Skye on the Isle of Mull

Skye was momentarily distracted from examining the Mull ferry by the sight of two Aston Martins in the queue behind Monty. Realising that although they looked fantastic, the cramped interior wouldn't be great for a German Shepherd she reluctantly returned to Monty's cavernous boot and her soft bed within. We found seats outside on the giant ferry's upper deck, rows of them all facing Oban - it felt like being in a cinema waiting for the film to start. The ladies in the two seats in front of us began to chat, one had owned a dog like Skye, and we found out they were two nuns on holiday. I'm sure I've seen a film with that title! The ferry engine caused the deck to vibrate and poor Skye took some time to get used to it- Amy giving her fishy treats helped - but the smell of them completely overpowered the real smell of the sea. I don't know what they put in them, but they smell like something that died and lies decomposing on a beach. Even a vulture would turn his beak up! I think a seagull would still go for it though.
Amy and I took turns persuading Skye that there was no room to fling herself about chasing the other dogs on deck. We soon arrived on Mull and set off towards Tobermory. I have been all over Scotland but never on Mull and I was really looking forward to it.

 We found what looked like a deserted caravan holiday site near Salen and let Skye have a run about chasing her Frisbee. She brings it back sometimes, other times she runs about with it in her mouth. I enjoy trying to make it fly straight so I often have to chase her to get it back, not easy when I only have half the number of legs. After a very small tug of war, I get to throw the saliva drenched rubber disc and ......this goes on until one of us gets bored. You have to guess which one.
Apparently it's obligatory to photograph the three derelict fishing boats as you make your way to Tobermory so we did, and it was quite interesting to have a good look and imagine how much they cost when new. I would have climbed on board but I also imagined all kinds of giant squids hiding in dark places so I stayed ashore.
Tobermory proved to be even better than all the pictures you will have seen. As soon as you arrive there is just a really relaxed pleasant atmosphere and we soon enjoyed a picnic sitting down underneath the clock tower at the quayside. One of my hobbies is visiting WW2 aircraft crash sites and the small museum houses the cockpit section of a C47 Dakota which crashed on 1st Feb 1945.

As you drive towards the west side of Mull, just before Dervaig you will find this fantastic view point with seats and marker board. The scenery all around was ..............hang on a minute, I've just realised that the plural of squid is squid and not squids!.................out of this world and as we headed down towards Calgary Bay it just kept getting better.  Some tea and cake at the Gallery café was very welcome and Skye enjoyed barking at another dog there. She barks out of frustration at not being allowed off the lead to play, but we didn't want cups and plates flying through the air so we kept her on the lead!

 Amy was brave enough to let the icy ocean water tickle her toes - mine remained firmly under wraps! Calgary Bay was lovely, although the sound of a large calibre weapon being fired on the hills above the bay did give me pause for thought. I had to force my imagination away from landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day 1944 back to the reality that we had a fair distance to go to catch the 5pm ferry. Hustling  two tons of Land Rover along twisty hilly single track roads meant I had no time to admire the many views, and we arrived back at Craignure just in time to miss check in. This meant joining a separate queue and hoping there would be room for us. Thankfully the crew were able to squeeze us on board and soon we were enjoying a nice meal at Coasters Bar on the seafront at Oban.
A perfect end to a great day on Mull!      

Lurch becomes Monty

You might recall that whenever I lifted off the gas, particularly when going downhill, my Discovery would gently weave from side to side in a slightly scary way.....and that was why we called him Lurch.  But the other day I invested the huge sum of £35 and purchased two quality rear shock absorbers (even including courier delivery!) which my navigator Neil and I decided to try and fit ourselves. I googled and found a really good set of instructions complete with photos and at 0930am on a fine day last week we started. Unbelievably the old shocks came off easily, and the new ones fitted straight on. We were celebrating in Costa Coffee just after 11am, and I even bought Neil a huge scone (but no jam, I'm not made of money) which he was able to eat whilst simultaneously complaining about the various muscles he had damaged taking the heavy wheels off. We had to use a very big wheel wrench with a piece of scaffolding pole slid on it to get enough leverage to remove the nuts. I reckon I saved over £100 by not having a garage do it, so I was very happy. Almost deliriously so in fact, which manifested itself later on when I found myself paying for lunch at the Otterburn Mill. We had driven there despite heavy rain to test the new shocks and see if the weave had gone....it had! I had never really gelled with the name Lurch, despite loving the Addams Family, and now that he didn't do it, I wanted a new name.

