A Fat Purple Fig

Morning brings a Starbucks coffee from a building they don’t deserve, and a disorderly plan that begins at Lower Slaughter, winds its way down to Bath, then heads to our final destination, Southampton.

I feel sorrowful as we strip the Scottish-scarf hooks in our Longtown home, farewell the post-box wearing his jaunty tam-o-shanter (almost!), and set off for Broadway, in the Cotswolds.

What to do on our last day fuelled much discussion. Kirkcudbright for seafood? Exploring Kenmure Castle? The Glasgow Mural Trail? Unfortunately, our plumber had different ideas, with his time frame to replace Jimmy’s leaking pipe encompassing most of the sunlit hours of the day. In retrospect, we should have declared our need to explore more of Scotland an emergency.

‘Ye’ll be wantin’ tae see castles then?’ Jimmy asks, as he polishes his shoes and reaches for his shoe horn, ‘Aye, right.’ And we are off for our drive, the sun peeking momentarily through patches of cloud to tease us with the promise of light and warmth.

There comes a point in a new environment when you begin to truly inhabit it. We have achieved a rhythm of living in Dodge City; waking and writing, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, and watching Britain’s Best Home Cook on Netflix, in the brief moments between changing into pyjamas and falling, exhausted, into bed.

The anticipation of a day without rain set our imaginations ablaze. Lucy and I are similar, in that we believe it’s possible to see most of the United Kingdom (including Wales and Ireland) in a week, if only we can craft a sufficiently-efficient itinerary. After developing a dozen routes on Google Maps, and feeling as exhausted as if we had completed them, we awarded the sun to a single, worthy recipient…the Lake District.

We arrived late in Longtown, and the entrance to our Airbnb was surrounded by a group of youngsters, on bikes and on foot, that made us laugh, with their hearty ‘fook off’s, and the fags that looked like they had been stolen from the packets of Mam and Da. The next morning, the footpath was dotted with broken eggs, leading us to conclude that there likely isn’t much to do in this town.

Of all the English heroines, my all-time favourite is Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If you haven’t read it, a catch-up requires little effort. Think headstrong daughter of limited means who refuses to acquiesce to a marriage devoid of love, and a brooding gentleman of 10K a year, whose arrogance keeps others at a distance…and there you have it.

Stratford-upon-Avon is such a delight, I am lamenting its category as a one-day restoration point. It is different to what I expected, although I’m not sure what I expected, so I make this statement with only my surprise in mind.

So, after purchasing several flights, receiving a couple of refunds and accepting an endless stream of timetabled flight changes, here we are in Stratford-upon-Avon, at long last.