A Road Trip

I love the idea of a road trip, riding free, top down on the car with the wind in my hair, singing along to a playlist and discovering great places to stop en route. Think Thelma and Louise but without the ending...  oh and the murders and robbery too. Okay, maybe not so much like Thelma and Louise except for the Ford Thunderbird and the open road.

Of course, the reality is very different, even if I had a convertible and hair long enough to blow in the wind, sitting in a traffic jam on the A1 on a snowy damp December day doesn’t quite match up to the dream. Yet the excitement I feel at the prospect of a long car journey continues to be one of expectation over experience. Nine times out of ten it’s never that much fun and I would go so far to say it’s mostly tedious in the extreme, but maybe this time…

So, despite the sad circumstances I didn’t mind the idea of our 900 mile round trip north last weekend. When we travel together, I’m usually a passenger for most of the time. Although I am quite happy driving, Stewart much prefers to drive than be a passenger. Put him in the passenger seat and he’s fidgeting, tapping, humming, and making irritating noises within 30 seconds of setting off. I might get a couple of hours of driving towards the end of the trip if he’s feeling tired and wants to nap but mostly, I spend the journey as the passenger. I like to be well prepared with podcasts downloaded, packets of Murray mints in the glove box and a knitting project or two to keep me busy. I never have been able to read in the car and even looking at a map can produce almost instant nausea, but knitting is always okay. Having been a knitter for almost my entire life I find I can mostly get away with not looking at what I’m doing, especially with a simple repetitive project like socks which is my go-to travel project. I nearly always have a pair of socks on the needles even when I am knitting other things but not this time.

My eldest grandson has coveted a knitted ‘gnome’ that has lived in my house for the past couple of years, so with his birthday imminent I decided to knit him his own ‘gnome’. The pattern is from Imagined Landscapes and I had enough yarn left over from a project box that contained my original gnome. I didn’t stop to think that this might not be the simple road trip project I had envisaged. With lots of counting and colour changing as well as fourteen different fair isle sections, this wasn’t going to be something I could do without looking. Progress was slow, but by looking up frequently it kept me occupied for most of the journey.

The other aspect of road trips that I always look forward to are the refreshment stops, yet another example where I don’t seem to learn from experience. Over the past twenty or so years we have travelled the same route to Scotland straight up the A1 all the way to Edinburgh on numerous occasions. Up the A1 past the same old service stations and pit stops. Whilst one or two have had a bit of a revamp over the years they are still basically all the same. There is the ubiquitous Costa Coffee, occasionally a Greggs and nearly always a Burger King or MacDonalds which we avoid. So, can someone explain why I think I’m suddenly going to discover some exciting new place to eat, offering original and tasty food? A lunch like none I have experienced before. It has never happened yet, nor is it ever likely to happen yet still I anticipate those stops with a childlike sense of wonder. Maybe it’s just the prospect of stopping and stretching my legs that makes me delusional.

There has been one exception and that is our usual stop at Berwick. For years we would go into Morrisons supermarket until after a particularly nasty encounter with a soggy English muffin and a couple of watery poached eggs when I refused to eat there ever again. In fact, like a truculent toddler I refuse to even leave the car unless I’m desperate to pee! But in the past couple of years, we have discovered a garden centre just before Berwick that serves freshly cooked food and homemade cakes that are excellent. Not particularly exciting but good homely fare. I can recommend it should you be travelling that way.

The same applies to shopping opportunities too. I don’t enjoy shopping at the best of times so why do I suddenly think that when we stop for a break, I’m going to discover wonderful things to buy that I never knew I needed from a dreary service station branch of W H Smiths and a Marks and Spencer Food Hall. It’s not going to happen, is it? Ever! Although I did find a particularly attractive bauble for the Christmas Tree from the said garden centre. That was pretty exciting but then I am easily pleased!

Of course, along with the long boring trips with the usual uninspiring food just occasionally there is a trip that lives up to expectation. One year we planned our trip to Scotland with different stops on the way. We packed picnics and flasks and this time stopped at The Angel of the North rather than just sailing past. We took a detour to Holy Island and spent and hour or so exploring, and on the homeward journey we stopped at a section of Hadrian’s Wall and had a walk. It was new and exciting to visit places we never been to before and it made the journey feel like a proper road trip.

Sailing past the Angel of the North on our latest trip.

I have also been fortunate enough to have had some really exciting road trips and many years ago before I had children I travelled down the Pacific Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which must be one of the most scenic routes in the world. There are mountains and giant redwood trees to one side and the magnificent Pacific Ocean and beaches on the other. The road hugs the coast all the way down the length of California and there are opportunities to stop at various beautiful places from surfing towns to pioneer outposts. I remember stopping off at the quirky town of Solvang which is like coming across a part of Denmark in America. A surreal experience. Having lived in America for a few years in the early 1980s there were several similarly memorable trips which is probably due to the greater distances between places and a network of big, wide, open roads. America is built for road trips.

Another great trip was when we drove through France to Italy a few years ago. We didn’t book our overnight stops but instead set out with an intrepid sense of adventure seeing where the road took us. Off the motorways the roads are quieter than the UK and we stopped at quaint little wine producing towns, discovered markets, found a wonderful local food festival taking place in one French village and spent a leisurely day driving along the coast of the Italian riviera having passed through the Alps and the Mont Blanc tunnel. This was road trip bliss.

And I guess it is this spirit of adventure that makes the prospect of a road trip so exciting with the anticipation that maybe this time we will discover something new. But it wasn’t to be on our recent trip. There was a frisson of excitement at the prospect of snow on the journey up but fortunately it didn’t impact our journey. We stopped at our usual stops, ate the usual food, and listened to the radio while all the while I knitted a gnome.

And now since coming home there is the realisation that Christmas is barely two weeks away and despite my very good intentions for early preparations, here I am as usual with cards to write, presents to buy and wrap, a cake to make, food to plan and prepare, and a house to decorate. But am I panicking? No… I’ve just started knitting another gnome… like you do!