Heading south

This morning we left the cottage in North Berwick without having seen the aurora!
We drove to old haunts in Portobello, The New Town and Stockbridge and T’s childhood home in the west of the city before firing up the satnav to take us south to Lancaster.

We opted for the very scenic route through the borders. We had a picnic beside Ettrick Water. We stumbled upon the Buddhist Temple and Monastery. We removed our shoes and marvelled at the peacefulness, the silence and whirring the prayer wheels.

Further south we encountered four large unaccompanied hounds in the middle of the road chasing an elusive scent. Two miles later we saw the hunt motionless waiting for the sound of the horn. A mile further on we told some farmers we’d seen the hounds and they relayed the news immediately on their radios.

We rejoined the familiar route at Lockerbie and headed south to Lancaster for our night halt.