We've Been Away

One of our Glasgow/Leeds trips, and although w have generally stopped fretting about making travel arrangements in Jan/Feb this might have been the time that makes us cautious again.

It amazes me how well my trips to Leeds and Scottish Opera performances tend to gel and this one was no exception. We left Orkney on Wednesday, had a gentle free day in Glasgow on Thursday with a performance of Nixon in China in the evening. On Friday we enjoyed a fairly trouble free drive down to Leeds, including our now regular stop at the Tebay Services. I managed to buy nothing in any of their shops which was a wonder. And a record, come to think. Saturday I spent with my Dorothy Dunnett reading friends, discussing The Spring of the Ram, the second novel in her Niccolo series, and trying to make sense of the tarot connections someone had reported there being, without getting very far. Since none of us actually knows very much about the tarot, this was not surprising, although I did learn that tarot cads were used to play card games in the way our more usual deck of cards is today. The OH went off to have lunch with a former working colleague who lives in the area. So we both had a lovely day.

While we were away there were raging winds over most of Scotland, while large parts of England and Wales seemed to be fast disappearing under water. The OH kept a constant eye on what the local ferry companies were doing practically from the moment we left Orkney in the first place, and sadly what they were mostly doing was cancelling ferry crossings due to high winds. Not surprising, gusts of up to 137 mph were recorded on Orkney while we were away.  I refused to stress about this until Sunday, our actual day of return; an attitude which was rewarded by having the wind drop and all the ferries run as normal. 

We set off earlier than usual for our drive from Glasgow to the North Coast since snow was forecast for most of the way. We did in fact see one band of snow, in the Cairngorms and this was the sight that met our eyes when we stopped at Ralia for an early lunch.

As can be seen - quite deep, and slippy when we got out of the car. But we made it to the café and back with no disasters and by the time we got to Inverness (Ralia is about  45 minutes south) there was no more snow to be seen, except on distant mountain tops.