RogueRunners '23 - Day 10

 

The last day, we set out from out mid way hotel on minor roads, not good driving roads, but I'd had a plan in mind.

But first - some time ago I fitted titanium skid plates to the rear trailing arms as they are not far from the road surface & today I was glad I did, the edge of the tarmac moved away from the verge & a rear wheel dropped off the edge. There was a graunching noise & I steered back. On arrival at the next stop Brian said "there was quite a shower of sparks under you car at one point", when I looked at the video - WOW, yes, a shower of sparks eight feet behind the car!

After an hour or so we rolled into a "viewpoint layby" (really just a muddy bit at the side of the road) to see "On Freedom's Wings", a 1:1 scale sculpture of an Avro Lancaster that operated & crashed locally. It's made of mild steel & has lots of holes in it, but it's still 10 times the weight of an actual Lancaster. The site wasn't open, but it was visible in the distance from the layby.

Then we kind of split up, with three going on to the coffee stop & the other two heading home.

So after some more not too interesting driving we reached the final waypoint, the very good Moor Farm farm shop & café near Peterborough. we had coffee & cake, then Brian departed, but as he was doing so a young waitress was clearing our table & said "Oh wow - whose are those cars?" "umm - ours" we said, it turned out she was a big F1 & interesting cars in general fan, so it was with some effort that I managed to drag my girlfriend away from this kindred spirit.

So that was RR26 all done & dusted. The weather could've been kinder, but it wasn't too bad, the driving was excellent & the company as ever made it an absolute joy!

Day 10 video

PLANNING FOR RR27 HAS BEGUN!

RogueRunners 26 Day 9 - Heading South

 

Time to leave EkkyFekky, so we said our goodbyes to the Ecclefechan Hotel & also to Steve who was heading home northwards & then we set off. We kept it simple by just using the A74 / M6 for a few miles, it’s a long route & we needed to get some distance done. 

We crossed the border at the River Sark & on the outskirts of Carlisle we took the A689 east & an early cake stop at “The Nook” where it was warm enough to sit outside. Linda parked alone in the middle of the car park & was almost completely surrounded by motorcycles by the time we left.

Then we went up onto the moors & some spectacular scenic & traffic free driving, we were passed by the same two bikers that held us up on a very rainy day on the Lead Hills road, they wanted to go slow because the hail was hitting them, but I wanted to go faster so it went over the top, I'm pretty sure it was the same two, how many EXTREMELY loud Harleys with whitewall tyres are there?

Then we dropped down for a visit to Brough Ice Cream Parlour, where I took the time to wander around the castle ruins which are good, it has some proper history & I've paid £10 to walk around less impressive, less complete castles.

Back on the road, we went south on the A685 & then turned onto another moorland road. When I planned the route, I liked the idea of cutting the corner along “Popping Lane”, but streetview showed the middle to have a luxuriant crop of grass, so I decided against it. So instead we went the long way round, heading for the Tan Hill Inn past the hamlets of Whaw & Booze. At one stage there was a puppy running enthusiastically down the middle of the road which we managed to avoid. Again, spectacular unimpeded driving, but we eventually came up behind a group of two cars a LandRover & a van travelling quite slowly "ah" I thought "game over", but no sooner had we caught them up than we arrived at the Tan Hill Inn, the cars went right & the other two stopped at the pub. Result!

Next stop was the Brymor Ice Cream farm, it’s only 40 miles from Brough, so I wondered if we might not want to stop, then realised I was being ridiculous.

There was  more moorland to cross after that, this time with sheep liking the tarmac oblivious to any traffic that needed to get past.

After that the roads got slowly busier & we took to the motorway, eventually we ended up on the A1 until we turned off & spent the night in the Fox & Hounds near Gainsborough.

Part one video

Part two Video

RogueRunners '26 - Day 8, Almost Selkirk

 

Day 8 dawned blight & clear - I'll say that again louder - DAY 8 DAWNED BRIGHT & CLEAR.

It was dry & sunny as we prepped the cars, Adrian of the hotel wanted to film us all leaving, so Steve lead us out & off past Carlyle’s monument & on towards the A75. This was a bit of a drudge, but soon we were in the hills, where it was cloudy & cold. After a while we stopped in Thornhill at Jinny’s Tea Room in the middle of the high street which required a little jostling for parking spaces.

Getting away was also difficult as we were all facing different directions, after that there were more excellent roads including the one past Meggit & Tala reservoirs, the road we call "The Devil Sheep Road" because there used to be a herd of very curly-horned sheep which stood in the road & only moved when they felt like it.

 It's not a fast road by any means, but it is beautiful & a challenging drive

That was followed by cake in “The Glen” café recently re-opened & it was good to see it busy. Usually we park up in the car park, but today we stopped across the frontage for a photo – except for Richard, who drove past.

After that it was mile after mile of excellent roads, a few with poor surfaces for short periods, but not too bad. Next  we went along the valley of Yarrow Water, through Yarrow Feus, Yarrow & Yarrow Ford, past business called Yarrow Fishery & Yarrow Dogs (bit of a theme here). When we’d had enough yarrow, we took the B7039 south to Etterick Water & passing through Etterick Bridge & past the Cross Keys Inn (“the badger pub” of previous tours).

After more fantastic roads epic scenery & a 1930s Bentley blatt, we re-fuelled at Lockerbie & we went back to the hotel.

Epic day.

