Here we are in Ballater, in a beautiful cottage near the town square, and it’s just stopped raining. It’s markedly cooler than it’s been for weeks in Norfolk, and we have the heating on, though the wood-burning stove remains unlit. We’ve just been to church, which is roughly two minutes away, and had an early lunch: pie and sausage roll from the bakery.
We arrived yesterday at around 3.15pm after filling up at the petrol station, and the owner of the cottage – a youngish woman called Sue – was here to meet us. She was very pleasant and was clearly keen not to intrude. She left us a bottle of nice merlot and some chocolate biscuits. The cottage is pretty near perfect, except for the lack of a tumble drier. I suspect it has been completely refurbished very recently. We have the downstairs bedroom, with an en suite bath and shower. The Eagles will be upstairs, which is only right.
Last night we bought some food from the usual place and visited the river, which apparently burst its banks last week. The woman in the bakery said she had never seen it so “angry”. Some sandbanks are still lying around, and the river is quite high, but there are no longer any sheep being washed down to the sea. We booked meal at La Mangiatoia for tonight and failed to book one at the Glen Lui for Monday, when it is “residents only”. Then we bought some Indian from the takeaway directly opposite, which was fine but far too much.
TV reception is good, and so is WiFi. We watched Match of the Day (or most of it) in bed and caught up with Norwich this morning on iPlayer (Norwich 3 Watford 0).
The journey was mixed. The first part, from Norwich to Lockerbie (Annandale Water) was pretty awful. We followed our new satnav and took the direct route via the A17 and the A1 for a change. Never again. The A17 was funereal, averaging around 40mph and too many cars to make overtaking feasible. The A1 was even worse, continually stop-start until we took the M18 to avoid a nervous breakdown, stopped at services and came back on the M62, rejoining the A1 further up, where it was much clearer.
However, we then made the mistake of acting on advice from someone who recommended an east-west route through Bedales, Leyburn and Hawes. Beautiful road, but very twisty and therefore slow. Eventually we hit the M6 near Kendal and stopped for petrol at the Westmorland services. After this the going was very easy, but the whole journey still took us nine hours, and we had stopped for only about an hour in all. Distance: 342 miles. Our one lengthy stop was for lunch at The Chestnuts – favourite stop on the A17 for the Evetts and the Towns. We will probably never go there again, but it was very nice.
Annandale Water services: excellent room, with balcony and view of the lake. Pleasant receptionist. Poor restaurant facilities: McDonalds or Costa. We chose the latter, and also had breakfast there the next morning, me with sandwiches and fruit from Smiths, Dot with a croissant. the journey from there was pretty easy, though the A9 was unexpectedly slow. We stopped at Stirling services and then were held up by road works approaching Perth.
We had a sandwich by the Cairnwell chairlift and then proceeded through rain to Ballater, where it was much brighter.
I should mention a couple of events before we left. On Wednesday I had a “dress” rehearsal of Chronicle at Rob’s, which seemed to go quite well. Caroline tried on her new dress, made by Penelope, which can be seen on the Paston Heritage Society Facebook page.
On Thursday, with Dot in London for the day with Anne, I checked in at the printer to approve a dust jacket for the Chronicle book and (later) picked up Dot’s pills. In the afternoon there was a meeting at Mundesley of the PHS trustees, where I got rather annoyed with Lucy because her drive was so appalling and I was afraid I might have damaged the car. I hadn’t (as far as I know), but the drive was far worse than it was last time. Not much to report from the meeting, but I managed to write the minutes when I got home.