My brother lives in the grim land north of the Watford gap and we are off to visit him this Saturday. We would normally drive up on a Friday but were glad we decided to leave it till Saturday morning as the weather on Friday was driving rain.
We were up a a reasonable 07:00 and left the house at about 08:40. The usual route was taken over to Milton Keynes then up the A5 for a few miles before joining the M1. The weather was really great the sun was low and bright in the sky so the views from the motorway were stunning. We saw quite a few buzzards, and two very large flock one of wood pigeon and the other lapwing. I have been doing photo of the day on facebook and decided a stop at Watford Gap services to grab a coffee and take a picture were the order of the day. The services have a sign out the front a bit like the one at lands end but with only two arms, ones points to the south and the other the north.
We made good time on the motorway and the driving was a breeze. I may have mentioned before the cruise control on the VW golf that I have, it allows you to set no only the speed you want but the distance you want to be from the car in front then the card maintains the speed as best it can, but always keeps you a certain distance from the car in front. It means that you hardly ever need to touch the accelerator and so all you need to do is keep your eyes. The road and steer the car in the right direction. We did the journey in roughly the time the sag nav had suggested at the beginning of the journey.
The weather took a turn for the worse after we had had some home made courgette soup for lunch. So we chilled out with my nephews for the rest the day. Kev made a foret noire gateau, and prepared a Chinese feast for us to eat in the evening. The feast included springs rolls, steamed buns, and steamed and deep fried dim sung. We also watched France trounce England in the six nations rugby match.
Sunday we lounged around for a few hours in the morning drinking coffee and playing on the Wii, then we had some cake and headed off to the Yorkshire Sculpture park for some fresh air and exercise whilst taking in some culture. If you are ever in the area the YSP is well worth a visit, it is a large open park land with lots of works of art scattered here and there, as well as one off temporary exhibitions. We saw an unusual installation Roger Hiorns: Seizure, which was a metal crate which had had copper sulphate crystals grown within it some of them very big, it was very dark and very blue inside. We then went for a walk around the ground where we spotted quite a few birds including cracking views of a nuthatch despite no binoculars.
We went our separate ways Kev back home and us back down the M1 home but not before stopping on the other side of the Watford Gap services.
