We've Been Away For A Few Days. This Is What We Did

On Sunday we drove to Scotland. It took us about four hours. They say this is an overcrowded island, but the only major town we came across between Greater Manchester and Edinburgh- and we didn't go through it, only saw it signposted off to the right - was Carlisle.  Otherwise that whole huge stretch of country- first the Lake District, then the Borders- is just hills and hills and hills. We booked into the Travel Lodge at Kinross That night we had been invited to have tea with an online friend of Ailz's in a nearby town. This is the first time either of us has sealed an online friendship with a real life meeting. I think it went OK. After tea she took us to the pub where she runs a late night karaoke session. Ailz and I both hate pubs, but she's better at hiding it. There were three pubs on the one street- the Rangers pub, the Celtic pub and this- which was the "non-sectarian" pub. After a few minutes Ailz turned to Carolyn and said "You've got to understand; he's a Southerner; this is a terrible culture shock for him." And it was. The noise was horrible, I could hear hardly anything that was said to me, and there was an elderly man dancing by himself with a bottle of WKD in his fist. We stayed about an hour and then Ailz's back started spasming from being sat on the hard settle- and we made our excuses and left. Peter, Carolyn's partner, insisted on walking us down the hill to our car because he was afraid someone might bottle us for being English.

It was a lovely clear night. Very little light pollution. For a while there was no-one on the road except us and the Great Bear.