On The Road Again

The door of our third and final holiday let closed behind us for the last time on the 25th of November. One month before Christmas, and with all of our belongings once again squished and squashed into the back of our trusty car, we set off for the airport to spend a few days at home before travelling back up to Edinburgh with a van full of everything we would need for our new home. However, what may have seemed like a simple plan turned into a logistical nightmare with flights to our preferred airport getting booked up, train fares rising to dizzying heights and van hire only available from obscure industrial parks miles from any airport. In the end we managed to fly to Southampton, get a train to the centre of the city and walk along a dual carriageway to the van hire depot and then drive home (phew!). The next few days were a blur of family visits (I have double the amount of family than the average person, all of whom are dotted across the Southern/Eastern counties, which makes for a lot of driving!), yummy food making and consuming, autumnal walks, fireside family crossword puzzles and sorting out an accumulated mass of home and kitchen ware which my parents have been patiently storing in the barn at home.

Yesterday morning arrived and all of the difficulties of hiring a van earlier in the week paled into insignificance as we were able to set off having already packed the day before. Having persuaded D to squeeze in the one house plant we have ever managed to keep alive (although I am not sure of its chances now that it will be sitting in the dark with no water in the van for two days!) and with a bountiful picnic to dip into on the six hour drive I was feeling full of adventurer’s spirit. The feeling lasted until we started pricking up our ears to the weather reports. It seemed Scotland was being hit by torrential rain and flash flooding and we were heading head-first into the heart of it.

The cloudy, wet weather in the Lake District was nearly as bad as the last time we drove up (which, coincidently, was the day before Hurricane Katia hit Edinburgh!) so we missed out on the spectacular views but by the time we had crossed the border into Scotland we could hardly hear each other speak as the rain pummelled against the van’s windscreen. By a sheer stroke of luck our Sat Nav signalled us to take the junction off the motorway just before a newly formed lake which had appeared in the middle of the motorway. We stopped at the nearest petrol station and the shop assistant told me that a car which had attempted to go through the water at the same time as a truck had been flooded and the water had covered the seats! You can imagine my trepidation then as, faced with the dusky, windy roads of the lowlands in a van full of everything we own, we were forced to drive through deep, sometimes flowing swathes of water with huge trucks gunning along from the other side of the road. However, after what felt like an endless forty five minutes we reached the airport where our car had been waiting. We then went in convoy to the hotel where we are spending two nights before our flat FINALLY becomes available. Convoluted is the word for this part of our mighty move to rainy Scotland!

If all of this wasn’t enough to deal with I have got an interview tomorrow and a trial shift on the 2nd, and then we go on holiday for four days to Malta! But these are nice problems to have as everything seems to be coming together at last. I am so excited to be getting the keys tomorrow and finally having a place to settle down in and, if all goes according to plan, a job as well!