Video Part 1

Video Part 2

RogueRunners '26 - Day 7, The West Coast

A run out to Girvan was in prospect today, to begin with the hoods were definitely up & my screen took an age to de-mist, but de-mist it eventually did & we set off. We had some SatNav strangeness. As we left different people's ones were showing 220, 235 & 245 miles to the finish - the actual planned mileage was 196! However a closed road just after Sanquhar was probably the root cause, we did some on-the-fly amendments & headed back the way we'd come through all the road works.

At about this point Linda's wipers gave up, so at each stop there was a certain amount of flapping at the screen with a yellow duster, leading to comments about Morris dancing.

The route was good until we found a REALLY bad logging road, with craters, debris & even a log to be avoided. After a couple of miles it got a surface on it & became wonderfully swoopy.

Then the closed road that had shown up on the SatNavs, by this time we were in two groups but met up again at The Buck tea rooms, visited for the second day running.

It threatened rain all day, but after the initial showers, it never got worse than a dramatic mist on the hills. 

Day 7 Video

RogueRunners '26 - Day 6

We left Ecclefechan with the usual confusion over direction & took the B road parallel to the motorway, it used to be the main road, so it's wide & smooth & there's nothing on it. We crossed over the Water of Milk (it's a river) & passed through three close packed villages called Newton, Whamphray & Newton Whamphray, up ahead it was looking like rain might spoil the day. As we turned south through Elvanfoot, it started to rain, but it was pretty much confined to the high ground - pity this route was mostly on high ground.

We had a fuel stop at Sanquar where I found the two main cameras hadn't been working, fortunately the two auxiliary ones were fine so I have some video to work with. 

I got the rear one going, but on Day 5 I'd managed to set the front camera to slow motion, so I have about ten hours of v e r y  s l o w footage. 

We called into Straiton & the excellent “The Buck” tearoom run by the people that used to run the Carsphairn tearoom for the second day running. After our refreshment we took small roads to Newton Stewart for another re-fuel before taking bigger roads to Drummuir Farm ice cream parlour. Then another fill up in Annan & back to Ecclefechan where we found that Steve had arrived.

RogueRunners '26 Day 5 - The South Coast

 

As I said in the day 4 write up, Jason had arrived, this was his first tour with the Rogues, so he would've been looking forward to some epic blatting. So what did he get?

Well the first bit was on dual carriageway, then it started to rain, the next bit was good - except for the rain getting harder, at the furthest point we took shelter in a petrol station & put the hoods up, Jason hasn't got a hood - or indeed a windscreen.

Port William - the locals didn't have much to say

The next bit was over narrow lanes which were rutted & pot-holed, but the rain was easing by the time we got to Port William (no, not Fort Willian, that's somewhere else) the café there was closed (we knew this would be the case, but the public loos were open). It was dry(ish) as we headed out of town over more awful roads, heading for The Isle Of Whitehorn - which isn't an island, but it has got a harbour, I would've liked to walk around it a bit, but the cake in the café was calling to me.

The "café & community shop" could've been very good or very bad, but in fact St Ninnians was very very good indeed. After a coffee & a very large piece of sponge with actual strawberries on (so it counted as at least one of my five-a-day), we moved on over more rutted roads, but as we progressed along the coast, the surfaces improved & the roads started to wind a bit & it all became quite enjoyable. But at some point along there I managed to set the cameras to slomo, so I have no footage.

 When I went down to clean the mud (& worse) off the screen & lights, Jason still hadn’t returned. I was about to send out messages & prepare a rescue mission when a growl suggested he was about to arive. After a comfort break, the SatNav had tried to take him round the route AGAIN & he’d gone 20 miles in the wrong direction before realising.

RogueRunners '26 Day 4 - Brough, Hartside & The Wall

Day 4 started well with Bob joining us for a drive, but before we set off, we had a problem to resolve, because today was Monday & one of the cafés was closed on a Monday. Had I stopped to think, I had already sorted this out by removing the closed café from the "pace notes" & replacing it with the "Twice Brewed" brewery, but in my haste to sort out the "problem" I found a café in "The Angel Inn" & we agreed to meet there.

So we set out without the SatNav inspired direction problems of yesterday & headed for England. There was very occasional heavy rain, but we were lucky as it always stopped just before we had to get out of the cars for coffee stops. It was pretty much restricted to the highest parts of the route so wasn't really a problem at all. We got a more or less traffic free run up to "The Nook" (again - this was the third day running). We went into Cumbria & up onto the high moors where it rained on us & we encountered a nine car Porsche blatt going the other way but the roads are fantastic, then down to the superb Brough Castle Ice Cream Parlour.

Refreshed we headed for the A66 & were rained upon within 1/4 of a mile, but with the cars doing 60 it was going over the top, so we didn't care. Next we turned off the main road & the roads got even better with a run up to Hartside pass. At one point my heart sank as we came up behind a Honda Jazz, but the traffic was very light & I was able to safely overtake for the excellent run up & over the top, where we saw the Porches again, still going in the opposite direction.

After that was an expensive coffee in the café I'd found, while we looked at a series of photos coming in from Richard as he re-attached his cycle wing in a lay-by, then a drive along the very straight road just south of Hadrian's Wall & past the brewery we were supposed to be calling in at, before turning off to head for Gretna & a re-fuelling stop at Annan before heading back to Ecclefechan, where we were happy to find that Jason had arrived after spending the weekend in Cornwall, driving back to south London, then north to Scotland - good effort that man.

Day 4's video