Day 18 - Leaving Scotland, Entering Keswick

May 19, 2008

We woke up for our last morning in Scotland and started getting ready. We scheduled the earliest breakfast we could with our hostess at 8:00am and wanted to be there right on time as we needed to get out quickly to start the 6 hour drive that was ahead of us.

We had another wonderful breakfast and enjoyed talking more with our hostess, Caroline. She was very friendly and if you are ever in the Drumnadrochit area, make sure to stay at this B&B (http://www.loch-ness-farm.co.uk/); you won't regret it and the prices are very reasonable.

We finished packing as quickly as possible and I took a few more pictures. We got back in the car and said goodbye to the farm and all the hairy cows.

Then we started off towards Inverness to head on down to the Lake District. We got a really good view of the Loch on this route and stopped to take a few more pictures and to say goodbye to Nessie.

We went through Inverness and started our way down between Edinburgh and Glasgow. We made one toilet stop but otherwise drove straight through. I would say more about the drive except that we were on major motorways/highways so there wasn't as much pretty stuff to see, although you do get a good view of the rolling hills and some mountains as you leave Inverness, but I was also asleep for a lot of the drive.

We arrived in Keswick around 3:00pm and found the street with my sister's B&B. Parking was a little tricky as the B&B was on a street really close to the city centre so there was much street parking available. But we did manage to find a spot a little ways down.

We then walked back down the street and I could not find a sign for the B&B and was looking for the number on the door (12). Well, luckily Becky had a window view room out to the street and she poked her head out to signal me where to go. Apparently the house number was 22, not 12 (not sure where I got 12 from).

She let us in and we walked upstairs to her room. It was a very pretty place and they had a nice room. We sat down in some chairs and started sharing our different experiences thus far and our pictures. Gretchen, my sister's friend whom she was travelling with, was currently at the laundromat.

We just chatted for a bit and then Gretchen came back. We then decided to take a little walk to the lake before getting some dinner.

We walked through the town and it was a really cute town with shops, pubs, and cobble stone streets. We found the path that lead down to the lake and we followed it. We made our way down and found beautiful views to take pictures of (Becky ran out of memory on her camera and forgot to bring another memory stick with her). There were some geese around and after a little bit, Jeremiah and Gretchen decided to try to chase/capture a geese. It was pretty funny.

We then walked a bit further down alongside the lake and smelled a campfire not too far off. It smelt just like Hume and made us what to get there even more. Near the shore we found a really neat looking tree with many of its roots exposed. We also found lots of rocks and after a little bit of trying to skip rocks, Jeremiah started throwing rocks at a larger rock a little ways off to see how many times he could hit it. To this, Gretchen made the comment, "See Sara, you don't need kids, you have Jeremiah." :) He had fun and I took some pictures.

After a bit, we headed back into town to find a place to eat and we finally settled on The Kings Arms. Jeremiah and me were a little iffy on doing a pub as we aren't quite pub food people, but we thought we would give it a try.

I got a Cottage Pie, which was just like a Sheppard's pie, with new potatoes and vegetables. Jeremiah got Chili Con Carne with Nachos. My food was very good and I was pleasantly surprised. Jeremiah's on the other hand...well, let's just say that it didn't have much flavor and what they consider to be nachos is not what they consider to be nachos - they stuck 5 tortilla chip in his chili dish and without any cheese! Not quite what he was expecting especially as Gretchen got a side of Nachos and that looked a lot more like what nachos are supposed to look like. Oh, well. It just made him look forward to coming home to some "real" nachos.

We had a good time and some good laughs. I asked Becky what she wanted for her big birthday party coming up in September and we chatted a bit about this. Then at some point, I leaned across the table, put my hand on the side of my mouth to cover it a bit, and asked in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear but in the tone of a whisper, "You are inviting Gretchen, aren't you?" We all got a good laugh out of this as I already knew she had invited Gretchen but it was just too tempting to let the jest slide.

We then walked back to their B&B and got a few things out of the car before going to their room. We sat around and talked for a little bit more while eating some biscuits for dessert. The biscuits were rather hard to pull apart as the caramel had stuck them really good together (being in the car the last few weeks probably didn't help as well). So I ended up with 3 stuck together and ate them like a sandwich. It was a bit much and I still shiver a bit when thinking about eating one again right now.

Around 9:00pm, we said our goodbyes as we had a little bit of a drive to get to our Travelodge in Carlisle that night. We were pretty short on gas and needed to fill up before we left, but the gas stations in the area closed at 9:00pm and by the time we got there it was 9:07pm. The mileage gage on the car said we had 12 miles left and we needed about 37 to get to our Travelodge so we needed to find gas fast and before they all closed.

We tried finding some other stations on the GPS but it took us to one that didn't exist and another than was closed for construction. We stopped by a pub to asked them, and he gave us directions. We followed them to find ourselves back at the first station that we had gone to.

We didn't know what to do and I was starting to think we might be spending the night in the car that night, just waiting until the station opened in the morning. We parked the car at the station and walked back towards town to see if we could find someone who knew of a station that was open longer.

We walked in the first pub we came to and the guy and girl there were really nice and helpful. They said that none of the stations in town stay open very late, although he said they should, and they talked between themselves as to which direction we should go to get to the next 24 hour station. They were trying to decide between Cockermouth and Penrith. On the GPS, it said that the Cockermouth station was closer (I had seen this before we left the car at the station) but the girl was pretty sure that the Penrith station was closer and that it was definitely a 24 hour station. The only concern the guy had was that the way to Penrith was uphill while the way to Cockermouth was mainly down hill.

We thanked them for all their information and help and headed back to the car. Once there I found the station they were talking about in Penrith and it was 16 miles away. By this point the gage on the car said we had 7 miles left.

We prayed that God would get us there safely and, if not, that we would find a safe place to park the car on the side of the road for the night while we waited until the morning came.

We headed out and found that there were quite a few hills to go over, but it also meant that there were quite a few hills to coast down and not use any gas. We tried to be very careful to not go to fast or have the car in a lower gear for any length of time and just hoped that the gage was wrong.

We counted down the miles on the GPS and although I thought it would be the longest 15 miles of my life, they actually went by pretty quickly and before you knew it, we could see the station in the roundabout!

We made it! We thanked God and filled up the tank.

We then made our way up the M6 to Carlisle to our Travelodge. It was such a nicer trip knowing that we weren't going to run out of gas any time soon.

Once at the Travelodge, we found some street parking. We thought we were going to have to pay for parking but it ended up being free. We got inside and had a very warm welcome by the staff at the counter, even though it was near 11:00pm by this time.

We headed up to our room and were very pleasantly surprised by the space, cleanliness, and moderness of it all. It was great and we could have seen ourselves staying here for even longer (and at £30 per night, it was a great price). They even had a flat screen TV on the wall with more channels than we had gotten at any other place. We would highly recommend this one to anyone travelling in that area.

We settled in a bit and finally headed to bed. It been a very relaxing but also adventurous day for us.

Love,
S&J