Saturday 6 June 2015

Rogue Runners Day 6 Doune to Bridlington


The second stay in the hotel at Doune ended with another excellent breakfast served by another extremely attractive waitress - or maybe I’m just getting old – yes, I expect that’s it.
As we were leaving a flock of old bikes chugged into the hotel car park, causing a certain amount of distraction for the assembled blatters & while chats were going on, one of our number found that the route for the day wasn’t in his satnav “no problem” I volunteered “I have all the routes on my laptop & I have a lead”, so I unpacked the car to reach the laptop & found the route as requested & loaded it to his satnav & then we set off.

Once again I had a plan of my own as I wanted to get a picture of the Fury under my very favourite bridge – the fantastic Forth Bridge, long term readers may remember I de-toured my family to stand under it a year or so ago. So I headed off my own way & while doing a stretch of motorway I passed a gaggle of Westfields, every last one sparkling clean & doing 65. It was with some pride that I overtook them all doing 70 in my FILTHY kit car – mine has BEEN places! I saw another Westfield on my route. While crossing the Kincardine Bridge going north, I was surprised to see the guy I’d given the route to coming south, strange. Only later did I discover that the route I’d given him was one I’d modified to go via the Forth Bridge – he’d got separated from the rest & followed the satnav, fortunately he’d realised he was being misled & has deleted some waypoints. Sorry GB.

The Forth Bridge was as impressive as ever, in a previous life (previous marriage) I’d spent a lot of time in North Queensferry (where the bridge comes ashore at the northern end) as my then in-laws lived not far away, in fact I’d already passed through the village where my first wife currently lives (keeping my head down) & had a plan to photograph the Fury outside the ex-inlaws distinctive gates just for the devilment of it – but the gates were open & I chickened out.

Having taken my photos, my plan was to catch the others, a plan not helped by missing an exit off the M9, but I carried on heading for the English / Scots border, where I stopped for another photo or two & saw a man in a kilt – the only one on the whole trip, he was playing the bagpipes though.

I knew the others would be stopping for fuel every 100 miles or so & also for coffee breaks, fuelling six cars usually takes a while, I stopped just the once in three minutes flat , so I was confident I was gaining & sure enough I found them in a petrol station, so we re-grouped & headed out. We were soon climbing into moorland & came across what was described by one of our number as a “tractor blatt”, no fewer than 31 vintage tractors in a line, miles from anywhere – wherever they were going, it was going to take them a LONG time.

So at last we descended into Bridlington, a town – and indeed a B&B we’ve visited on a previous road trip, but before wrapping the cars for the night, I trundled mine down to the sea front for a photograph of the LAST coast (east), then we headed out in search of food. The choice of the majority was curry – I don’t do curry & besides, we were at the seaside, so for me it HAD to be fish & chips on the promenade

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