The World Turned Upside Down

It was always going to be a challenge driving something like 460 miles today only to do the return journey tomorrow after the probably stressful event of a funeral. I was sharing the driving with Greg and trying not to think about the distance except in positive terms as we passed various metaphorical milestones. It was one of those grey-yellow skies in the south and one which deposited occasional if somewhat translucent showers from deceptively high cloud.

Sutton Scotney was crowded when we arrived and we continued instead to Chieveley. It would not have been my first choice for breakfast but, to be fair, the food, served charmlessly by listless late teens, tasted better than it looked. Our stomachs were revived but our wallets depleted by our latest brush with the fruit machines - no £500 today. I don't know what I expect at 90% payout but I must have still had some expectations when I lost another £20 at Norton Canes. Thank goodness the toll is reduced at weekends.


There are more attractive service areas than Lancaster as I have alluded in an earlier post. In fact it is visually hideous and, inside, is inadequate and cramped. However, its M&S Food provides the best lunch you can have on a motorway. There was some beautiful weather to enhance both the Lake District and the south of Scotland and thus the world was turned upside down; it is not often these regions can offer better weather than the south which has had a dire non-summer.

I was not looking forward to the A75/76 variation to our usual journey, required because we would be staying in Irvine and not Glasgow but much of the route was very pretty. There were mining scars as well. I resented the speed limits for the several pointless linear towns with their drab cottage bungalows lining their main thoroughfares. Such were my thoughts as we passed through Sanquhar but as we left the worst of its dull centre behind we stopped for some surprising photographs which appear on my Photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/johnoram . That very stop delayed us enough to allow new cloud to encroach the Ayrshire sky so I had only a brief foray to the railway at Newton on Ayr and the merest glance at Prestwick Airport's tastelessly decorated terminal before continuing in the gloom to Irvine.

We found the Menzies Hotel with only a little driving but my first impressions made me wonder why exactly it has four stars. With no obvious lift and air conditioning which seems, to say the least, ineffective, it was set to lose one Oram star and see Oram star at Reception in one of his famed monologues. However, dinner revived their reputation. I must say the food was pretty good. Generous portions and good quality ingredients were served efficiently considering the presence in the restaurant of two large groups. The mainly teenage wait staff would not have been at all suitable for 'sulky breakfast' at Chieveley; they had evidently been to smile practice. Perhaps this was just one more manifestation of the good Scottish service I noted in my last blog from North of the border.


Tomorrow won't be easy but perhaps the mood will be lightened on the way back if we can photograph rhinos in Dumfries. We know it is possible and you will be none the wiser unless you read again tomorrow.