Well it’s been a funny old week. A bit of a nothing week. We have tiddled about in the caravan doing a great deal of nothing very much. We have been to Gretna Green famous for marriages with around 5,000 couples tying the knot there every year and to Gretna town. Historically it was to Gretna Green that young English runaway couples eloped so that they could be married ‘over the anvil’ from the age of 16 without parental consent.
Gretna Green’s Famous Blacksmiths Shop, where couples have come to marry since 1754, is still there, although to describe it simply as touristy is a considerable understatement.
The town of Gretna was built during the First World War to provide homes for 30,000 employees of a munitions factory that was the biggest in the world at nine miles long - incredible!
There is a large factory shopping outlet - Gretna Gateway - on the outskirts where we managed to get replacements for both our kitchen and our bathroom towels. The shop chain, Mountain Warehouse, was bringing in a new range of towels to replace the old so the last of the old stock had first been reduced by 50% to clear most of it and then the last few reduced by a further 50% and if you believe that . . . . . . ! still they were a very good price and we did finish up with nine.
There is a distinct shortage of Lidl stores around these parts so we have been struggling to get our second favourite muesli for our brekkie, so while we were at the Gateway we got some ingredients to make our absolute favourite - our own mix. We have made our own on and off for some time but because it has so many ingredients which a) generally come in largish, expensive quantities and b) quite a number of those ingredients are very difficult to source in mainland Europe we have over the last year or two defaulted to second favourite - Lidl’s own. Our recipe is on the food page here.
I didn’t realise quite how many remote controls we now carry - goodness only knows how many “normal” people (those who live in houses) have. On the average evening we use five, I kid you not - five. One to control the outside lights (turn them on and change the colour etc.), one to control the TV, one to control the speaker system, one to control the Minix box and the fifth to control the free-sat box. Everything is getting more complicated even our toothbrush “talks” via Bluetooth © to a little gizmo that tells us how well we are/have brushed our teeth and for how long. Being a grumpy old man I would, of course, say that there is simply more to go wrong, but I expect the ever optimistic youngsters of this world would say it all gives us more control over our lives - yea!! 😀
We first came to this area in 2009 for a week when Sue was doing a course at the University of Cumbria. We had just returned to caravanning after a two or three year break with a new to us caravan and a brand new porch awning. I was still working, driving between Carlisle and Preston, and had gone to work for my first ever night shift. During that night a storm blew up Sue rushed outside as the brand new awning thrashed itself to death, she grabbed it whereupon it lifted her off her feet and threw her backwards onto and old pole in the adjacent hedge. The scars are still visible. Still it was not all bad, we used to walk Bert, our lurcher, around Talkin Tarn just a mile or two from where we are now camped. It was a super walk with a very good ice cream at the end of it. They say you should never go back but we went back to Talkin Tarn this week it is sill a great walk and the ice cream is just as good.