Big Tent Festival 2010

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What an ace weekend.  Old friends, new friends, lots of nice beer and laughing a lot.  Very funny, mellow and just downright good! (and even Co-op bubbles and a fridge magnet)

Car Free?  Well….

Home to Edinburgh Train Station – Taxi (I was late back from work and we had lots of bags)

Markinch to Festival  -Taxi (last festival Bus at 630pm – bit early for a late one! (Hey, we also saw a showdown between local taxi drivers looking for our trade:  all cracks off in Markinch))

Back from festival – given a lift (thanks Duncan and Boyley)

From Dot’s to Leuchars – lift from Dot

There’s lots of people who help us out with lifts, especially when we go to rural areas and need to get to/from the station.  Good chat with Brodie about helping with petrol at the end of the blog…

So kind of car free.

Mind, we did take our strawberry pot incentive for using public transport.  They were very sweet.  (Could have done with verification (smartcard?): I talked to an old lady who admitted she had lied – the shame!!!)

World Cup 2010: goodbye England – hello the beach

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Today started so well.  Nice run up Arthur’s Seat and views which seemed to say “This is the day when England achieve”.

I had laughed at the Scottish strategy to win the 2034 World Cup by having children with Brazilians (see link) and thought that really, today, it would be the start of something big.

So we set off to Fife – 40 miles away –  on the bus and train, to enjoy the game at Boyley’s footy party.  It would be so easy to pop up in the car, but, that wasn’t a choice.  Planning to get a taxi from the station (Leuchars) to Boyley’s.

Dot rang to say she’d pick us up and we could have a pre-match-relaxation-walk on the beach. Hurrah!  This would not have happened if we’d driven  -we’d have been straight to Boyley’s.  All very sociable and nice.  Thanks to public transport…?

I do feel a bit bad that people give us lifts: we go car free and they pick up the tab. But it wasn’t a big detour for Dot and we did have a nice walk.  Flick was happy too.

Little did we know that England would never show up (well, we kind of guessed they wouldn’t).

And not driving meant I could ehjoy a beer and had empty bottles to throw at the telly.

Roll on 2014.

Getting to the ferry and a surprise meet with a celebrity chef!

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After a busy time packing and saying our goodbyes we took the car to the ferry..oh no – we were supposed to be selling the car weren’t we?  Well it turns out that if you are travelling to the UK and have cats forget NOT using a car!!

Eurostar = only guide dogs (we could have disguised Andrew and Oswald but I think they would have found it hard to stay in role)

Footpassengers on Ferries = P&O only.  But we needed to go to Hull with P&O =  No pets with foot passengers, unless guide dogs or hearing dogs. (We need to train the cats better)

Hire a car = yeah right! £1200 one way ( we could have made it much cheaper if we did two hires – one to port in Belgium and other from port in UK, but dropping the car some way from the ferry terminal and arranging transport between these points is a big pain).

Fly = only via Heathrow – we wanted to go to Edinburgh.

Removals company = they kindly offered.  Only £1500 – a snip

So – take the car and bring it back to sell – what a pain.

Ah well, at least there was a celeb on the ferry – nice one Mads (the really annoying Sophie Dahl can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJFufGa8upk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKUEFSSVqPM)

It’s nice to be home

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So we arrived on the overnight ferry – tired and jaded…but what awaited us…