May 25th, 2020. It’s Goodbye to Durham and the North East. We’ll be back before too long, I hope. We find ourselves again undertaking a long journey on a Bank Holiday Monday. What have I done, I cry, to deserve this? From the heavens, there is no answer.
For one moment of waking in the night, I entertained the quixotic notion of taking a route which avoided motorways. This didn’t survive long when I quizzed Google Maps at breakfast. It turns out the A1, the Great North Road, is so obviously the best route, that avoiding the motorway sections involves so many twists and turns to follow A-roads running almost parallel, and then to rejoin the A1 when it stops being motorway, that it’s not worth the trouble. Anyway, when the pilgrimage is over you just want to get home as fast as you can.
So it’s ‘Fastest route, the usual traffic, via A1(M) and M1’. 4 hours 11 minutes, 250 miles; though of course it always takes longer because you need to stop for a comfort break, a drink, and a sandwich, to say nothing of giving the back a rest and stretching the legs.
This time I resist the thought of stopping Somewhere Interesting we’ve never been to en route. We’ll press on and get a takeaway in the evening when we’re home.
It’s been a good Virtual Pilgrimage. But it’s good to be virtually back inside our own four walls, for a change.
Godspelled 