The Highlanding – Part 2

Day 1 – Mind-Numbing Motorway and Pitlochry Perfection

And so we begin the interesting stuff. In fact that’s a lie, as at this point we were still in a rather overcast Wiltshire, and had a huge number of miles to cover before getting to the place where the interesting stuff would begin. The first job was to collect my co-pilot, Adam, and his not-insignificant luggage. We then hotfooted it down to the A419 where we met Frank at a petrol station, treating the Mazda to a brimmed tank of motion lotion.

Frank, in his infinite wisdom, had decided to remove his hard-top for this trip, replacing it with an impossibly tatty soft-top he picked up from a lad in Reading in exchange for a crate of beer. This caused some small issues. Many moons ago, in the pursuit of “Racecar” he had ditched, alongside his own perfectly serviceable roof, the rain rail and accompanying fixtures. The replacement top did not include such things, or even a rear window. Water tight it was certainly not. This became apparent almost exactly straight away, as he found the light drizzle which was hanging around that morning, via the wonder of aerodynamics, was hitting him square in the back of the head. A make-shift rear window spoiler was therefore fashioned out of gaffa-tape before we continued our voyage. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that it didn’t work.

Our next waypoint was the Air Balloon pub a few miles further down the A419 near Gloucester, where Ed and his Lupo were waiting patiently. Frank messed about creating soft top rear window spoiler iteration number 2 (of around eight hundred thousand), and we all poked fun at Adam for being the only one not sporting a pair of shorts.

Then we departed, hung a left at the roundabout, and a short while later came across signage for the M5. I must include a short anecdote at this point, as at the time I promised faithfully on the walkie-talkie that I would. I won’t pretend for a second that my grasp of geography is anything greater than average, and that may be pushing it, but when Frank, who was currently leading, posed the following question, I very nearly swallowed my own face. “We are heading north aren’t we?”… It’s worth noting that this man is in charge of years 7 through 13 at a half-decent private school. Apparently those who can, teach.

I duly coughed up my nose and chin, and we merged onto the M5. North. Fortunately the journey from here on in was pretty straightforward, with an acceptably direct network of motorways taking us all the way to Stirling, a town a little further up than Glasgow. Tedious sure, but ultimately very efficient. I set the Clio’s cruise control at 70… ish, cracked open a bag of pear drops, and relaxed. We stopped at a generic motorway services a little later for a walk and a wee. Seeing as Frank’s car was anything but secure we decided this kind of activity was best done in pairs. So as Ed and Adam skipped off together to compare genitals, I grabbed the camera and took some more photos. It turns out that the delicate act of checking engine oil without a bonnet stay (another “racecar” rejection) is a popular spectator sport in this area of the world.

Take a moment to observe the cabin which was Frank’s home for the next 5 days, complete with comedy speedo. I simply cannot comprehend the scale of the accident that would happen if this car really could do 180mph.

We had eyed up a quaint little village called Pooley Bridge as a nice place to stop for lunch. Sat just a stone’s throw from the Ullswater lake in the Lake District it was bound to have somewhere scenic to park up and grab a sandwich. Well it transpires that the entire population of Northern England had had the same idea, which meant that the actual village was a complete no-go. After driving around for the best part of an hour trying to locate a small car park or layby nearby, and finding all the good spots had been shotgunned by camp sites or private boat clubs, we admitted defeat and went back from whence we came. Burger King in Penrith would have to do. Road sign innuendo bingo cheered me up slightly at least.

As well as artery-destroying fast food for us, Penrith also provided the cars with refreshment of far better quality. My Shell Points card was going to get a good hammering over the coming days. Infuriatingly I only realised on day 5 that I could have been cashing in on Franks juice as well as mine, as he had never taken ownership of a little yellow plastic rectangle of money-backism like me and Ed had. Livid.

Back onto the M6, and back onto cruise control, we watched the miles fly past, hastily dispensing with the A74(M), M74, M73, M80 and M9. We were now deep into real-life Scotland. At Stirling we joined the A9, a road name we would become extremely familiar with as it spans around 70% of the country. We stopped for a splash and dash at the Shell garage in Gleneagles, before leaving the A9 at Pitlochry and joining the A924 towards our first night’s accommodation, the Pinetree Lodge Log Cabin in Kirkmichael.

I never expected to hit any truly great roads on the first day, it was simply penned in as a day of “getting there”, with the good stuff kicking off the following morning. How wrong I was. That stretch of A924 was amazing, and after a full day of monotonous straight lined triple-carriageways we greeted it with wide eyes and open arms. It was a relatively short 12 miles in length, but jam packed full of twists, turns and undulations, often only just wide enough for two cars to pass, but sometimes most definitely not! It cut its way through some glorious countryside, small scale stuff compared to what we would experience later in the trip, but full of vast, lush fields and imposing pine trees – a beautiful sea of green. We met minimal traffic coming the opposite way, most of which were bikers out on an evening jolly (the weather had turned rather pleasant by this point). One of these Ed discovered on a particularly tight and blind left-hander which he had been taking rightfully cautiously. The biker had other ideas though, and came screaming past at a jaunty angle, very nearly head-butting the poor Lupo’s A-pillar. From memory we only came across one car pointed in our direction, and it very kindly pulled to one side as soon as it spotted us getting bigger in the rear view mirror. This was something we experienced a great deal throughout our trip which was extremely appreciated. I often find in England that when you’re trying to press on a bit, the driver in front will do everything in their power to stop you, whereas the Scots just seem to accept the fact you’re going to overtake them anyway, so you may as well get it over and done with straight away. So on the off-chance any of you are reading this, thank you!

We arrived at the Lodge just after 6pm, a full 11 hours after I’d pulled off my driveway. It had been a long old day, but standing in the evening sun admiring the gorgeous view across the countryside made it totally worthwhile.

Back on the subject of Frank’s shoddy soft top, it turned out that in fact he had found a sliver of common sense banging about in his otherwise vacant head, and included a car cover in his packaging. I say car cover, but what I really mean is a section of tarpaulin, just about big enough to cover the cabin, and some bungee cords. Remember I did say sliver. Nevertheless he made decent use of this kit, ensuring that if and when Scotland decided to greet us with its famous big rain, his driver’s seat would be subjected to minimal moisture. An added bonus was a total lack of squirrels camping in his footwells overnight.

He needn’t have worried as it turned out to be a very mild night, the start of which we spent being abysmal at darts and pool, and being hounded by the barmaid to buy more drinks. Adam, having the luxury of not driving in the morning, conceded rather easily to her endeavours. Later on, after a couple of whiskies, Ed admitted that he’d never taken any drugs of any kind, and wasn’t at all fussed on the idea of them. If pushed he’d probably have a go at LSD though. Silence followed, and then we collectively decided it must be time for bed.

Click on the link below to find out what happened on Day 2!

The Highlanding – Part 3