Guillaume’s neighbours to his right on the side of Loch Linnhe are Scots who live in Perth. During a natter with Francine, who at least speaks a little Scottish, occasioned by a shared interest in photographing the conditions on and (just) above Loch Linnhe, Mr. Neighbour expressed the opinion that Fort William was a dump. That’s the third independent consistent assessment that we’ve had. This morning, there being a lull in the rain if not in the wind, we decided to dawdle the 15kms/9mls up the road to see for ourselves.

In our opinion, all three third party assessments were correct; Fort William is, in fact, a dump. Actually, Francine thought that dump was too kind a word for it. Many of the buildings are the soulless concrete slab buildings favoured in the 1960s. Much of the paint is flaking off the door and window frames of some of the shops and their signs/names tend to be missing odd letters. Several of the shop units in the main street are closed and empty. Those that are still trading seem to be selling the same Scottish tourist tat: tartan mugs, highland map tea towels, etc. There is an unavoidable air of decay and neglect about the place. It’s an ugly town that’s being allowed to fall apart. This is curious because it seems to think of itself as the outdoor activity centre of Scotland which should want to attract tourists. The tourists still spill out of coaches, for some reason, and are faced with the unwelcoming sight of a dilapidated Fort Dump. There was one piece of development going on; Weatherspoons pub was being developed, presumably to provide a ready supply of reality correction fluid to those unfortunate enough to be here.

We escaped Fort Dump to drive a short circuit up to Spean Bridge. At the beginning of the circuit, just outside Fort Dump, is the southern end of the Caledonian Canal, the last feature of which is a flight of eight locks known as Neptune’s Staircase. We parked and wandered a while to watch a couple of sailing yachts and, somewhat curiously, a life boat, begin they’re long journey up the locks.

Towards the top end of our circuit we came across this second world war memorial to the commandos. The countryside around here was used as their training ground. Beside this statue is a small memorial garden containing many recent tributes to those lost in conflicts more recent that WW II, particularly Afghanistan.

A final disappointing observation. From Neptune’s Staircase you can see Ben Nevis when the cloud permits. Ben Nevis may be Britain’s highest lump of rock at 1343m/4406ft but visually impressive it isn’t. That’s it in the centre distance of this (bad) picture under the traditionally disturbed sky – no craggy, pointed peak, just a rather dull, rounded, almost flat-looking top. Had I studied any geography, I might have understood why the Scottish mountains are soft and rounded like this – I’m guessing glacial erosion from the ice age, or some such. Suffice to say that I prefer the cragginess of the Pyrenees and the Alps.

Incidentally, we’ve been told that mountain is an English word, the Scots call them hills. Well, they are 3000m/10000ft lower than the Alps/Pyrenees, I suppose.

As you can see from this Monday morning picture, the texture from yesterday evening’s moody grey skies had completely disappeared to be replaced by oppressive, featureless low cloud. This is the view from the right front quarter of Guillaume across to the opposite shore of Loch Linnhe, just visible between the low grey clouds and the grey water. It was breezy but at least it wasn’t raining.

We went to visit an old friend of Francine who, for some inexplicable reason, has chosen to live in Scotland. Apparently, he wanted to “do all the Munroes” – a Munroe is a mountain above 3000 feet – but, as can so often be the case, health issues intervened. We had arranged to meet for a walk upwards but, as you can see from the first picture, heading upwards was a decidedly bad idea so we opted for a trip to visit Oban instead. Oban was, to quote friend’s wife, “a bonny wee town”. Like our once removed contact at Englethwaite Hall, she also expressed the opinion that Fort William was a dump. A consensus was beginning to form.

We wandered along the harbour and called into an Oban cafe and chocolate shop to sample both the coffee (very good) and chocolates (also very good). Outside, a constantly changing line of cruise ship tourists were being ferried back to said cruise ship, moored out in deeper water, by two tenders shuttling back and forth.

Our friends spotted a fish restaurant, the Waypoint Bar & Grill, across Oban harbour on Kerrera island. There was also a ferry service to and from it which, it transpired, was free. Fish and Chips appear to be regarded as Scottish haute cuisine, along with black pudding which they were at pains to point out was best from a master butcher in Oban. With trepidation – Franco doesn’t do well on small boats – we took the ferry for lunch. Whilst our pals tucked into Scottish gourmet haddock and chips, Francine enjoyed some wonderfully caramelized scallops with bacon and salad (declared delicious) and I chose mussels with garlic, white wine, cream and parsley, or moules marinières, as I prefer to call it. I must say, I think the mussels were the best I have ever tasted.

