good for a giggle
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009by Rach, who does not like driving in the pouring rain with useless wiper blades that leave a smear at eye level and make her hunch over the steering wheel like a granny to see beneath it!
beside a cricket pitch, Lesbury, England
The water splashed up almost as high as the motorhome, certainly it went higher than the roadside hedge. This English Summer Rain had cut short The Very Best Castle Visit So Far and sent us scurrying for cover. We would find somewhere nearby to stay the night and hopefully, weather permitting, return in the morning, because this was a castle that required a leisurely visit. When the rain had started, we had only just listened to the last audio story – we hadn’t explored, hadn’t gone back to favourite places, hadn’t read all the boards, hadn’t got engrossed in a medieval-ish game, hadn’t taken a walk down towards the village and then hopped on a boat to “The Hermitage” as we had been told we could.
The audio-tour had been, as ever, excellent, but this castle invited *play* with its passageways and staircases linking halls and chapels, chambers and garderobes. It was expansive enough to get lost in, detailed enough to sneak around the same room different ways. Complete enough to not be predominantly roped off for safety reasons. And we hadn’t yet played.
But it was raining, with no sign of letting up. Rain, thunder, lightning, puddles, puddles completely covering the road, puddles down the side of lanes, puddles that later ER would play in and get completely filthy (actually, she just this moment came to the van asking for a cloth to wipe her shirt – it’s going to take much more than a cloth to de-grub her puddle antics! This is not the giggle bit. Not At All.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, that was some diversion. Cleaning up the girl turned into cooking dinner turned into getting kids to bed turned into me totally losing my train of thought.
So let me tell you how things are different here in the far north. We aren’t yet in Scotland, but we have already met the midges. They swarm, particularly for some unknown reason, around Lboy8. At the castle he was wearing a permanent black halo of almost a metre diameter. Wherever he went, the little (and not so little) black bugs followed. Gave the rest of us a giggle anyway!
And up here they (the people, not the midges) speak much less *British*. Not quite Scottish – I mean to say, we can still understand what is said, but it’s certainly nothing like down south.
The further north we go, the longer it stays light too. We knew it would be that way. In fact, maybe that’s what prompted the confession from our eldest son, who shall remain nameless. Not that confessions should come because it’s light, but that the fact of there being light almost all day would justify his faulty thinking. You see, he mentioned tonight with an embarrassed laugh in his voice that before giving the matter any real thought, he had expected we would travel at night and wander around sites by day. Clearly he still believes that his parents have Superman Capes in the cupboard and never go to bed – a fair assumption on his part seeing as we are sitting at the table when he retires and by the time he appears in the morning the same table is made up ready for breakfast. He may not even be aware it can turn into a bed <wink> We’ve all been guilty of equally silly thoughts at times, so it was nice of him to share his with us for a bit of light relief after the rain!
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 88km
rayres