A good ‘wake up’ :-)

It was 6:00am before I awoke yesterday morning, without the weight of a wee dug on my feet it felt strange, as did the faint sound of one or two early A9 commuters. The greenery outside

 

providing a little compensation for the lack of sea or Skye mountains. The joy of not having to deal with clouds of midge whilst feeding the pigs and hens was noted and put a broad smile on my face. That would be a job for the young Mr Camilli today

There was still the  boodly pigeons? though, actually, just Googled it, it’s the ‘Grouse of the north’  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-11627556 At least I wouldn’t need to let off a few shotgun rounds to scare this one off

Anyway, it was a great night’s sleep and far better than my original plan of sleeping in the car on the way back home. I’ve done that plenty of times too, just pulling over when I was tired and lying out in the back with Molly and several quilts. It’s actually quite comfortable in the Subaru but there’s not so much room in the back of the Discovery!!! I kid you not. Despite having many more cubic feet of ‘boot’ space it’s nowhere near as long and I’d have to sleep diagonally. That and the prospect of every layby having a ‘wild camper’ in it and being awash with turds and toilet paper put me off Well, that’s what the media would have you believe anyway Not that I take much notice of the media anyway, though I did switch the TV on this morning, something that I never do. I guess it was just the novelty of having one in the room and missing the wee dog whining for biscuits. Don’t think I heard COVID or Donald Trump mentioned once!!! but then it was only on for ten minutes, I hate the feckin thing.

Whilst ‘enjoyed’ is probably too strong a word, I was extremely pleased with my brief stay here. Sure it’s only got two stars and no food other than a vending machine selling chocolate and crisps with breakfast consisting of a disposable cardboard box full of other disposable stuff with some cereal, milk, juice and a chocolate cake in it. Still, the room was clean, bed comfy, water hot and it was cheap.

 

No frills, not even miniature bottles of shampoo or bars of soap but it was dead handy, I feel fully refreshed and ready to go and negotiate for my ‘hostage’, the 1986 Land Rover that has been an integral part of my life for twenty years

The ‘Highway to Hell’

 

First though, I had to dig out my Disco and trailer that was obviously parked somewhere it shouldn’t have been The guys were very understanding though and pretty soon I was off to Tayside https://taysidelandrovers.com/ to collect my family hostage.

 

Well, there were certainly many more Land Rovers there than when I last visited, obviously Matthew is very busy

  

Well, the ‘Old Girl’ wasn’t exactly ‘finished’ or even running but they engine and gearbox were in, we came to an amicable agreement over the two and a half years in ‘captivity’ and shook hands. My cracked or damaged rib was so boodly painful that Matthew and Mark expertly loaded her on the trailer for me.

 

Come 11:00 after coffee, I bade them farewell and headed north up a very wet A9. It was a boodly nightmare and my sincerest apologies to any poor soul stuck behind me at 40mph. I did pull over into just about every layby I could to clear traffic but there are surprisingly few in the sixty miles between Perth and Dalwhinnie. The beef & tomato soup, roll and black coffee at the Dalwhinnie ‘Snack Shack’ could not have come too soon for me.

By the time I reached the Broadford Co Op and petrol station my nerves were so frazzled and my cracked rib had obviously broken as I could barely fill with diesel or carry two pots of yoghurt, two containers of milk and a pizza for my dinner. I’d not be getting back to Sonas until 20:00 and my son wouldn’t be home to feed me I did have the kind offer of a meal in the village but I just couldn’t wait to get home to see Molly and the pigs would be boodly hungry to0. Not only that but it’s actually starting to get dark much earlier as September draws closer.

  

It was so, so good to be home with my ‘wee dug’

Broxden (where it all started)

Like a fish out of water me, I feel like a boodly alien down here, everywhere but the hotel room and Lidl is strange to me. The bedroom in the Travelodge is like every hotel room I’ve ever stopped in and Lidl well that’s just like every other one I’ve ever visited only I walked a mile or so to it from the Broxden services near Perth. Well at least I never had the usual shopping trolley dilemma I encounter on arriving at a Lidl or Aldi, you know the one, do I get a big trolley or little one? get the American sized one and I’m tempted to fill it, get the mini one and I do fill it, to the brim and over Well cos I was walking there and it was all uphill on the way back to the hotel it was just dried fruits, nuts and black olives I came away with rather than several trays of tinned tomatoes and boxes of muesli.

It’s not even 200miles from Arnish to Perth and I guess I’d have done the return journey in the day not so many years ago but nowadays I gotta psyche myself to drive to Portree or Inverness in the same day, let alone Perth. Well, I made it with that whopping great ‘tiltbed’ trailer and without incident, barely wincing when I passed the new section of crash barrier on the A9 at Pitlochry. That’ll be the crash barrier I sat the last Disco on several moths ago, the last time I came down here

I was heading south to see my son in Edinburgh but was also hoping to call and see my Land Rover on the way. That all when ‘tits up’ when I wrote my first Disco off Still, it all worked out fine and no one got hurt.

That’s it, I found my way down here without the ‘prat nav’, my hardest task being finding a boodly parking space for my stead and it’s trailer.

 

That needed about as much room as a small articulated truck. Luckily, there was such a spot near to the Travelodge I’d booked into and my outfit was soon camouflaged with McDonald’s detritus from the ‘Golden Arches’ next door.

   

The last time I was in this very spot was in March 2018 after dropping off my trusty old Land Rover for it’s ‘six week’ job at Tayside Land Rover https://taysidelandrovers.com/ two and a half years ago!

Well, having just received an email from Matthew Webster of Tayside telling me it’s ready or at least it will be by 9:30 in the morning    I’d better get some sleep, I can’t wait.