2012 - HD1

South-west Scotland has 'Tourist Attractions'; they're not strictly listed as you would imagine - you get the obligatory brown tourism sign, with such legends as the Devil's Porridge Exhibition and The Tooth Art Gallery, but you don't get much more and then you get this sign that says, quite clearly, Tourist Attractions. One such attraction was the Torture and Upholstery Centre; or as the wife pointed out, it was actually a Furniture and Upholstery Centre; I'd just read it wrongly.

The journey was relatively uneventful; with the world and his brother concentrating on Jessica Ennis's abs, the roads were quiet-ish and once we got north of Kendal, it became bleak and clear, apart from the start of the rain storms. We got off at the Lakes to try and find a pub and somewhere to stretch the dogs legs, but there weren't any, so we let the dogs out in a car park* and got back on the road. It started to thunderstorm just north of Gretna and by the time we got to Dumfries the sky looked angry and black and full of fork lightning - it was really quite impressive, if not a little scary at times, especially at the amount of water on the road and being hoicked onto my car by passing lorries.

*Actually, we went to a place called Sedgewick, which just happened to the be the place where they found Aphelia Ahmed's body - the Pakistani girl murdered by her parents; now, is that a spooky coincidence or what?

What followed after our arrival was pretty much what you'd expect from an arrival at a holiday destination; we unpacked, sorted things out, took the dogs down to the mud flats, Lexy rolled in some yellow pooh, came back and sat exhausted until the wife crashed out and left me doing this.

I am Bruce Bucked; 8 hours in the car and all the usual bother. I can't guarantee anything better later (especially as the weather forecast for tomorrow is worse than today's), but I won't have a headache.