Stop! Flowertiiiime...catch up blip - 2

We awoke on Saturday so lots of rain and so a lazy morning ensued, occasionally looking out of the window, wondering if & when there might be a break in the precipitation. And occasionally there was, albeit in short moments rather than promising spells.

Come the early afternoon though a drier spell did appear just as we were discussing lunch nom nom. Ms.Arell suggested we visited a cafe in a garden centre near East Linton, a mere 20something miles away, asking if I would like to ride pillion aboard Fidra the Pan European...

...an easy question to answer! There was much traffic to negotiate to begin with on the outskirts of Edinburgh due we speculated to the Marathon, or maybe just because of the weather, flooding having been an issue over the last week.

Riding behind her on what is like the Starship Enterprise compared to Biscuit was a thrilling experience as she accelerated up to speed and it was equally relaxing being able to just sit back & enjoy everything going on around us without worrying about keeping the bike on track!

As we arrived at our destination the heavens opened and so we shuffled through the array of lovely plants (blip is a very pretty Rhodanthemum Marrakech) to the cafe. We chose to sit in the conservatory rather than under the covered area outside, having some hot soup & a roll and very nice it was too. Ms.Arell got a nice surprise meeting a fellow Pan fan in there who she mentions in her blip of the day!

With no sign of the rain abating, judging by the sound it was making on the conservatory roof, we decided to just get wet. Upon reaching the parking area though we found that mother nature had thrown us some luck because the rain had stopped! We scooted back on a more scenic route via Haddinton, Pencaitland & Dalkeith - somewhere we had pedalled through in January!

After cupsa tea we were very kindly chauffered to the Flums residence where they had made us a lovely vegetarian cottage pie, preceded by some slices of a very nice seeded bread that Mrs Flum had made. I was quite taken with this as it looked similar to a rye bread that eldest had once bought. This was different though, lovely taste & textures without being too rich that would overpower anything spread upon it. I departed happy to have enjoyed the company of the Flums once more with a few extra slices to nibble, the recipe to have a try at along with some notes she had collated of tweaks others had made.

All in all a good day :-)