In which Sid and Doris go international and start touristing.
The day starts at the County Hotel in Hexham with Sid setting out to buy the local paper, because then you know you are away. Happily the Hexham Courant covers stock prices, by which they mean Angus Cross Steers. That’s a proper bull market.
Sid feels an final piece of toast would just finish the breakfast off nicely and asks for please just one slice. It is brought, with the waitress looking reproachfully disapproving: “It looks awfu’ lonesome”. Lonesome toast and pronto, ha ha.
Doris has first drive and we pause for a picture on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, the old border. The actual wall was higher than the dry stone wall you can see in the background but with amber rain warnings we decided not to spend time finding real remains.
We carry up on the A68, road of a thousand blind crests. These are really serious blind crests, with the tarmac kicking up sharply as you approach the summit until all you can see is sky. As you leave Corbridge the Northumberland police have a board with a count of accidents in the last 12 months – 75 so far. Doris approaches the crests cautiously, but White Van Man behind her is keen to press on past as soon as we have gone over. A stoat dashes across the road and survives.
Sid made many attempts to gather the scenicity into the camera. Northumberland is just lovely, and largely empty.
It is also full of (mostly) happy memories such as Kielder Forest and Kershope Burn, just one of the best stages in British rallying as the car dances alongside the stream in a blissful flow of threes and fours. Doris had a class win with Nigel Cannell there in the Pirelli International Rally back in the day.
As we press on northward perhaps a less happy memory is Doris navigating a rally newbie Neil Cloughly over the Otterburn Army Ranges. These are fiendishly difficult tarmac roads with no rhythm and everywhere the opportunity for ditch visitin’. This was made more fraught because Neil was a very confident beginner and his car was an ex-race Clio Cup car on unsuitable suspension, near slick tyres and then it snowed. Perhaps happily it broke down. Sid towed it out with the Subaru Legacy Turbo on decent road tyres, maybe faster than it had been before. The county roads there have a lot of straights and while towing we overtook someone going uphill. Sid really liked that Legacy.
Next up: the current Scottish Border. In the next few years we might find the simple tea wagon at this viewpoint lay-by has been replaced with a full border crossing. Just down the road we found the Buccleuch Arms. You might think you have quite a big garden, The Duke of Buccleuch has 217,000 acres which seems a lot in a small country. This isn’t Texas. Still they have been Dukes since the thirteenth century so who is going to suggest some sort of wealth tax might help out the Treasury? Scottish oil is running out and the UK Treasury’s Barnett formula causes the British tax payer to deliver £9,300 of services per head to the English and £11,240 each for the Scots. If I were the Duke I would be for a United Kingdom. ‘Well, Duke Sir, we’ve come about those acres’….. In Sid’s mind things do join up.
It takes us a while to work out why we are seeing so many runners with numbers on. They are doing the London Marathon which in this plague year is a professionals-only event. But many charities benefit from the sponsorship these runners collect so the London Marathon has been run everywhere that runners are. Twenty six miles is a very long way. We tootle and wave encouragingly – everyone loves a Mini waving at them.
We wound our way under Edinburgh and over the Queensferry Crossing of the Forth. To our right the Forth Road Bridge, now for buses and bikes, and the Forth Railway Bridge which is a fabulous piece of engineering. We could see it but what the camera saw was a confusion of suspension wires and railings. [So I’ve put in this shot from visitscotland.com of all three bridges – we were on the closest one – D.]
Once over the water Sid took the wheel. Teal, number plate SOB917M, is secretly delighted to be on the A917 but Sid and Doris are hoping it will become a scenic road with views across the Firth of Forth, such as you might expect from the Fife Coast Tourist route. Doris will tell you more in today’s Bothy McWeevil report, although neither of us will dwell on the agonising age we spent through some featureless housing estates behind a learner doing 20mph. But it did lead us round to Anstruther with its working fishing harbour and marina. Sid and Doris dearly love to look at other people’s boats. The Museum of Scottish Fishing was fully booked but the ice cream shop was open so hey. And while eating ice cream you can admire the North Sea from the safety of the harbour wall.
As Doris squelched out of the car she was a bit alarmed to find quite a lot of water in the nav side footwell. As the car’s temperature had been fine all day it was no surprise that the heater matrix and hoses were all ok. Possibly a split where the floor pan meets the lower bulkhead. If it is dry tomorrow we can slosh some bitumen paint around. If not, we can always grow mushrooms on the carpet.
With the weather warning at our backs we pressed on to Dundee over the spectacular and very long Tay Bridge. The part-built oil platforms remind us of the live platforms that could be seen so clearly earlier just off the Edinburgh coast. No wonder the Scottish Independence case includes the finances of the offshore oil industry – activities invisible to the Sassenachs in the Mini.
And because we are early into town Sid says, ‘What was the attraction shut on Monday and Tuesday?’ Some juggling of damp bookmark-laden guide books in the navigator’s area and we find it was the Verdant Jute Mill, another of the European Industrial Heritage museums. It is great, with pictures of clippers, all the machines, explanations, little fillums, and Sid’s favourite: early colour home movies from Dundee families that went to Calcutta to run jute businesses on the Hooghly river. We enter it an hour before closing and are given a two-day ticket so we can return and finish off the second half.
Our room in the Apex Hotel has a view of the old docks where the jute came in. More usefully there seem to be restaurants nearby. Most usefully the Brasserie Ecosse is nearby for some high-quality dining. Least usefully, directly across the road we are offered the opportunity to swim in the docks… wetsuits are not optional…
And the weather warning? So far we have dark clouds but it’s Not Actually Raining. Sid and Doris have a handy abbreviation for this state: N.A.R.
The day starts at the County Hotel in Hexham with Sid setting out to buy the local paper, because then you know you are away. Happily the Hexham Courant covers stock prices, by which they mean Angus Cross Steers. That’s a proper bull market.
Doris has first drive and we pause for a picture on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, the old border. The actual wall was higher than the dry stone wall you can see in the background but with amber rain warnings we decided not to spend time finding real remains.
Once over the water Sid took the wheel. Teal, number plate SOB917M, is secretly delighted to be on the A917 but Sid and Doris are hoping it will become a scenic road with views across the Firth of Forth, such as you might expect from the Fife Coast Tourist route. Doris will tell you more in today’s Bothy McWeevil report, although neither of us will dwell on the agonising age we spent through some featureless housing estates behind a learner doing 20mph. But it did lead us round to Anstruther with its working fishing harbour and marina. Sid and Doris dearly love to look at other people’s boats. The Museum of Scottish Fishing was fully booked but the ice cream shop was open so hey. And while eating ice cream you can admire the North Sea from the safety of the harbour wall.
As Doris squelched out of the car she was a bit alarmed to find quite a lot of water in the nav side footwell. As the car’s temperature had been fine all day it was no surprise that the heater matrix and hoses were all ok. Possibly a split where the floor pan meets the lower bulkhead. If it is dry tomorrow we can slosh some bitumen paint around. If not, we can always grow mushrooms on the carpet.
With the weather warning at our backs we pressed on to Dundee over the spectacular and very long Tay Bridge. The part-built oil platforms remind us of the live platforms that could be seen so clearly earlier just off the Edinburgh coast. No wonder the Scottish Independence case includes the finances of the offshore oil industry – activities invisible to the Sassenachs in the Mini.