We’re back on the road again. When I last posted we were on our way from a soggy tour of the south coast of England for Sarah to have her long awaited hospital tests. These were completed two days ago and so we thought there’s not a minute to waste – let’s get off again.
The idea this time is to tour northern Scotland and we haven’t much more idea than that. If the ferries aren’t too full we’d like to visit the Outer Hebrides. At the moment it’s a vague as that. We may get called back half way through our trip by a letter from the hospital, but the speed the NHS is working at the moment we hope this is unlikely.
In a way this trip mimics Sarah and my first holiday together when we were at university. We took Sarah’s 1963 VW Beetle right up to John O’Groats, across the top of Scotland and down the North West coast. It still brings back lots of memories: beautiful scenery; freezing to death in August in our two man tent; and us doing the whole trip with a blown cylinder head gasket on Sarah’s car! We didn’t know we had a blown cylinder head gasket and on most cars, which are water cooled, this would have immediately killed the car, but Beetles have an air cooled engine so we carried on with the car making a hell of a noise, backfiring and having great difficulty starting it. It was only when we returned home that Sarah’s dad, who was a mechanic, stripped the engine down and showed us a groove worn through the cylinder head where the hot gases had been escaping through the blown gasket! Tough car beetles.
Today, on the first leg of our journey we have travelled to Lytham St. Annes in the North West of England. There is some nostalgia linked to this choice of first stop also. In 1977 I was accepted by British Aircraft Corporation (now BAe) at Warton for their Undergraduate Commercial Apprenticeship scheme. I had to work at BAe for a year before going to university and my parents helped me find digs in nearby Lytham St. Annes. For any youngsters reading “digs” were places where young men and women live while working away from home and the digs was run by a landlady, in my case Mrs. Vose, who provided bed, breakfast and evening meal. If I remember rightly I paid £18 a week for this. On the first day I arrived my digs I found I was sharing a room with a young man called Steve. Steve and I became good friends during the seven years I stayed at BAe and we have remained friends ever since.
Tonight Sarah and I are meeting up with Steve and his wife Jan for a meal in the Queen’s Hotel one of our favourite pubs when we were both living in Lytham all those years ago,
Basil’s overnight spot.
Our stopping place tonight is a car park right next to the enormous sandy beach at the north end of Lytham St. Annes (53.760033, -3.045190). There are two official motorhome stopping places in Lytham designated by the forward looking local council, and the one we are using only opened on 29th March and is being operated on a one year trial basis. The cost is £4 per night from 6pm to 10am or £7 per day. It is possible to stay for up to 3 days. There are no facilities on the car park but the other motorhome stopping place in St. Annes does have somewhere to empty toilets.
North Beach
Mabel has a paddle
No sooner has we parked up than we were on the beach with the dogs having a fantastic time as usual.
The dogs love a beach
Tomorrow we will cross into Scotland but we’re not sure yet where we will be stopping. Bank Holiday weekend starts tomorrow and so find a place to stay may be difficult, but wild camping is legal in Scotland so it should be possible to find somewhere.