1. The whole way to the motorway is beautiful – rolling fresh greens fields decorated with gamboling lambs and stretching out to snow topped hills and mountains in the distance. The Tour De Yorkshire followed this path (in reverse) yesterday and so all the villages are still decked out colourful bunting and bike sculptures. Yorkshire flags – white roses on turquoise – still flutter en masse and in some places they make it look like some sort of medieval (or Westerosian) tourney.
1b. We take the wrong exit at the roundabout and end up diverting through Kendal to get back to the motorway – a long but pretty route. The road finally brings us out next to the north-bound lanes – we drive parallel to the M6 for a mile or so, tanalisingly close but 50m higher up.
1c. Everyone in the cafeteria makes the same face as they watch the teeny-tiny baby ducks. We also marvel at the well behaved springer who doesn’t run into the water and disrupt everything.
1d. We have to select a new album just as we’re about to cross the Scottish border: of course it has to be Admiral Fallow. After the tight bend in Canonbie, the roads become pleasantly familiar.
2. The B&B is lovely but intense – very much just rooms in someone’s home. The owners are welcoming, friendly and we share a lot interests but still, we feel like we’re intruding. The cats give me something to focus on though – one of them jumps on my knee and gazes up at me with utter adoration for a time in the afternoon, and when we return from dinner, the other stretches out on my lap for belly tickles. They’re almost identical former farm cats with the bestest colouring: black with a white spot on their chests.
2b. The Italian restaurant is better than we’d hoped. I have pumpkin flowers and a pizza topped with very good salami & pancetta (and a hint of rosemary), while John follows his stuffed pepper with parmagiana over chicken. He is disappointed that it’s good value for money – if it had been poor value, we’d have had room for dessert.
2c. Sunset over miles of border hills as we drive back to the B&B.
3. Even with the headlights in the holding car park and our as-yet unaccustomed eyes, we can still see thousands of stars.
3b. When I lean into the eyepiece to look at a galaxy, a shooting star streaks across the lens.
3c. They use laser pointers to show which objects they mean. The columns of light stretching upwards make us woo almost as much as the objects themselves. We joke about beings in another observatory somewhere else being blinded by them while they watch us.
3d. The crispness of Saturn’s rings through the telescope make it look artificial. A white paper cutout against the black.
3e. I’ve been worried about it all week but when he puts his hand on my arm and says ‘hello you’, I know it’s going to be ok. We don’t have long to chat, five minutes maybe, certainly not enough to cover the missing 18 years, but I’m so glad to have seen him again, and to see that he’s happy too. As I say to him, there are bad times from Southport that I would like to leave in the past but there were good times, good people, I’ve lost by mistake and it’s always such a joy to reconnect. I’m so grateful that a crazy coincidence – and our mutual space nerdiness – have brought us back together.
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