I have to go down to Durham every now and again to meet up with my lecturer, go to some classes, return books to the library etc. The trip down and up again is pretty straght forward (you get onto the A1, and never leave it), so it can be pretty dull to drive the two and a half hours, and although I tend to have the radio on, and sing along to any songs I know, I still find myself rather bored at points.
There are plenty of castles and what looks like great sightseeing places on the way, mind you, and I’m thinking of taking my camera from now on, and stop somewhere every now and again and spend some time exploring the area. Before you pass the border to England the route is besides the coast, so you get some stunning views of the sea, if it isn’t overcast, which is rare, let’s be honest…
You know those jokes/postcars about ‘Welcome to Scotland’ where it’s all windy, raining, and wet sheep? Well, it turned up to be truth yesterday. I was driving back up, left around 2′30pm, and in Durham there was this massive, gorgeous blue sky (and still like 3 degrees, but anyways), and on the whole trip up to the Borders, you could see no clouds, no bad weather. It was starting to get dark (we are in winter, gets dark pretty soon) but I still managed to take a nice pic with my mobile phone, where it showed the beautiful weather (mind you, was getting closer to Scotland, which is the huge cloud you can see it the distant):
So, quite nice, you would agree. Then I go to the borders, where I stopped the car in this road-side area where you can stretch your legs and have a wee rest, and I still had nice weather:
Nice sky, nice ‘Welcome to Scotland’ sign (everytime I see it, I don’t know why, I say in my head ‘Toto, we’re not in England anymore’), nice day.
And this is what happened five minutes later… I’m not kidding you, all these pictures were taken yesterday on my way back from Durham, between 4 and 5ish (which is when I got home), and as soon as I was in Scotland, I was welcomed by this:
I couldn’t see anything in front of me!! It was mental! Sigh… I guess this is what you get for deciding to live in Scotland… Fàilte gu Alba indeed…