Travelodge Carlisle Central

After making arrangements by text last night my friend Steve (from Crewe this time - I know a lot of Steve's) caught a train to Penrith with his family to arrive around 8am to collect my car. Joanna brought me back to Appleby and that little task was sorted. Typical of me to be finishing off such a large task at the last minute but it all got sorted and that's the main thing.

It is now the time to be assembling my stuff into ...

... Riding down through Cumbria the amount of rivers that had burst their bank & surface water on the roads was staggering and really confirmed that we had made a good decision.

Currently, we are all sitting in the kitchen with Anne, Phillip and their two children Ieuan & Elise having stuffed our faces with home made lasagne & apple crumble claimed to be all of work of Phil our host!.. the look on Anne's face might mean he was exagerating some what!

... affair. This is good though, as the next time I am here will be on the day of my last injections - which is also day before I depart - so there will be precious little time for social arrangements.

This evening marked precisely 2 weeks to departure - awesome! XD

Day 2 and I need to fix the LR!

My first night in a hostel and first experience of having to share a room with 3 other strangers. There was one man that kept waking me up with his snoring, lets hope I got some revenge throughout the night;-) It's 8am and time for breakfast. Most of the Hostel are here for the Great
North Run so when I turn up for breakfast it is packed and everyone is excited about their days events.

I am ...

... has a variety of shops and restaurants for the tourists. Outside the Tartan shop was the Glasgow Accordion and Drum Band! They were excellent! Lots of toe tapping music, and, yes, we were surprised to hear the accordions. Down by the gift shop there was a full dressed piper playing his bagpipe. It was an interesting place with lots of happy atmosphere!

We then headed back into England to Lancaster. We didn’t want to be too far ...

... place to visit.

From there we drove around the Border Regions of England, checking out Hadrian's Wall - built by the Roman Hadrian to keep the Scottish clans from attacking them - and then up across the border itself into sunny Scotland. An hour in to the country, Helly received the phone call we were dreading - the call to come back to work early. *sigh* So that was the ...

Busy busy busy today. First we went to Castlerigg Stone Circle, which dates from the Early Bronze Age - around 3200 BC. Pretty old. The setting is amazing - surrounded on all sides by mountains, and hardly a sound to hear...except for this annoying little **** who kept climbing on the stones. I realise I'm a killjoy, but for ****s sake, a bit of respect please? If you ...

... to the construction of the stone forts. These timber forts had to be replaced every 8 years or so, as the local timbers from which they were made rotted away relatively quickly. To save time and effort, the Romans tended to build over the top of previous constructions, by just laying a new floor over the remains of the last one, and this method actually helped preserve fragile relics such as abandoned items of clothing and ...

... some gigs (no money as usual). Will be taking my guitar to Corfu and maybe I can do some busking to help augment the usual financial crisis. Anyway, not much to post at the moment as I'm up to my shoulders in packing and sorting out bills etc. Will be flying out of Manchester Monday night. No doubt there'll be internet access somewhere near my village (http://www.sidari.biz/) and if any of you are planning Mediterranean jaunts, come and see me/stay! Cheers all Lee

Lake District was the northernmost area we visited. That's probably why the Lake District is one of the best attractions of U.K. John told me the story of Beatrix Potter, the author of Peter Rabbit.
Actually, I don't remember which lake I visited, because John took me there. I still remember I took a boat to the opposite ...