The route just received shows we’re starting at Sywell just north of Northampton on Friday 19th June. The total distance expected to be covered is 2200 miles, but - and this is a big but - that includes routes over inhospitable terrain that we’re almost certainly going to route around adding another few hundred miles to the total. We’ll be including John O’Groats and possibly the Orkney Islands, the Western Isles, Northern Ireland (Definitely life jackets for that one), Wales, the South-West including Lands End and Lundy Island, then the South Coast, up Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk and a visit to the Red Arrows home :)

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So, after 3 days/nights of sleeping on the clubhouse floor with non-stop pouring rain, we decide to abandon the Shadow and get a lift for the drive back South. Some hours into the drive it became clear why we got stuck - loads of the Midlands and Gloucestershire were flooded by the weather. I mean really badly flooded - we drovepast many houses with water up to the upstairs windows, and plenty of roads washed away.

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Ran away from the rain at Oban and retraced our route back down the islands and lochs, past Glasgow and into Colin McKinnon’s place at Strathaven (Pronnounced ‘Strathan’ by the fast-talking locals). Colin hasn’t been here long but already he’s doing some major surgery to the place. The clubhouse being very modern and the welcome was very warm!. There was only a couple of other ‘planes that made it here, and when I turned around they had vanished.

Carlise is one of Eddie Stobart’s airports and is fairly large with plenty of jet traffic. It was disapointing that they locked the place up so we campers didn’t even had a toilet to use until it opened up in the morning… The landing at Carlisle was generously free as Fly-UK is a fund raising event for the chosen charity - this year the Leukemia Research Fund. The parking was not however so we left after forking out 20 odd quid.

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