Happy birthday brother Paul.
I am having a day off to do some numerology reports for my patient and understanding clients today, so staying in. But time to reflect a little.
I'm three weeks in today and what have I learnt?
I am loving it. I am loving doing it solo. I lose sense of what day it is, and I haven't any idea what is happening in the news!!
Other positives?
- Starting my journey in May. Summer is coming, nights are longer, fewer bulky clothes needed and hopefully better weather, and the UK is looking stunningly beautiful in her colours.
- Staying in Airbnb homes with real people and their families including pets. This has been great and is self policing so works well for solo travellers. The blend of single rooms in a family house and small flats when I have been the only occupant (and had access to a washing machine) has worked brilliantly. Airbnb have a tricky system from my perspective in their fee charging structure. You may think you are playing £46 per night, within your accommodation budget, but they add percentages to that and in one case it was £50 more than I had bargained for. Check the small print carefully on each booking. The percentages are different. Hosts are all different. Their homes are different. So far I have stayed in a 15th. century wooden house, a Victorian terraced cottage, an ex council house, a converted workshop and here I am in a neat little flat in an Edinburgh tenement building.
- I have avoided asking Tourist information offices what I should see and do. The best plan is to find a random stranger in a cafe, a charity shop, or as I did in Scarborough, a local traffic warden and ask them. I have seen gems that tourist information staff have not known about. Skull collection in Hythe? Concrete menagerie in Branxon? The smallest visitor centre in the World? The only Victorian ladies toilet too sell award winning ice- cream? Enough said.
- Doing this coastal trip right here in the UK. Why go all the way to India or walk the Compostella when you can do a pilgrimage right here? Love old abbeys? We have them and what Henry VIII left of them. Castles your thing? You can do 6 a day in Northumberland. Trains? Don't even get me started on trains - single track trains are all around the coast. Twitchers can bird watch to their hearts content especially in Essex, Lincolnshire and up the east coast. Culture vultures? You will have to wait for Hull until 2017 but there are art galleries, museums, theatre and opera all along the coast. Foodies can even munch their way round the coastline of Britain.
Not so positives?
Few so far, apart from my state of the art Sat Nav stating categorically that certain National Trust properties do not exist .
- I should have spent more time in Essex and Suffolk and I intend to remedy that.
- I need to slow down or I will be home next week!
- I need to stop buying little presents for my family. There's no room in Gloria for anything else and the craft beer probably won't travel that well.
Onwards Macduff - into Scotland and more delights... now how does one catch a haggis at this time of year?
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