back home...

I thought I should finish off my account of our trip to Scotland. We really are the worse tourists ever. Once I had made the decision to stay for another couple of days and cancelled my work for the rest of the week, we headed out for a look around the area. St Andrews sounded nice, so that is where we went first. It was quite pretty, but we kind of saw it all in just over an hour. Very, very dull. So, we decided to head over into, what turned out to be, the heart of the bird flu epidemic. Fortunately, we stopped off at a Woolies to buy a map and Mrs McMuffin spotted the headlines. I was still up for going, but Mrs McMuffin was worried that Babycake might get infected. By the way, Scotland appears to have another claim to fame, apart from the fact that I hail from there, it looks like the bird flu originated on a farm in Aberdeen in 1959. How the f**k can they possibly know that? I'd just about had enough of all that open air and managed to persuade Mrs McMuffin that we really needed to visit a city. Dundee was close by, so Dundee it was. What a dump. If Perth is the Prague of Scotland, then Dundee is its Croydon, except Kate Moss could never have come from Dundee. We stayed an hour, just enough time to buy some new underwear from M&S and have a cup of coffee. We didn't even take any photos.

The journey home was a leisurely affair. We stopped off in Berwick Upon Tweed and Lindisfarne before spending the night in Durham. Berwick was dull, dull, dull. We didn't even use up our one hour parking ticket before heading off again. Lindisfarne was dull, dull, dull. A tiny little island accessed only by a causeway that spends much of its time underwater. We debated whether we wanted to see the main building, but concluded that once you had seen Mont St Michel there hardly seemed any point looking at another building on an island. Lindisfarne is a bit like a two-bed semi in comparison to Mont St Michel's stately home. Although, I have to admit that there was something impressive about the bleakness of the place. It amazed me that there were people living on the island. Not only that, but there had been some new houses built. I couldn't help but wonder who paid for them to live there, they certainly couldn't have ordinary jobs off the island. After all which employer would pay someone to turn up at work around 12 noon, when the causeway is clear, sometimes depending on the weather and the time of year. Also, who paid for that three mile stretch of road that is so essential to maintaining their isolated livestyle?

It also didn't help that we ended up spending the best part of an hour sitting in the car park while Mrs McMuffin fed Babycake. Babytime really scuppers your day, that's for sure.

After three or four winding stops for Babycake, we finally arrived in Durham. Now, that's a proper town. We were heading towards a Travel Lodge on the outskirts of the town, but I sometimes forget how small everywhere is compared to London, and before I knew it, we were in the centre of the town. We found a lovely hotel, and struck a great deal for a suite for the night. The rooms were so lovely that we could hardly bear to leave them the next day. Durham is a great little medieval town with more than enough to see and do to justify a weekend break, if you're interested. While we were wondering around, we were shocked to find one of the first signs of the end of civilisation as we know it.

Sorry, but I know this is a bit of a ramble, so I'll stop for now. Maybe I'll come back and do a bit of editing later. I'll end with one of the cutest things I saw all the time we were away.