Before we start, a note: Owing to fluky wi fi at a couple of our temporary residences making the uploading of photos a bit of an impossibility, we have a backlog of posts for which the text has been written but photos not inserted. I now sit in the heart of London, with wonderful wi fi,  hurriedly illustrating and churning out our adventures of the last week. 

Some days you can amble, others you just buckle yourself in and try to absorb as much as you can as it flashes past the Homestead Holiday Mobile.  Today was one of the latter.

And so it was, with heavy hearts (truly, because this place was our best accommodation of the entire holiday to date), we bid goodbye to Christon Bank, Northumberland.

With its spacious, comfortable, homey interior (including games room!); wildlife (moles, pheasants, owls, bats, rabbits and foxes) which was as awesome to us as it was irritating to the locals, and backyard (well, nearly) railway crossing it was hard to tear ourselves away.

Today’s journey was through Carlisle and the Lake District; the destination: Liverpool.

Unfortunately, the weather didn’t play along with our plans of hurried-but-gorgeous photos of the one place everyone tells us is a must see, but we tried our best. Through the mist and rain we splashed our way along the A6 (Carlisle to Kendal) stopping only for a quick lunch at Brysons of Keswick (so gentile!) followed by a jog down to the lake (which we are pretty sure is called Derwent Water but my attempt at clarification was met with a derisive “how ridiculous” from a couple walking their dog); Maybe they didn’t understand my accent.

Sorry, Lake District, you have every right to feel cheated

At this point, we also must apologise to fellow-blogger Tootlepedal as time constraints meant we couldn’t pop in for that cuppa and cake. Suddenly this adventure has taken on a sort of urgency and time seems to be slipping away.

We were on target to reach the outskirts of Liverpool just as peak traffic was building and, having negotiated other cities at this time (some of them of lesser population), we were not looking forward to the nose-to-tail creeping this involves. Weirdly, although the traffic was heavy, we cruised at a steady pace to the very door of our next temporary abode.

The Twelfth Man is a proper football pub and is 400 metres from The Bean Counter’s mecca: Anfield, the home of Liverpool FC. Despite this, and The Bean Counter, Goat Herd and Milk Maid drinking way too much with the bar patrons (once they had established we were Liverpool supporters), even they couldn’t rustle up tickets for tomorrow’s game.

The Bean Counter is trying to be very upbeat…he knows, when confronted by a storm, how to walk on.