England

I think I might get to like Scotland.

Last night’s hotel also had a gloriously comfortable bed and thick quilt. It was regrettable that we were on the second floor and the lift was broken. This is bad enough anywhere, but in a tall building with magnificently high ceilings it is sufficient to rob two portly elderly people of all of their puff, I might have to do some practice before this dreaded April walk.

We had got to get ourselves organised early because of having to drive to Yorkshire for Oliver, and so set the alarm for half past six. Through our hotel window we had a bird’s eye view of Edinburgh waking up, which made an exciting change from our usual coffee in bed vista of the pigeons on the roof of the house opposite.

We rushed through breakfast, which we had to do because there was simply lots of it, and chugged off through Edinburgh’s early morning traffic in the direction of Yorkshire.

Mark was in charge of both driving and navigating this morning, as we had some difficulties last night when I was reading the map. I had carefully looked everything up on the computer before we left, and written the details down with a little map in a piece of paper, because I get confused by onscreen maps that swivel round when you try to turn them the other way up so that you can work out better which way is left. I had misfortunately lost this, and had forgotten what the hotel was called anyway, and so was trying to work it out on my computer.

This is a terrible thing to be doing in the middle of rush hour panic and roadworks in the dark, especially when you can’t find your glasses and you know your husband is having to be very patient and understanding because it shows in his voice and the way he is gripping the steering wheel.

In the end I found the name of the hotel again, and we had to swap the map for a little voice on my mobile phone that says things like: “In three hundred yards, turn left.” This should not have been problematic, except I didn’t even manage to get that right and we almost had a domestic when we were going round a roundabout for the third time with lots of other cars trying to get on and off it as well, and not looking very friendly towards us.

After that Mark looked at the map himself whilst I was writing my diary last night, and this morning was amazing, we just turned right and left a couple of times and suddenly we were on the right road. It was splendid and neither of us needed to swear at all and nobody tooted their horn at us. Mark said kindly that it helped that the A1 is signposted and ‘your hotel’ was not, which is true but nevertheless it was embarrassingly true that I had been a rubbish map reader and I did not at all blame him for not letting me do it any more.

I had had a feeling that having come as far south as Edinburgh we were almost there, but of course we were nothing of the sort. There is still an awful lot of Scotland between Edinburgh and the border, and then a lot of England underneath that.

It took all morning to get down to Oliver’s school, and of course it was brilliant to see him.

He listened patiently to our muddled outpouring of description about schools, and in the end said sensibly, “I think you might be right, it does sound as though it might be just perfect for me,” and then turned his attention to his tuck and his computer.

By the time we got back to the Lake District we had thoroughly had enough of travelling. We collected the dogs from the farm and made our weary way home, where we stretched our cramped and aching legs and set about reorganising our lives.

Of course there was the fire to be lit, and our bags to be unpacked, which led to the obvious result of a pile of washing on the floor which needed sorting out and stuffing into the machine. Then Oliver needed feeding, and the dogs needed emptying, after which we got ready for work.

I feel as though I have had a huge adventure.

It is nice to be back.