Thursday 5 November - to Moffat
Where was Bertie? He spent a night at Moffat C&CC campsite at a cost of £29.02 for a hardstanding pitch with electricity.
Our night in the Old Colliery (pub) car park was quiet enough, save for a few fireworks and a HGV that fired up its engine at just after 6am, and a whole lot quieter than the Park & Ride had been. When I'd booked it, I thought we might eat in the pub (I had seen a report that they would credit us the £10 we'd paid to stay in the car park, but hadn't verified whether that was true), but after looking at their menu, I decided I'd rather cook and eat in. That meant that we didn't even set foot in the pub, but as I'd booked and paid for our stay online, I didn't see any need to. It was only as we were leaving that it occurred to me that the booking form hadn't requested our registration number, so they had no way of knowing that we'd paid, and no one knocked on our door to check.
We were away relatively early, for a 25-minute drive to the first of two hills I was to visit. A bike ride, a walk and a return bike ride had me back at Bertie for an early lunch, then another 10-minute drive took us to my second hill, which was all on foot and an absolute bogfest.
We'd passed over into the Scottish Borders on our way to the first hill, and I have that county in my mind as one in which I've always enjoyed my outings. What struck me on these hills was the absolute monoculture of grouse shooting estates, with heather and tussocky grass and a dearth of trees. Add in the low cloud and miserable weather, and I wasn't taken with the area.
Not wanting to be a constant whinger (although Mick would completely support me in this complaint, as he was driving), but the B709 down to meet the A708 to Moffat wins our award for the worst road surface we have ever driven in the UK, and not just for a small section, but for miles. The A708 was in better condition, but it's a small road as A-roads go, so we were happy indeed to arrive in Moffat.
Friday 6 November - to Haworth
Where was Bertie? At Top Field C&CC certified location, for £22 for a hardstanding with electricity.
I'm perpetually surprised as to how far south in Scotland Moffat is, so it was less than a 2-hour drive to get to J36 of the M6, where we arrived early enough to nip to the garage to fill up with LPG* before meeting Conrad for lunch at Cafe Ambio.
My bowl of soup was large and my accompanying sandwich huge and somehow I didn't expect the soup + sandwich combo to come with salad and coleslaw, but it did. Add a slice of cake, and we didn't need much for tea.
We all needed to be away by half past two, in our case because we wanted to arrive at our next night stop before dark. That we did, and settled Bertie onto a pitch at Top Field - a good little campsite that we would happily use again if we had cause to be in that area.
The evening was filled with the sound of fireworks. I don't think I have ever heard so many!
(*We also filled the LPG on the way north, so know that this trip used 27 litres of gas. Due to our battery issues, we had a lot of electric hook up on this trip, but that still felt pretty good going considering how much we ran the heating, including on some of the campsites. Why run the gas heating when on electric hook up? A few possible reasons: 1) it heats the fabric of the vehicle much more than the oil filled radiator or fan heater, so retains the heat for longer; 2) it heats the water as a by product, so if the night is going near freezing, we'll run it for a short while before bed so that the residual heat of the water heater will stop the frost valve from dumping the water over night; 3) a couple of the places we stayed were on metered electric, where for cost efficiency we mainly used gas + oil-filled rad, rather than oil-filled rad + fan heater.
As a further aside, we dithered a bit in our packing as to whether to take the 450W oil-filled radiator and decided, as it's so small and light, that it was worth it even if it only got used a few times. Its output isn't enough to heat Bertie to a comfortable level, but it does take the chill off. Using it on a time switch so that it switched off an hour or so after bedtime and came back on sometime between 3 and 4am (exact times depending on the forecast overnight low), we were grateful to have it with us. Moreover, because it's oil filled, the heating element cuts in and out (unlike the fan heater, which is noisy and consumes a steady 750W), it's pretty efficient as electric heating goes.)
Saturday 7 November - to home
A parkrun to start our day, then a visit to Wentworth Castle Gardens. Like NTS, many English National Trust properties are now closed for the winter, but these gardens were open and were a small enough detour to make a visit worthwhile.
The gardens themselves were as you might expect in winter: very little colour and lots of dead stuff, but the castle folly was worth seeing (so much bigger than I'd expected), and the greenhouse was the highlight (not just for the warmth in there!). The cafe was exactly as we have come to expect (good scones and pasties), even if this one did also have a very smelly dog in it for the first twenty minutes we were there.
It was sunny as we drove out of Yorkshire, but the nearer we got to home the foggier it got. Harrumph, should have stayed away for longer!
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