In to Scotland and our plans go wrong again!

We emptied the loo before we left the Anglers Inn – what terrific value that stop over was. A nice meal and drinks for just over £20, free stop over, free water, emptying grey water and emptying the loo!

The road north from Kielder was even smaller than the road in from the south and we felt we were entering to Scotland by the back door!

Our first stop was planned for the Hermitage Castle which is a dramatic building in the middle of nowhere. Well these days it is the middle of nowhere but in years gone by this was the hub of a network of cattle drove routes and it controlled Liddesdale.

Hermitage Castle is an amazing place and well worth a visit on a sunny day like today. From here we headed on to Hawick where we planned to have a quiet afternoon at the dedicated motorhome spaces in the town car park beside the River Tweed. It was a good plan but once again we were bumped off by festivities – the whole car park was closed and was occupied by another funfair! Oh dear nowhere to have lunch and nowhere to sleep!!

Scotland has far fewer Britstops than England so the loss of Hawick was a bit of a disaster as we had no fall back option! Once again we headed out of town looking for somewhere to pull over and make some calls and have our lunch. We found a pleasant layby on the A7 high above the town surrounded by sheep!We needed internet access to look at the databases and see what was doing round here. There was no Britstop to be found within 100 miles so we ruled that out. In the end we chose a Camping and Caravan Club Site at Lauder – pricey at £19 but at least we could have some nice showers and top up the water!

Another lovely drive over the hills through Selkirk to Melrose where we stopped to visit the famous Abbey. We had not expected to be very long at the Abbey but it was so interesting and the weather was hot and sunny that we took our time and spent a couple of hours here. The free audio tour was first class and one of the best I have used.

We arrived at Lauder Club Site at 5pm to warm welcome and our pick of the sites. We only needed a grass site with no hookup and no hard standing so we could go pretty much anywhere! We parked up by the little burn a short walk from shower and loo block. This site was costing almost as much as our meal last night so we were going to do some serious showering! The only disappointment was the lack of a decent mobile signal so once again no internet.

Mileage reading: 115777
Travelled today: 115kms
Total distance: 698kms
22nd night on Bertie