Before travelling to Normandy I had put two military stickers on with the insignia of  XXX Corp who were under the command of General Montgomery during WW2 so I decided that Monty should become the new name of the vehicle formerly known as Lurch. I actually wanted to call him Rommel after the German general but as he is a British built Land Rover I didn't think a German name was very apt. 
After we had consumed two all day breakfasts and toyed with the idea of trying to fit puddings into the restricted space available in our, how shall I put it, ........ample stomachs, we headed onto the Otterburn military ranges, which you are allowed to explore so long as a large red flag is not flying.  If you do see one then do NOT enter or you may never leave, well not in one piece anyway!
We came across an airstrip where I attempted to take off in Monty but I think you have to go faster than 45mph to achieve flight. Even shouting V1, V2......rotate didn't help. You can see the video on Youtube.  I think the airstrip was used to put targets on, rather than land planes as it is quite short.       

               

 The scenery there is stunning even when it's raining, and you could spend hours looking around but we needed to get back. On the way I tried to turn right onto the A68 but a police car was blocking the way so I drove down to Otterburn village and turned right there, but it didn't help as we soon came upon the emergency services dealing with a three car accident and we had to detour via Bellingham.

I hope the people in the cars were OK. It was a sad end to a good trip out though.  





 



Goodbye Brian!

I got married to Amy at Langley Castle near Hexham  on 1st August 2012 and we used my Land Rover 110 ( built before they came up with the name Defender) who was known as Brian, in tribute to the alcoholic talking dog from Family Guy, as our honeymoon transport. I discovered there were some nice green lanes near the castle but as I was a tiny bit busy on that day I didn't get a chance to explore until nearly a year later.

 

All the lanes are legal to drive, and if I encounter other people then I always wave, say thank you if they step out of the way - and if they are on horseback I switch off and let them pass. I have read stories of furious walkers shouting abuse at people in 4X4's but, touch wood, I have never experienced it.

 

I think possibly it's because they see my lilywhite legs dangling beneath my shorts and feel sorry for them. After all, my legs have to support the rest of me which can't be easy given my predilection for pies of any kind - steak and black pudding from Rothbury is highly recommended!
You can see that Brian was a great vehicle and he took us all over the UK and around France. He only ever failed to start twice, once in a McDonalds car park and the other time in a layby next to a catering van. The RAC fixed him both times and I thanked them with a burger! Amy said that when we went on holiday in him, it was like taking a bit of home with us.
Not long after this picture was taken my wife opened the upstairs curtains and asked me where I had parked Brian. I had left him right outside our house, and being bright red with a union flag on the side, he shouldn't have been hard to see! But he was hard to see because somebody else obviously thought he was great too and had stolen him during the night. All that remained was an oil stain on the road. We were going away for a weekend in Scarborough and I had packed things like tools, brollies, picnic chairs, kites, binoculars etc so all that was gone too. It wasn't the same doing the trip in my wife's rusty 13 year old Fiesta, I can tell you! I had planned to keep him forever and I still miss him to this day.

I really want another Defender but apparently once you've had one stolen the thieves keep checking to see if you buy another one, then take that too! So I decided to wait long enough for some bad karma to happen to them- I really do believe you get what you deserve- before I looked for Brian 2, the sequel. 

I was going to write about green laning but I am running out of time so I will leave you with a photo showing me and Brian tackling a river that was almost 3 inches deep! You really can go anywhere in a Land Rover!

  



 

 

 

 



  

Lake District Old Coach Road on a very hot day!

If you drive along the A66 West towards Keswick, somewhere near Threkeld, and look to your left you will see what looks like a big lonely grassy hill. There is no trace of any buildings and it looks quite remote - but there is an ancient road running through it and if you have any kind of 4x4 then you can drive it.
Neil, Skye and me had a great cup of coffee in Granny Dowbekin's at  Pooley Bridge in the garden overlooking the river. Actually, I decided Skye couldn't have coffee as I was certain it would make her even more hyper than watching two young Labradors splashing about in the river. She kept trying to jump over the café garden wall to join them and I had to multi task, drinking coffee, eating millionaires shortcake and holding her back. As any lady ( including my wife) will tell you, men cannot multi task and so it was that some parts of my t-shirt did absorb a few droplets of flying coffee. We took Skye down to the riverside and threw twigs in for her to fetch, then she played 'chase me' with the Labs until the welfare of several small children seemed threatened by the dogs running ever closer, ever faster. 

 

Leaving the café we travelled  along the side of Ullswater, then turned up to Dock Ray where we joined the start of the 5 mile track -The Old Coach Road. I don't know whether it is an old road, or was used by old coaches - probably a combination of both, but it is a good hard surfaced track with no obvious obstacles. It was very peaceful making our way through the landscape with large hills and blue skies all around .