After a brief interlude of relative brightness, the grey had returned and the rain, which had begun as we approached the island, gradually intensified. The clouds hit the deck and, as we were driving back to Guillaume after our return ferry trip, the rain was downright awful. The opposite side of the loch had become all but invisible.

This could get tedious.

Our next destination is another 200 miles further north at the Caravan Club site at Bunree, near Onich. Our site at Englethwaite Hall has been an interesting stopping off point. Englethwaite-Bunree seems to be a popular combination. As Francine was waiting for the organized fish and chip delivery on Friday evening, along with several others, she began talking to another gourmet diner who was also at Englethwaite en route to Bunree. Her camping neighbours, in turn, had stopped at Englethwaite on their way back from two weeks at Bunree where, they reported, it had rained every day. Oh joy! They also expressed the opinion that Fort William, at the southern end of the Caledonian Canal just above Bunree, was “a dump”. As a result, I have now mentally rechristened Fort William as Fort Dump, though I am still personally to validate their assessment. Today would take me one step closer to doing so.

We hitched up and were on the road before 9:00 AM. In just a few miles we were beyond the frontier of civilization, leaving Hadrian’s wall behind us in the rear view mirror. The journey north begins on the M6 motorway. This self-same motorway then utterly seamlessly becomes the A74(M) which then, again completely seamlessly transforms itself into the M74. One road, three different numbers: M6, A74(M), M74 – how sensible is that?

I noticed another odd thing about the Scottish end of the motorway. Our national speed limit on such roads is 70 mph. The national speed limit for any road is signified by a white circular road sign with a thick black diagonal bar. What you never see in England is speed limit sign with “70” specifically written on it yet, here in Scotland, they were. They looked weird, just because we’re not used to them.

Mercifully, a new motorway-grade road has been built through/over Glasgow. Since the best way to deal with Glasgow is to get through it/over it as quickly as humanly possible,  the new road helped greatly. Regrettably, the 70 speed limit signs were replaced by a mixture of 60 and 50 speed limit signs, slowly progress somewhat. Even more unfortunately, Sally Satnav didn’t know about this new road – her maps are 18 months out of date, after all – so Snr. Navigation Officer Francine had to assume control as Sally drew a car in the middle of nowhere and announced, “driving in Scotland”. Very helpful, Sally!

They could do with a new road running beside the 24-mile(ish) western shore of Loch Lomond but alas, we had to bounce our way relatively slowly over the existing road surface. [I use the word surface loosely.] The puddles from the moderately heavy rain made reading the surface as difficult as seeing anything of the bonny, bonny banks themselves.

Our route even further north took us through the twin tourist attractions of Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe, both of which managed to maintain a certain amount of visual appeal despite the low cloud base. It had, at least, stopped raining. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to return in more favourable conditions, should any arrive.

We arrived at Bunree Caravan Club site at 1:30 PM and checked in. The site is picturesquely placed right on the shore of Loch Linnhe. There are loch-side pitches literally eight metres from the shore but awnings are not permitted on these. As we were early enough for there to be several up for grabs, though, Francine couldn’t resist snagging one of the remaining ones and foregoing the convenience of our small porch awning. I was more than happy to forego the pleasure of having to erect it.

Here’s a moody monochrome shot of Guillaume’s view for the next eight nights.

We’d ticked off two of our list of tourist attractions for our first base. For our third and last day here, Francine fancied checking out the Solway Firth west of Carlisle. As a juicy bit of bait for Franco, she came up with another RSPB reserve, Campfield Marsh, on the southern side of the firth which, as well as birds of course, boasted a decent collection of dragonflies. Once again the weather didn’t look very promising for Odo hunting and the thing uppermost in Franco’s mind was getting a full tank of diesel ready for tomorrow’s drag up to Onich on the west coast of Scotland.

As usual, navigation officer Francine chose an interesting route right beside the southern shore of Solway Firth. There was a thin strip of grass then mud flats running beside the road but the water was an encouragingly long way out. Less encouraging were signs placed at regular intervals beside the road reading:

When the water reaches this point the maximum depth is one foot.

Great! Maybe we needed a Land Rover with a high-level exhaust. One sign actually mentioned a maximum depth of two feet. I hoped these signs referred to an unusual occurrence and not to a twice daily flooding caused by high tide. I had memories of watching cars play chicken with the advancing tide as it raced in to flood the passage de gois, a submersible road joining the Île de Noirmoutier to the mainland of France. Since cattle were roaming freely across this road in front of us munching the grass verges, however, I thought we’d be safe but one never really knows.

