All good things must come to an end

I've written before about my religious persuasion: neither a believer nor a disbeliever. Nor, really, an agnostic. But I do think that there are interesting insights to be found in all religions. From Buddhism, I've taken the fact that all things must end and I have found that this philosophy, rather than bringing despair or fatalism, has helped me to enjoy myself more in the moment.

This is rather weighty way of introducing the fact that on Sunday morning, GGSA2013 came to an end. We had agreed to meet for breakfast but just before 7am there was a text from Bob saying that he was heading off, on the basis that he expected to feel a lot worse later on.

I wasn't particularly hungry but I joined the remainder of the Gang at breakfast, settling for a rather unsatisfying coffee.And then, after hugs all round, we picked up our bags and set off for the various car parks we'd ended up in after the great satnav/pedestrian precinct chaos of the previous day.

For a while I found myself settled on the M5 behind E but then I made a pitstop for diesel and a proper coffee. An hour or so later though, I thought it might be nice to have one final echo of the weekend, so I rang E to see whereabouts he was on the M6 and we met up at Knutsford services for a coffee.

I like service stations where you can sit on a bridge over the motorway. I think they hark back to a time when motorways were exciting and new, and when one stopped for coffee there was simply nothing better than sitting and watching the traffic. These days, new service stations seem determined to get you as far from the motorway as possible.

One final hug, we made our goodbyes and I set off home. An hour or so later I ducked off at junction 35 and came up onto this bridge, where I took this photo. This far north, the motorways aren't so crammed: maybe this is what they looked like when those carriageway straddling service stations were built.