under the bed

In the early hours of the morning a thunderstorm blew in. Lottie Lurcher managed to squeeze under our bed. As it extends out from the sofas there are two long drawer fronts narrowing the gap to 1 foot wide. Somehow she squeezed out at the cab end turned around and wedged herself back under the bead where she felt safest from the bangs.

She was nervous and stiff when Van-Man took her out but ate all her breakfast.

After breakfast we headed for Newcastle in sunshine. We stopped for lunch at Scotch Corner even thou it was early. Ironically we had Cornish Pasties from Falmouth in Cornwall for our lunch close the Scottish border and I took over the drive.

A car towing a caravan sped past me wagging its tail.

“They should slow down,” I said. A mile further on a caravan lay on its side the skid marks across the road showing how it had lurched out of control. A few minutes after clearing the accident I over took the caravan that had sped by me. As it was doing a stately 50mph I assume the sight of the wrecked van made them slow considerably.

After that we stopped at Blyth gave Lottie a quick walk and carried on with Van-Man at the helm.

The drive back to below Bedford was quick and easy. We stopped at Baldock services and I took over driving. I managed the massive south Mimms roundabout and headed onto the M25. We expected trouble because it was after 4.00 when we reached the M25. We had originally thought we would take a long evening dinner break and attack the M25after 7.00 but didn’t fancy waiting 3 hours to do that. Soon we encountered slow traffic in the inside lane as it queued to get off. It picked up a bit but the variable speed was fixed at 40 at junction 16 which never really improved. We crept by an accident and changed drivers while stopped in the queue, easy to do when you can stand between seats we crawled to junction 13 where the overheads said it would be an hour to our junction. “And the rest,” Van-Man said.

I navigated an alternate route from junction 11 and headed home via Woking, Dorking and Reigate. We stopped at Newlands corner to have a break, and walk and feed Lottie. We stopped at18.15 and carried on 50 minutes later. It was a quiet drive home from there. This is the longest trip we have done but will head up north again soon.