Nettled

Backblipped on 7th June

The journey home was much less pleasant than the journey up to Scotland had been.

Lots of reasons - both physical and psychological.  I think that for me the primary problem was the feeling of deflation.  Often after a good holiday, we come home with a feeling of having thoroughly enjoyed the holiday, but we are now looking forward to getting back to our own bed and getting on with our normal lives.  But I don't think that 2 weeks is enough for that (at least, not for me), and this was compounded by the fact that we were returning to "same old, same old" in terms of the Covid, and the Brexit situation.

This feeling was exacerbated by the charging hassles we encountered.  W had planned a recharge in Penrith - but when we arrived, both Instavolt chargers were in use.  We tried a nearby alternative charger but were unable to make it work - not sure if that was a fault with the charger, or our RFID card.

"Oh well - we'll press on".  We'd planned a relatively easy journey with 2 stops, so we still had plenty of miles left in the battery.  We carried on down the A66, and the next available charger was in Appleby.  We weren't certain we would be able to access it, but thought it was worth a go - but Appleby was heaving with horses and carriages (and police).  The Appleby Horse Fair would traditionally have been this weekend.  It's actually been put off till August, but clearly the travelling and Romany fraternity were not taking much notice of this, and had rolled up in Appleby anyway.  "What shall we do?"  "Just get the h*ll out of here!"

Next stop, Scotch Corner.  Again, the chargers were occupied!  We stopped anyway in a far corner of the car park, to eat our sandwiches, but then pressed on to Glasshoughton, near Castleford, where we finally found an unoccupied charger in a McDonald's carpark.  So we sat around for an hour charging back up to a level good enough to get us home.  W did try popping in to Macca's for some drinks, but it was reportedly heaving, with kids everywhere and no attempt at controlling numbers in the takeaway section, so he came away without them.

The journey home from there is about 160 miles, and 3 and a half hours - we would normally break it in two.  But W got the bit between his teeth, and just pressed on home.  He was fine, I was shattered!

A quick wander around the garden whilst W cooked some dinner revealed that we really need to do some weeding - nettles and dandelions abound in the flower beds.