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We're heading north again for our summer holiday, back to Center Parcs (but again a different one, so it's very much like visiting another country) and then a few days in the Lake District. I wondered on the long drive whether we might have been better off doing this last week and Catie and the kids meeting me from Edinburgh, but there must have been some reason we decided to increase our carbon skidmark (not by much though - I'd still have had to drive up anyway).
We finished packing and watched the first half of the World Cup Final, but we had to listen to the second half in the car. The Lionesses didn't quite manage to get their paws on the trophy and it was a disappointing listen, but still the greatest achievement by an England football team in my life-time (and the win at the Euros is a very close second).
Phoebe managed the whole six hour trip without needing to go to the toilet, Ernie had to have one stop, conveniently he decided he needed the loo just after we'd stopped for the small-bladdered adults. The elderly can only envy the young.
We crossed the Pennines and wondered what it was like to live in one of the isolated farmhouses that scatter that desolate but beautiful landscape. It's hard to believe there's this huge area with hardly any evidence of mankind in it right in the middle of the UK. But the country is full and there's an end of it. Catie wasn't convinced by my idea that we should buy an abandoned building and do it up and live here. And when I realised that the internet connection might not be that good, I decided against it. I also thought the other farmers would probably look down on me as a soft southener and wondered if they'd bother to come and rescue us after we starved in the first three days. Maybe I will never be a farmer.
We stayed overnight in Alston, all sharing one room in a really nice family run hotel. It was fun and we were all tired enough to more or less fall asleep straight away, though the double head whilst comfortable, had a funfair aspect to it, where if one of you moved at all, the whole thing would lurch and bounce and wake the other one up. The biggest mistake we've made in our marriage is to have a huge and very comfortable bed at home. It means that we can usually sleep together in harmony (except when I get up to snoring weight), but it also means that any other bed is basically impossible to sleep soundly in. But I was so knackered from the drive that I fell back to sleep quickly each time. Before dreaming about being on a ship on the ocean in a storm as my wife scratched her nose.
