My Travel Adventures, Cars , and Motorcycles: I Feel Like Such a Cheap Hooker.....

Dear Family & Friends,

Today was a three part day.... Scotland, wandering, back in England...

We started off in Edinburgh and wanted to end up in Newcastle.. This time I set my GPS to find a route with no tolls, no highways, no freeways... What a great choice! For two hours we rode beautiful back country narrow lanes through hill and dale. Some deep forests and some barren rolling hills... When rode for miles without seeing another person or car. Great motorcycling..

One area we were riding was along the top of a series of barren rolling hills filled with lambs and goats.. Since I am so fond of Lambs I stopped to take some photos... All fun and games until we went to leave and my GPS would not come back on! No matter what I did it was dead...

So I looked up at the sun, got my bearings and decided I could navigate myself using the sun. Duane was very skeptical but since he had NO idea where we were he decided to follow me.. The riding was great and I figured this is an island where no point is more than 100 miles from the ocean so how lost could I get?? We wandered and wandered and I kept track off our relationship to the sun always directing us south east which I knew was where Newcastle was generally located... When we finally came out of the country side we intersected a major highway and Newcastle was only 10 miles down the road!! Not bad for a solar navigator..?

A bonus too while we were wandering through the Scottish country side we came to a small town near where Jimmy Clark was born and buried. For those of you younger than me Jimmy Clark is still considered one of the greatest racing drivers to ever lived! In the town was a small museum dedicated to him so we got a quick tour in. What an amazing life, so sad it ended so young.. Made me think is that kind of glory and achievement ever worth dying for? (He died in a freak accident in his early 30s) As much as I would have liked to had his career it would not have been worth the price. I would have hated to miss my family. What my daughters and wife accomplish are far more important to me..

We arrived at Newcastle and we were a bit disappointed. Very crowded and busy and not very old. It is a University town so there was lots going on but no place for us so we decided to head further south.. Getting through that city was a challenge, specially with no GPS but I managed to find our way out and to the coast. I am sure there were several times when Duane thought I was completely lost but again it is a small island and if you head east you are bound to hit water...

The final leg of our trip was down the east coast through small tourist beach towns and lovely views of the ocean. We also rode through a national park.. As the afternoon went on we realized it was going to be impossible to find a room anywhere along the ocean. It was very busy with tourist enjoying the great weather and everywhere we stopped was completely booked.

At this point Duane was getting tired and cranky and I figured we needed to find a room soon. We decided to ride inland about 15 miles to Scarborough, a much larger town and away from the coast. We got there and Duane finally switched on his GPS and found us a delightful hotel.. When we checked in the clerk had zero sense of humour or at least did not understand American humour. Duane made a couple of good natured comments and I thought he was not going to rent to us.. Plus his accent was so difficult to understand we were all confused. When the clerk gave us our room keys he said one room was the "Pink Room" and one was the "Green Room". We had no idea which was which but I wound up with the pink room. When you see photos of it in my blog you will understand why I felt like a cheap hooker....

We checked in and within an hour Duane was in the pub next door and one beer later smiling and happy...

I have also noticed while the Germans use to many syllables the northern English do not use enough. They seem to leave off that last half of each word they say so it is a very difficult accent to understand!!

Tomorrow it is off to York, one of the most interesting cities in England. Looking forward to it. Less than two weeks now until we return so I have to enjoy every minute.

Jason