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.
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.
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.
With the cars stripped of luggage, we headed out, but the first question was "which way?" SatNavs know where you are, but not which way you're pointing, Linda went left, everyone else went right. There was some radio chatter on a theme of "Linda's pointing the other way, we must all have it wrong", at which point Linda turned round & a little male pride was restored. However, at the end of the high street, the SatNavs sent us back the other way (left from the hotel).
We set off along one of the "B" roads that run parallel to the motorway, in days past this was the main road to Glasgow, so it's wide, smooth, sweeping & empty - apart from two couples walking along it, miles from anywhere. It's Scotland, there are much nicer places to walk than in between two major roads.
Before long we rolled into Canonbie & it all went a bit wrong. It started well enough, with two MkII Escorts coming out of town towards us, but vey soon I thought I'd missed a turning, so went back, only to find the SatNav telling me to turn round again. Brian turned round & sped off in the direction the Escorts had gone, the rest of us followed the SatNav up a steep road, only to be told to turn round again. Research since I got home suggests we entered Canonbie from the wrong direction, but looking at the route I can't see how the SatNavs did it. Anyway, we all got back in a line & headed out of town.
While all this was going on, we'd seen a couple of old Porsches & a TVR, so there was an event on somewhere & we quickly came up behind a WRC liveried Subaru going very slowly, we followed it for miles doing 35 - 40 on a 60 limit road until we all entered Newcastleton, which is a long thin village with an interminable 20 limit. The Scooby was doing 12-15mph, so I overtook it on the high street, never exceeding 20 & soon after that it pulled in to let the rest past.
Next was the ever popular B6399 up to Hawick (the "Hoik" in the title) it's a lovely road & not long re-surfaced & here we caught up with Brian. Heading south again, I rounded a corner on a narrow lane to be faced with a HUGE tractor, with HUGE tyres, pulling a HUGE trailer. I was able to pull into an entrance to let it past, I radioed a message out, but apparently chaos reigned behind me.
The next remarkable thing was another enormous tractor rumbling along a twisty A road, never dropping below 40 considerably faster than the WRX Subaru, it was both hilarious & scary to watch.
Then there was a trip up on to the moors - lovely road again, but the blue sky vanished, to be replaced by ominous clouds. We were following two very slow bikers when the hail started, they wanted to go slower, but stuck to the middle of the road, I wanted to go faster as I was taking hits from hailstones the size of marbles. I managed to overtake one of them & soon after that three of us turned left & followed the SatNav's instructions along a narrow twisty road which appeared to go through a farm yard, at which point a Mustang & Porsche from Belgium appeared round a blind corner "at speed".
Having disentangled ourselves from that, the road passed through a field & with a gate across it, we waited a while for the others, but as they didn't didn’t appear we went on
& arrived at the very quaint Simonburn Tea Room just after them. They had got there by an entirely different route.
The next part is a bit of a blur I'm afraid, but with all the excitement so far, having nothing memorable happen was probably a good thing. I do remember having more SavNav trouble with the route I'd plotted along a dual carriageway, off at a roundabout, then through Hexam to re-join the dual carriageway in the other direction.
Firstly I saw the blue line going both ways along the D-C, but missed seeing it go into the petrol station, so had to double back, then as you may have guessed, the SatNavs took us not through Hexham, but along the D-C & into Hexam from the other direction with "hilarious consequences". The worst part was being told that this all happened last year as well.
After what seemed like not very long at all, we rolled into "The Nook" café, I arrived a little before the others & was able to leap out & take some "arrival pics".
As we left The Nook, the sky was pretty dark in one direction & only a mile down the road, there was proper surface water, so we'd just missed a downpour
We travelled along a stunning road behind a pick-up pulling a tree axle trailer, often these are difficult to keep up with, but not this one. After that was the flat-lands around Longtown & Gretna, long long straights with little scenery, but soon after crossing the border we made a wide sweeping curve into the hills & were rewarded with some excellent roads & lovely scenery, quite a lot of sunshine too,
Eventually the route turned & came into Lockerbie, by which time the sun had gone away & it hailed again while I was stuck at traffic lights, but shortly after a petrol station provided a canopy, but did we put the roofs up for the last run for the hotel? Of course not, so we got wet in a shower after a mile, but after 2 miles it was dry at the hotel. That evening old SKCCer "Beefy & his son James
arrived to join us for tea.
