Wednesday 23 April 2008

Day Twenty three-A start in the dark-Yorkshire Dales

Oskar decided to wake up at 3am this morning. Yes it was still dark and we were desperately trying to get back to sleep in the infamous Ruby.

Jason and I sleep in the back of Ruby. The chair folds down to become a bijou double bed complete with chair cushions that are sometimes perfectly comfortable but occasionaly are annoyingly mobile.They creep around so you spend your entire night in a half slumber trying to find the comfortable bits.
Oskar has a bunk that fits over the two front seats and he enjoys it very much. Especially when he gets posted into it.

Anyway at 3am Oskar was awake and shouting.Loudly. No amount of passifying, ignoring or pleading worked. Even our pathetic: "but look, it's still dark outside, even the birds aren't up yet" didn't work.

So, we had a masterful plan- well it was masterful at 3 in the morning. Squeeze all three of us on the magically moving bijou double bed and pop a Magic Roundabout DVD in the laptop. I balanced it on my knees while still trying to sleep. It worked for an hour and a half. Jason and I have become experts at answering questions while still sleeping. Then the magical distraction wore off and so, still before the birds were up, we left Northumberland for the Yorkshire Dales.


We had planned to go back to Holy island today as yesterday I spotted winkles, mussels and a yummy seaweed called enteromorpha which is delicious briefly deep fried then tossed with seseme oil and a small amount of brown sugar. But the tide was still in and our beautiful boy was in no mood for waiting around. So off to the Yorkshire Dales it was.


Our thanks go out to the coffee shop near Newcastle for providing us with a bucket of very hot strong black coffee each and for not complainging when grunted at them. They were very sympathetic. Oskar got carrot cake and told to behave. Thankfully he did. Cake as second breakfast? We were weak and very desperate.

Now we are in a hotel complete with double bed, gramaphone and a decanter of sherry. Oskar is asleep having enjoyed his day dispite the early start and I have had two baths already. Its the one thing our dear Ruby lacks. A decent, hot relaxing bubbly bath. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. Goodnight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you go anywhere near Staffordshire do try Staff. oatcakes. They have no connection with the Scottish
ones but are made with yeast I believe. I have the recipe somewhere which my sister sent me.
We used to watch them being griddled on enormous hot-plates in a big store in Hanley near where we were staying with my Grandmother for most of the war . We managed to find some in a Waitrose in Surrey some years ago but they did not stock them for long. They are unbeatable toasted or fried with eggs and bacon.
What is the name of the sea-weed?

Anonymous said...

What can you say, cuteness doesn't run by GMT. Oatcakes sound gooooooooood.