After a few weeks rest and recreation, during which we did some replacements and repairs on the van, we got ready for our next trip. Repairs included painting wipers and the roof hinges with black hammerite paint, so as to keep the rust at bay. Replacements included ordering a new solar panel controller from China and fitting it, as the original stopped working sometime near the start of the holiday.

We set off first to Glasgow, where we met four of our yachting friends for lunch. Then we went for a walk in the botanic gardens and down the banks of the Kelvin, only to bump into two other yachting acquaintances from Lagos. So quite a reunion!

Then we drove across country to Kelso, avoiding the M8 completely. We stayed for three very pleasant days with Ju's mum, and then moved on down to Seahouses, where we had booked to stay a couple of nights, and Morag was due to join us. We pitched our little one person tent for her, and when she arrived, we had dinner. The last evening in Kelso we had used our Cobb barbecue to roast a huge joint of pork. It did us for dinner that evening with Norah, dinner at Seahouses the next day with Morag, and lunch sandwiches on the third day. That night there were gales forecast, and while we slept blissfully through a very blustery night, Morag had a bad time worrying if the whole tent was going to lift off the ground with her in it!

The next morning things looked just as windy, so Morag shot off to the office and got herself booked into the bunkhouse. That proved a bit problematic, as it was a couple of miles away from the campsite. We had about three attempts to find it, but in the end all was well!

We left the van at the campsite and drove to Bamburgh in Morag's car. What an amazing place! Then to Lindisfarne, where a Viking group were busy doing their stuff in the abbey ruins. I bought Ju's birthday present, a black fleece, and a bottle of mead, which we disguised as Morag's purchases. As a gift for a relative! Dinner on our second night in Seahouses was in a very nice busy pub near the harbour.

Striking camp the next morning, we headed off down side roads to Alnwick, where Norah had told us to visit Barter Books, a bookshop there. I don't know what I expected, but it was far short of what we found. First of all it was signposted on a brown sign, right in the middle of the town, and hard to miss. Easy parking, so we left Jack in the van in the shade with all the windows open (it was a coolish overcast day anyway), and entered an amazing experience. A bookshop, yes, but so much more. Built in a former railway station, the bookshop had overhead model railways running round on the tops of the bookcases, it had quotations from literature on the walls and bookcases, rare books in locked cases, and an excellent buffet where the old station buffet used to be. We had a late breakfast of bacon rolls and coffee, then each spent 30 minutes browsing. I didn't buy anything, but found a hardback book which turned out to be a record of highland journeys by Queen Victoria herself. If it hadn't been £40 I might have bought it. As a read it was totally absorbing, and gave an insight into how important her relationships with all of her entourage were to her. She worried about the severe chafing on the backs of John Brown's knees after a particularly long walk wearing a heavy wet kilt, for example! Another incident she described was a carriage accident where she was tipped out of her carriage along with her companion, and wound up her her face in the mud! And she had to walk home!

Our journey continued overland towards Bellingham, where Ju had located a small farm campsite, not affiliated to either of the clubs we belong to, where we could stay for four nights, and visit Hadrian's Wall each day.

The campsite was excellent, quiet, and we were the only campervan, as all the others were tents. The bunkhouse was close beside it, and catered mostly for walkers on the Pennine Way. The village was small, but had everything we needed. Including a pub for dinner the first evening.

The next morning we headed for Corbridge, which boasts a real Roman street, the Stanegait. We had coffee first and I popped into a bookshop to buy some sellotape and wrapping paper, and wound up buying the new Harper Lee novel, Go Set a Watchman, with To Kill a Mockingbird thrown in free!

Corbridge Roman town is impressive, with extensive stone structures still identifiable from their foundations. Large ventilated grain stores, barracks, the governor's mansion, all there. It had a good museum, which we all had a look at. Jack wasn't allowed in the museum, but he had a good walk and snuffle round the Stanegait, picking up and chewing a goodly number of old Roman stones!

Then on to Hexham, where we stopped in a supermarket carpark and had a picnic lunch, before wandering up in the rain to the town itself, its shopping area and the cathedral.

By common consent we were all pretty wiped out by the two visits, and decided to postpone the visits to Housesteads fort and Vindolanda until the next day. We headed back, and had a bit of a rest before dinner and an early bed.

On our second day at Bellingham we set off for Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall. It had become much more commercial since I was last there in the 80s with a school group. A large managed carpark, a visitor centre with cafe and shop, and way up the hill at the back a museum with video display of life in Roman Britain. As well as the archaeological remains of the fort itself. We climbed the 750metres from the visitor centre and then entered the fort, climbing on the wall at the rear of it, and looking along some of its length. For me the whole visit was spoiled by the quantity of sheep dung everywhere on the paths, it was impossible to avoid it. Yugh!

We had lunch in the visitor centre after we came back down, then drove the few miles to Vindolanda, where there is an active archaeological dig in progress. Ju and Morag went in, as I had visited it before, and, unaccountably, dogs were not permitted to enter. Again we knocked off after the two visits, as the day was special, being Ju's birthday, and we were due to eat out this evening in a splendid restaurant in the Pheasant Inn, near Kielder.

Dinner was indeed special, we all had three courses, and I really enjoyed Northumbrian lamb. A great way to round off Morag's time with us, as she headed off back home the next morning, a day early, as she was concerned about her elderly cat.

Ju and I spent a leisurely day on the Wednesday in and around Bellingham itself, exploring a river bed up as far as a celebrated waterfall, which we never quite managed to reach!

On Thursday we decided to head home ourselves, as the weather was not forecast to be too good. A gentle drive up the A68 then round Edinburgh to the M9, a quick pitstop at Lakeland near Stirling, a picnic lunch near the Falls of Leny, and then home.

Another ramble with Reg completed!