 



I was only slightly worried by the temperature gauge which was reading rather high - no doubt due to being constantly in a low gear on a baking hot day- but we kept stopping to take photos so I didn't see any steam. In the distance I could see an old railway wagon which had been used as storage for the farmer, but now looked distinctly worn out. I noticed movement inside and as we got closer I saw several cyclists taking shelter from the sun. They looked a bit nervous as we approached, maybe thinking we were the farmer coming to evict them, but as I passed I waved and shouted hello.
The track continued and we came upon a disused quarry where I was able to practise hill climbs and descents. I found that the Discovery bonnet sticks out a long way making it difficult to see when you are teetering on the edge of a steep slope!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxCU9HMPCb4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFTyL0nOVXM followed by http://youtu.be/m4VrJiZM9cw
  are the Youtube links in case you haven't seen them on my profile page.

As I was creeping over the edge the back of the vehicle stepped out slightly to the right, which you can hardly see on the video, but I felt it inside! I think Skye was a bit worried I was going to leave her but she did as Neil told her, and I had eyes on her the whole time. She was definitely better off not being in the back of the vehicle. Leaving the track we had a very pleasant run along to Ambleside then up The Struggle for a pint at the Kirkstone Pass Inn. The engine did get very hot on the way home, I even discovered a red flashing warning light on the dash so I immediately pulled over and gave him 30 mins to cool down. I have since found out that the fan isn't working properly so I am waiting for a new viscous coupling to arrive which I hope my DIY skills can cope with! 5 bolts in total, should be easy. Bet it's not though!

Tyne Valley Green Lanes in a Discovery

For some reason, when I was in the police I used to like to put the marked up Defender into low ratio first gear, then jump out and run around the vehicle as it was lumbering along, then jump back in again. This would impress any passengers who had never been in a land rover before, unless I had the misfortune to slip and fall over, then my desperate attempts to get up and back into the driver's seat were more amusing than thrilling. I think the point of view of the above photo just reminded me of those far off times - I can assure you the Discovery was stationary. If I kneel down these days it's not an easy task to become upright again and I am almost deafened by the clicking from my left knee.

It was a fine day so my friend Neil and I met up to explore some green lanes in the Tyne valley, west of Hexham. I made sure Skye had an extra soft bed in the back just in case it got very bouncy and I could tell from the look in her eye she appreciated it. It was the same look she gives when we give her treats or let her leap in a river. In fact she will dive into any body of water but show her the bath tub and it's a completely different story! She drops to the floor and goes totally limp making it very hard to pick her up. I wonder how she knows to do that?

Green lanes are public byways and your vehicle needs to be road legal to use them. Some of them are very easy, others quite challenging. We drove a few and they were mainly fairly smooth tracks, I never needed low ratio, in fact after climbing one quite steep track we came across a bungalow with great views, and there was a Nissan Micra parked outside. I felt a bit silly driving my rather large wheeled 4X4  Discovery but then I remembered some of the other places I'd been to where the Micra would have no chance and felt a bit better. 

At one spot by some old mine workings, Skye managed to train me to jump on some rocks and balance there. She had to lean on my leg or I would have fallen over, which is exactly what I did when she got bored 10 seconds later. We continued our journey and both Neil and I nearly jumped out of our skins when a C130 Hercules flew right over us at zero feet - I thought it was going to rip the flag off the aerial. It was even lower than the American ones we had seen at Arromanches!

It doesn't look very low in my photo, but I was slow getting the camera out - trust me, it was low!
We continued on, travelling cross country through fields and even somewhere that could have been the African Serengeti except I'm not sure they have Highland Coo's there.

    
 Neil and I managed to persuade Skye not to bark at this proud mother, and she in turn didn't gore us to death for getting too near her baby! They were really beautiful animals and it was all the nicer because we had not been expecting to see them here.
Eventually it was time to head for home happy in the knowledge that Lurch hadn't let us down, and as we drove I appreciated having a vehicle that can go most places off road, yet cruise at 70mph on the motorway.   

Normandy Trip Pt2

Well we made the ferry, Neil's fear of being seasick never happened and he was even able to wolf down a DFDS breakfast, only suffering a mild giddy turn when he saw the price of it. The crossing was smooth and uneventful (come to think of it, any event on a ferry can only be a bad thing!) and before we knew it we were trundling along the A16 which has a surprising amount of long uphill sections, followed by equally long downhills.  This is where we came up with the name Lurch, as the previously described weaving about intensified into a lurching sensation. Nothing dangerous, but lurching reminded us of The Addams Family and their gangly deep voiced butler and so the Discovery was christened. It does look like something that would be driven by a character in a horror film.

