Lake District UK

2fth Sept. Lake District UK.
It's been three weeks since last writing the blog. In that time we have spent a week in Lyon with friends and visiting some of the memorable restaurants there: the bouchon which is a speciality restaurant of the area that serve mainly offal dishes, much to Joan's delight, Brasserie Georges that seats 500 guests and many others. The area around Lyon has fine countryside and medieval villages that are all worth visiting. The game we watched there was against Portugal and although the store was enormous in the All Blacks favour to watch the plucky Portugese play and the crowd roar when they scored a try made you realize having the also rans in the world cup is really worth it. It gives them something to aim for and an occasion to remember.
From there we travelled north to The Netherlands to visit friends we had met in Sumatra. A very welcoming family and we can thank Arnoud for getting our Western Europe map in the GPS working and saving our marriage.
After that it was on to Harwich ferry and a short drive up to Gt Yarmouth to stay with Neil & Jenni for a couple of nights. These are our friends I first met in Israel in 1966 and we keep on meeting up again in such exotic places as Marrakech, Petra in Jordan and Mamallapuram in southern India. It gave us a chance to arrange for some work to be done on the van, book some flights home, and do some planning for the return trip in the van.
The next game was in Edinburgh which meant a trip north. We stopped off at Tim's farm still in Norfolk where we were to leave the van until our return. People think of small farms in the UK, their farm was 900 acres while the neighbour next door had 10,000 acres of land. After that it was on into Scotland and a detour to the Mull of Kintyre way out in the western area. Paul McCartney has a couple of farms here and made it famous by his song. This area of Scotland is exquisitely beautiful helped by a sunny but cold day. We took two ferries to get to Skipness where Fiona & Tom live. It would be difficult to find Skipness on a map, there are 20 houses in the village, I think the whole area has a population of just sixty. The road to to the village is single lane with passing bays for the last 20 kms. There is an old castle on the promontory that guarded the deep stretch of water between the Mull and the Island of Arran to the west.
The Scotland game was better contested and would've even even better if the Scots had fielded their best team. We stopped at a large camp site on the outskirts of the city. It was full of New Zealanders there for the game, at the ground itself I think Kiwis would have outnumbered the locals 2:1. The main street of Edinburgh must rank as one of the most beautiful of thoroughfares. The castle standing like a sentinel above with colourful gardens below the southern footpath.
Yesterday we headed south to the Lake District where we are spending 4 days with Adam. The weather was atrocious, we hope it improves.
This part of the blog is nearing its end. Maybe one more before we fly home on the 21st October. We are looking at driving back through Eastern Africa early next year, we had planned to sell the van here but import duty and the VAT add 27% to the price. What we would have to ask to cover part of that would push the price too high.