We had to leave our safe harbour after all the sites in England re-opened. We had a trip to Bearsted in Kent to collect post then a few days in Chester. The van has a few gremlins, the bathroom door catch has broken and the drawer under the oven is jamming. Today the pipe connecting water to the toilet flush popped off twice. The pump will then try and pump all the water out of the tank. When it first happened we were told it wouldn’t do any damage, today we noticed that water had got under the floor. We dried out as much as possible and have the dehumidifier out. We seem to have everything against us at the moment.

On Sun 22nd March 2020 we were, along with other full timers chucked off the CAMC site at Melrose. All of a sudden we were not welcome anywhere. We managed to scrounge a night at Stepps then while on the road we manger to rent a holiday cottage in Herefordshire on a temporary basis. We have to take the van out tomorrow to get Mrs H’s stitches taken out. We have a local shop, but no gf food. We have a delivery from a local butcher tomorrow.

Back at Moffat for a few days before heading towards Glasgow for the allergy show.

The blog has been quiet for a while, we had to return to Hereford for the funeral of an old colleague who was only a couple of years older than me. I spoke to him shortly before we set off on our trip and he said nothing of his illness. He will be missed, a lovely guy.

We have been stressing as well about not being able to find anywhere to live. Mrs H and I are like chalk and cheese so agreeing on somewhere to live has been harder than both of us expected. It doesn’t help that that we’ve had rain in every single place we’ve visited.

I hope to get back to blogging now. We’ve found loads of lovely gluten free places so I want to share those. Any helpful suggestions about where we can live would be welcome.

Our last day at Dingwall, so we visited the MacDonald Monument erected in honour of a local boy who rose through the ranks to become a Major General. Just a short hike from Dingwall Station but lovely views.

Feeling much better after escaping the gales at John O’Groats, now staying at Dingwall and enjoying the weather.

We did find some gluten free cake at John O’Groats at the Storehouse. It’s made off site and they have good processes in place to avoid cross contamination. The cake tasted nice too.

The weather is lovely here and there is a huge gf range at the large Tesco at the other end of town. Apparently we are sited in “rabbit corner” which is like a scene from Watership Down but without the messy bits.

We drove down to Dingwall from John O’Groats today. The first day at John O’Groats was great but yesterday was awful, the BBC weather forecast said the wind was only going to get up to 20mph but it was actually more like 40mph, we got the awning down but couldn’t get the roof down. As soon as we took the tension off the canvass it ballooned out and would have got snagged. So we had to ride out the wind till the morning being buffeted by the strong gusts.

The last few days have seen a bit of a drought for gluten free food, so have have been subsisting on the small free from section in the co-op. On the way to John O’Groats we came across a Tesco Superstore just as we drove out of Wick. We stocked up on emergency rations even going as far as getting a jar of peas and carrots.

We’ve been subjected to a lot of wet weather since leaving Hereford on the 7th June. We’ve made it as far as John O’Groats today and the views are wonderful.

The next couple of days are going to be very chilled.

Brief period of radio silence as we drove from Oban to Nairn via Fort William. Only a couple of nights in Nairn. We stocked up on some gluten free essentials at the giant Tesco on the A96 between Nairn and Inverness. Managed to get some gluten and dairy free sandwiches from Tesco too. Short trip North to Brora today with a couple of nights stay.