We stopped for lunch at a service area called Baie de Somme which was next to a wildfowl refuge. Neil stunned himself by remembering that the French for duck was canard. Thereafter it became his 'go to' word when other French words failed to enter his brain. This happened a lot, but wasn't too helpful.
"Combien pour le canard" whilst pointing at a cheese sandwich can only cause confusion.
The journey passed in a blur of toll paying, dramatic bridges, and seeing various WW2 vehicles and soon we were entering our home for the next four days, Honfleur. By some fluke we navigated the narrow streets and drove through the town and out the other side and eventually came to the last building which turned out to be our hotel! The receptionist gave me a lovely smile as she told me there was only one room booked in my name. I pictured myself sharing a room with 16 stone of snoring thunder and gave her an ugly scowl back. She called in a friend and the two of them spent 30 minutes frantically typing on computer keyboards which magically produced another room, so in the end we were all smiling.

We were smiling even more when we enjoyed a couple of Stellas in the harbour area, Neil said that if I asked him to draw his perfect holiday setting, he would draw Honfleur. It is a fantastic spot and we enjoyed several great meals sitting outside watching the world go by. Even the surly French waiters throwing our plates of food onto the table whilst simultaneously ignoring us only added to the atmosphere.
The next morning after using the battery from Lurch to kick start Neil (not a morning person.....at all!) we set off towards the D Day beaches. Various roads were due to be closed over the next few days and despite filling in application forms for permits and emailing them to different local government offices I got the expected reply - absolutely nothing. There was only one lady's email address printed on the application forms and when I emailed her directly she at least took the trouble to reply, denying any involvement in the matter and wondering why I had troubled her. So we went for plan B, take bicycles and simply ride past the road blocks.
Using my French O-level ( I was suffering from mumps during the oral exam which made me sound so French the examiner was totally fooled) I was able to translate that le Bacon McMuffin avec oeuf  was indeed a bacon muffin with egg so we breakfasted heavily on them. We had planned a traditional breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate but everywhere serving breakfast didn't open until lunchtime. Foolishly I had forgotten that meals in France are served 4 hours later than the UK equivalent.    
We visited a german radar station at Douvres which was very interesting, then went into Courseulles-sur-Mer where we found the place buzzing with activity, WW2 jeeps, motorbikes and trucks everywhere, as were people in period costume. I was videoing some jeeps when the USAF flew really low overhead in a giant C130, my favourite current 4 engine prop.  This is the YouTube link :-
http://youtu.be/LADRNBqrhyc
We had lunch at a café in Ver-sur-Mer surrounded by men who had landed in France in June '44, and watched their faces light up as various people in period uniforms saluted them and said hello. I couldn't help but eavesdrop as some of the old soldiers talked about their memories of being there. There was no show of emotion, just matter of fact talk with the odd funny story.
I introduced Neil to his first croque-monsieur avec frites and he loved it. Sounds so much better than ham and cheese toasty!

   

     

Double Rainbow!

As we left the house around 7pm the sun was shining but even as I unlocked Lurch I felt the first drops on the back of my neck. I glanced at the sky but could see no cloud. How can it rain without a cloud? I checked again, this time for any of our feathered friends who might have decided to bless me with their 'leavings' to coin a polite phrase. Well, it's better than saying 'shit', after all my mother might read this. Nary a bird in the sky. Applying Sherlock Holmes' deduction method i.e. when all other possibilities have been discounted etc, would have been my next step, but suddenly it started to pour down. At least I was saved the mental effort of deducing what was happening - see, every cloud does have a silver lining.
'But I thought there were no clouds' I hear you say.  'Clever dick.' I reply. Quick fire responses never were my forte.

Arriving at one of our local dog walking spots, on the site of a once massive steelworks, the rain was now belting down and bouncing up almost to the level of my wife's knees. I'm a bit taller than Amy, so it only reached my ankles.  We took Skye for a walk and I threw her Frisbee all over the place, trying to tire her out (seemingly impossible) and in the process we all got drenched.

Then with uncannily good timing, just as we neared the end of the walk the rain stopped abruptly.  Almost immediately we saw a complete rainbow form right in front of us, and then Amy shouted that it was a double rainbow! I've very rarely seen both ends of a rainbow touching the ground, never mind a double. Potentially we could have had four pots of gold but I'm not sure I had the energy to fight four leprechauns! When we walked a short distance further, only one side of the rainbow was visible - so we had definitely been in the right place at the right time!

 

It was well worth getting soaked to see the beautiful rainbow in it's entirety, and from now on I will not be put off going out in the rain, just in case another one comes along.


This is Amy taking the panorama above, it's a great photo.