The reserve didn’t look very promising as we started into it clad in Wellington boots which we’d sensibly remembered to bring. After half a mile or so and having seen little but the ubiquitous swallows swallowing flies to fuel up for Africa, we came across a small pond surrounded by reeds whereupon Francine yelled “Odos!” Four species were flitting about here but were having to be a little circumspect flying in the stiff breeze.

We continued on the trail seeing more of the same until we came to a boardwalk over much more open country. Time was advancing and we weren’t seeing anything new so we snapped the view, then did an about turn to start making our way back.

Very shortly, Francine spotted a tandem pair of Black Darters (Sympetrum danae). While she was snapping them, I noticed, hanging up just about two feet from her right shoulder, a magnificent male Common Hawker (Aeshna juncea) in pristine condition. I begged her not to move and started snapping away myself. With a shot or two in the bag, Francine relaxed and joined in. The Hawker seemed completely unconcerned and remained motionless. This star catch was the perfect partner to the female we’d snagged just the day before at Haweswater.

Already a happy camper, as we were nearing the car, old hawk-eyes spotted another hawker hung up in the hedgerow; apparently I’d flushed it whilst walking past. A Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) this time to bring our collection to six.

The tide was in as we made our way back towards Carlisle. The “encouraging” signs were still visible, the road wasn’t flooded and the cows hadn’t been swept away. Neither had their many deposits on the road surface – you really need to be careful with your speed around corners, here. We stopped overlooking the firth to munch our lunch where I couldn’t help but be amused by this Royal appointment sign on a British Gas van parked beside us. “Repair and maintenance of gas lamp lighting”? I thought we’d advanced further than this. 🙂

Just for the record, our wildlife haul for the day was:

• Common Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa)
• Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans)
• Black Darter (Sympetrum danae)
• Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum)
• Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea)
• Common Hawker (Aeshna juncea)

We are tantalizingly close to the north-eastern edge of the Lake District. In England, for spectacular scenery, the Lake District cannot be beaten, IMHO, not that I’ve seen everything, of course. In search of interesting attractions, Francine spotted an RSPB site on the shores of Haweswater, not too far distant. Our route could be encouraged to go through the village of Shap, which Francine also fancied seeing. We’d be needing shopping, too, on our way back and Penrith should be able to satisfy that. A plan emerged.

The intriguing thing about the RSPB reserve at Haweswater is that it used to be home to England’s only breeding pair of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos). Unfortunately the male lost his mate a few years ago so it is now the home of England’s only Golden Eagle, who can apparently be seen displaying, at the right time of year, in an attempt to attract another passing female Golden Eagle. Very sad, really; I’d say the likelihood of that happening would be pretty slim given the paucity of Golden Eagles in England.

We drove off and headed for Shap. Soon, we were threading our way down 1½ track country lanes overlooking fields criss-crossed by light-coloured dry stone walls enclosing various farmers’ herds of sheep. Unusually, the sun was shining and the scenery looked idyllic. Stopping to take this picture was a little problematic but we managed it without upsetting more than two of the aforementioned farmers in their Land Rovers. You really do need a serious four wheel drive up here in the winter, I’d imagine.

Haweswater is a man-made reservoir, i.e. dammed. I’d have thought that there were already enough lakes in the Lake District but apparently, in 1909 “they” disagreed, dammed a valley flooding a couple of compulsorily purchased villages, and created another, Haweswater. I bet the flooded locals were very happy. Hey ho! We drove the length of Haweswater to its southern tip where we found an overfull car park. Clearly other folks were interested in the walks and the lone English Golden Eagle, too. We found a small, as yet car-free pull-off and parked to begin our walk.

To cut a long story short, we wandered three miles there and back with no sign of anything large, feathered and golden brown, lone or otherwise. In fact, we didn’t really see any birds other than swallows feeding on flies above the fields in preparation for their long flight back to Africa. Given this year’s appalling weather here, one has to wonder why they bothered to make the long flight to us in the first place. Of course, they weren’t to know, were they? Despite grey, featureless skies, Haweswater itself looked quite picturesque, though.

Very unexpectedly given the conditions, we did spot something golden brown hunting on the wing, though it was considerably smaller. After a very determined Francine watched and waited for a while, it settled in the grass and posed for pictures. What didn’t we have? A decent camera! Francine managed it with snappy, though. Our quarry was a female Aeshna juncea, known variously in the vernacular as Common Hawker/Moorland Hawker/Sedge Hawker. Whatever its name, it more than made up for our not seeing its much larger feathered raptor counterpart.

