I think that I left you at Washington Services the other day, and from there I went on to Seaburn, an area that I know very well from when I used to spend a lot of time up there a few years ago. There's a nice cul-de-sac just across the road from the promenade that is a useful place to park up.
Next morning I did a little shopping and then I had a lovely walk along the prom in the sunshine - it really was a glorious morning. And I was swamped with telephone calls too - it seems that word has spread about that I'm over here right now.
In the afternoon at ASDA I met up with Kit and her friend Natasha, and they met up with Strawberry Moose to relive the old times. I took the opportunity to have a wander around the shop and found some 75-watt inverters for just £7:99. They had three in the shop. After I left, there were none. Handy little things, those.
The evening saw me in Hexham at Dave's. He's bringing his Detective Agency website up-to-date and se we had a really good chat about it. And then I left him to it and hit the road for Edinburgh -well, Rosslyn actually.
I overnighted "Can you say that?" - ed at Berwick, at the rest area that has been my home on a few occasions now, and then headed off to Rosslyn and its famous chapel. The reason why this was on my itinerary was that when I was in Nova Scotia I came across the supposed landing site of Henry Sinclair, the Earl of Rosslyn, on his alleged voyage that might have had a landfall in North America (you will note the vagueness - I'm having no part in any argument about any of this). Anyway, after his return his heirs built Rosslyn Chapel with all kinds of weird carvings that turned out to be quite passable likeness of plants found only in North America - although Sinclair's voyage was some 100-odd years prior to Columbus, and so this adds some kind of fuel to the argument of the Sinclairists who champion him as the real discoverer of North America ("and the Vikings?" I hear you say).
I drew the line at paying the entrance fee to go in as it was astonishing, but I was "persuaded" by the woman on the till who said "it's half-price for senior citizens". I wasn't sure whether to thump her or to storm out in disgust but the parsimonist inside me got the better of my emotions. But I'm afraid my ego has touched rock-bottom now and I'm inconsolable.
However, it's an ill-wind that doesn't blow anyone any good. I spent quite some time chatting to a tour guide about the Templars and Sinclair and all of this, and the upshot was that I was invited into the office and allowed to peruse the private papers of the Chapel. Furthermore, the curator will photocopy all of those that I found interesting and e-mail them to me, and so I certainly had my money's worth there.
Back at Hexham Dave took me on a marathon hike along the banks of the Tyne to see the remains of the Border Counties Bridge, in connection with my Riccarton Junction masterpiece, and after many vicissitudes we managed to scramble onto a pier where I took a pile of photos of the remains of the cast-iron columns. You can clearly see how it was made and I'll talk more about this in due course. We then started to proof-read Dave's website that he had now finished but one thing led to another and with bouncing a few ideas around we ended up totally reviewing it and it was 05:30 and broad daylight when I finally left there.
And so last night was spent on top on a mountain on the Alston Moor near Nenthead and this afternoon, when I finally woke up, I drove through all of the horse-drawn caravans littering the road between Middleton and Kirby Lonsdale (and you have no idea how much I hate these after having to negotiate an endless stream of them on some of the narrowest and most winding A-roads in the country, driven by horses out of control and drivers who don't have a clue - they need road tax and a minimum speed limit and a statutory distance between them and licences and tests for the drivers or else they can p155 off into a field and get out of everyone's feet) and I finally arrived in Middlewich in time to rescue Percy Penguin.
Now I'm on Sandbach Services and I'm sodding off in a minute - its [gulp] 02:31 and I have a lot to do tomorrow.
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