Peeling pink painted door

Next week's rail strike has scuppered our plans to take our bikes by train from Edinburgh to Oban next Saturday. After considering several alternatives, including a couple that would have involved a significant amount of help from other people who all turned out not be available, today we put into operation a plan that will deliver us to the ferry terminal, with our bikes, in good time for our summer Hebridean island cycling holiday.

We left our flat at 08:00 this morning to catch a train to Newcastle, then a second one to Haydon Bridge. We then walked from Haydon Bridge station to my mother's house (for exercise), and had lunch outside with my not-so-little sister and Mummy hazelh. We passed this door along the route. It could be a partner for my blip of 22nd July 2019.

Mummy hazelh has kindly agreed that we can borrow her (very precious) Volvo for the next couple of weeks. I drove it back to Edinburgh this afternoon.

So now the holiday plan is to travel to Oban and back by Volvo. One advantage of this arrangement is that we could set off on holiday early, or return a little later than planned, should there suddenly be a Scottish heatwave.

We're also thinking of cycling back to Edinburgh after returning the Volvo to my mother. We've cycled this route before on a couple of occasions, but in the opposite direction. The last time was in April 2016. It would be fun to do the south to north version while we still can (she said...)

Exercise today: walking (12,102 steps).