As planned, on the way back we called into Penrith for some shopping. We’d last been here in 2002 on a Christmas trip to Pooley Bridge with our two ageing mothers. [The two ageing mothers are now even more aged.] Then we discovered an excellent grocery shop in the square. It was a timeless, double-fronted Victorian classic with a central island counter boasting a fine selection of cheeses, amongst other temptations. I was delighted to find that it was still there, largely unchanged. We entered and I made straight for the cheese selection. As usual, my eyes sought that which I didn’t know – something new. They were inexorably drawn towards a blue cheese labelled “Jervaulx”. I’d never before heard of Jervaulx and had to have some. As a lump was being cut, I was informed that this had originally been called Blue Wensleydale, had then been called Jervaulx, and the latest shipments were now coming in once again being called Blue Wensleydale.

I’m familiar with Blue Wensleydale so the mystic attraction of Jervaux had been somewhat shattered. Maybe calling it “Jervaulx” had been some a misguided attempt to make it appealing to the intensely parochial French? Whatever, we returned to Guillaume with our purchases, for our fish and chip supper, pre-ordered and collected by the accommodating campsite wardens

The Jervaux/Blue Wensleydale proved to be the best I’ve ever tasted. Delicious, whatever its name!

“What have the Romans ever done for us?”

Well, apart from maintaining law and order, and developing central heating, starting in AD 122 they built a wall across the almost 80-mile width of northern England to keep out the Barbarian Scots. The Romans used walls to mark what they considered to be the frontiers of civilization. We should have taken note. By contrast, nearly nearly two thousand years later and having given Scotland its own parliament with considerable autonomy (which is more than England has), we wittingly installed in Westminster a Labour government, constituted largely of senior Scottish MPs, in particular the then disastrous chancellor Gordon Brown – sell gold reserves at an all time low, kill the pensions industry with sudden taxation, etc. – to ru(i)n our country once so considerately defended by the Romans. Talk about dense!

Today, rain being low on the radar, we went to see our historic northern frontier of the civilized Roman world, Hadrians’ Wall, which was our main reason for choosing to break our journey around Carlisle. There being 80 miles of the wall, our first decision was choosing which sections to visit. Being the most popular tourist attraction in northern England, however, there is no shortage of information to help in that regard. Not wishing to drive too far, our potential sites were determined by our location near the eastern end of the wall.

We started off by heading for Housesteads, one of 16 Roman forts along the length of the wall. Housesteads, pretty much centrally positioned along the wall, was begun ~AD 124 and garrisoned up to 800 soldiers. It is now managed by English Heritage on behalf of the National Trust so Francine, being a member of the latter, was able to get in for free. Others must shell out £6 which, for a pile of old stones, I declined to do. Franco isn’t particularly into old stones but for those who are, here are a few for the record.

Our second stop, a little further east back towards Guillaume, was to see what may well be the most photographed section of the wall. It was well known anyway but was made more famous – or should that be notorious? -by Kevin Costner’s relatively recent Holywood epic, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Sycamore Gap is unarguably an impressively photogenic section of the wall with the eponymous sycamore tree rooted centrally in a sudden dip between two bluffs. The notorious bit is that it has more recently become known as Robin Hood’s tree. The eminent Mr. Costner, a.k.a. Robin of Loxley, apparently having made landfall at Dover and being on his homeward bound journey to Nottingham, is filmed at this very location defending a young poacher from the wrath of the Sherriff’s men. Dover to Nottingham via Hadrian’s wall? Nice one, Hollywood! With a sense of direction that bad, Robin of Loxley would have stood absolutely no chance of leading his band of merry men against the deliciously evil Alan Rickman. He’d never even have found the Sherriff of Nottingham.

More sensibly, our route to Sycamore Gap ignored both Dover and Nottingham – well, we did have the advantage of an Ordnance Survey map – and took us from the car park at Steel Rigg, about a mile along the wall past the Roman’s milecastle 39. Very pleasant, though quite a lot of up and down.

After all that walking up and down we couldn’t resist slaking our thirst at an inn in the intriguingly named hamlet of Twice Brewed. Very descriptively, the inn was called the Twice Brewed Inn. And before you ask, yes, there is also a little place nearby Twice Brewed called Once Brewed. Bizarre!

