We had a delightfully quiet night, and not as cold as we had been expecting (Shap had been a bit nippy, with the heating kicking in at 3am when the internal temp got down below 7 degrees). 

Thursday 7 May - Perth and Cray 

Where was Bertie? He spent another night in a pull-in off a quiet B-road by Cray. 

Weather: A few showers, a bit of sun. Quite cool.

Broxden Park & Ride in Perth (where we have stayed a number of times, even once in Erica when the A9 was closed for snow and flooding as we travelled north a couple of years ago in late December) conveniently has a motorhome toilet emptying point, so we swung in there on our way past, before parking for a couple of hours in Tesco's car park. Some admin was done, taking advantage of the good phone signal, followed by a quick nip into the store for a few items, including tea towels. They are an item on our packing check list, and I duly ticked it off, feeling sure I'd packed some along with our big towels and hand towels. I discovered on our first night that we only had one on board. We now have six, which is perhaps a little excessive. 

With Bertie's fuel tank topped up, we set out to get closer to Braemar, but with no plan as to where we were going to stay. Deciding on somewhere was my first task during the journey, and the obvious choice was a pull-in by Cray where we spent a couple of nights last October. There was already a sizeable motorhome in residence, but we pulled in parallel to the road, thus leaving plenty of room for any cars that came along wanting to park. None did.  

On another occasion we likely would have headed out for a stroll, but with the combination of rain and a very sore body, I was happy to just rest and start catching up on blog posts.