Continuing east back towards Guillaume, our final stopping point, offering probably the best image of Hadrian’s wall itself, was at Walltown Crags. It would have been best had the sun put n an appearance without other grockels horsing about having their pictures taking in various autistic artistic poses whilst clambering along the top of the wall. What is it about walls that makes young folk want to walk along them? It’s very curious. It is very interesting, however, that this is a Roman relic that we allow people to clamber all over. Normally, such things are fenced off. Tourists used to be allowed to clamber all over an amazing Roman relic in France called the Pont du Gard. Very atypically for the French, that is now fenced off. As it was, we were forced to choose between sunlight grockels or dull and grockel-free.

‘T was a good day out, though a little windy and cold at times. What a pity that modern day Italians aren’t nearly as savvy as the Romans were. That’d help the Euro crisis.

North? What are “Franco, Francine and Guillaume doing heading north?”, I hear you ask. Very fair question – after all, we already live about 800kms/500mls too far north.

Well, it’s like this. Francine’s niece is getting hitched in September and invited us to the wedding. Francine’s niece lives in Edinburgh. Thus, our initial idea was a trip with Guillaume to Scotland around the wedding. It is slightly surprising, perhaps – it was to me – that it is considerably quicker to get from our home to Normandy than it is to get to Scotland. Our trip to Normandy is comfortable in a day being 200kms/120mls on either side of a 90-minute Dover-Calais ferry crossing.  Scotland, further north than the borders, at least, takes considerably longer. So, we needed a stopover in the north of England en route. We decided to make our first stop near Carlisle to investigate Hadrian’s Wall, which I’ve never seen.

Our weather forecast was not terrific for today’s travelling but we did manage to hitch up and set sail in dry weather. After that stroke of luck, for most of the 450kms/280mls it rained. North of Manchester a couple of tiny patches of blue sky interrupted the otherwise solid cloud cover but they were short lived. Dark cloud was the order of the day.

Ahead of a stiff following wind, Guillaume sailed along at close to 30 mpg. We probably could have finished the journey on the one tank of fuel but, not wanting to be on fumes on arrival at our campsite, we pulled in to Tebay services for a splash and dash. I should explain: diesel is running at £1.53 per litre on the motorway network, hence not wishing to buy more than necessary. [Aside: And our cold-hearted, silver-spooned chancellor has a government imposed increase lined up for those of us that understand the term budget.] We stepped out of the car and got instantly chilled in the damp, cool wind.

Tebay services has a reputation of being about the best service area on the UK motorway network. Admittedly, it doesn’t have much competition but it’s supposed to be pretty good. Our limited experience suggests that it is, too. As well as our fuel tank needing sustenance, we needed sustenance so we went in search of food. The first little sustenance provider was offering the following, to pick just two of the cheaper examples from its menu:

Artisan rolls: from £6.00
Paninis: from £7.00

Strewth! OK, both these came with “your choice of salad” but for Heaven’s sake, I just wanted a simple sandwich; no value-added salad and certainly no value-added chips. A panini is just a filled bread roll, albeit Italian in origin, toasted, and what the f**k is an “artisan” roll when it’s at home? Presumably, the use of words like “artisan” and foreign words for bread is an attempt to justify the inflated prices for a sandwich. Our local Indian restaurant – and it’s a damn fine Indian restaurant – offers a four item two course meal for £9.95 on four days of the week. Decidedly unimpressed!

Across the way was another food outlet offering, amongst other things, a “Lamb and black pudding pie”. Not only did that sound more interesting but it was hot food for £3.00 with no unwanted value-added trimmings – much more like it. I went for that and Francine plumped for another £3.00 worth of  sausage roll and we repaired to a seating area to enjoy our lunch.

You would think, would you not, that in a “lamb and black pudding pie” one might actually run up against something resembling meat? I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, this was not one of those sorry apologies for meat pies, containing little more than slurry and gristle, offered our fish and chip shops but I didn’t actually find anything looking or feeling like lamb. I may have bumped into a tiny morsel of something resembling black pudding but that’s blood and fat, not meat, so it doesn’t count. Other than that, the only solid food that I did bump into were chunks of potato, admittedly real potato but potato nonetheless. I have to say that the chunks of potato were in a reasonably flavoured – I presumed lamb and black pudding flavoured – gravy. This would have been more accurately described as a potato and gravy pie. Still, it was half the price of the cheapest “artisan” roll [groan] and was comfortingly hot. Disappointing but not all bad.

After another 45  minutes we were pitching up under one of those all-too-rare breaks in the cloud cover. Carlisle and the surrounding area may benefit from being in the lee of the Lake District. Pretty lucky really: dry at both ends to hitch and unhitch but sopping wet in between.

Even Carlisle is further than Normandy.