The Tandem Adventure

We did it!

This is the story of how much the two of us can cram in to a long weekend. 3 1/2 days is all we could scrape together. There's quite a lot of adventuring here, so I shall attempt to spare you too many words, and give you all the pictures instead. 

1046 miles. This accounts for a good proportion of the miles now on our poor wee motor.

Dad gets a Tiny Squirrel Cuddle. 

4 lanes. How is that even fair? They just creep up on you and before you know it there are people driving Death Machines at high speeds on all sides. (I learned to drive in Aberdeen)

So we got there. There was a bike. Kinda funky, no?

The bike made it as far as a local drinking establishment; me on the back, holding on tightly whilst cursing, whimpering and praying for safety. I quietly drank cider in a very pretentious beer garden (it had fake grass, and people were drinking white wine and not being ironic about it), then the chain jammed and we had to push it home.

There were exhausting Small People who did a better job of tiring me out than the other way round. There were far too many people in one house, so we had to sleep in the garden. There was Chinese takeaway. They do it different in the Sowf. I watched Frozen for the first time, with all of it's glaring grammatical inaccuracies. And then we had to go home (because we are boring grown-ups who have to be at work on Monday mornings).

Daddy Jones assists with the fiddly bits.

Spoyk gets loaded.

So it does sort-of fit up there, and everyone looks worried about how far off the back it goes. 

Should've bought a longer car, Kiddo.

Don't get too worried, I promise you it was secure. Precarious and unbalanced - yes, but secure. We chose a route avoiding all A-roads, bridges, height restrictions, sharp bends and the Tour de France and set off on our mammoth journey Northwards. 

My original notion of how this would pan out, car vs bike. I like to think I wasn't far off. 

Being so far south that Bedford and Milton Keynes and listed next to "NORTH" makes me twitch. 

Shadow-watching. When the Sun went behind the clouds I would start worrying that the bike had fallen off.

We found a Dobbies, because I am a sucker for a good scone, and had no problem remembering where we'd parked.

Lunch by the Seaside in Morecambe. There are chips, and seagulls. Things are now feeling a little more Northern and I am twitching less.  There was also ice cream.

For a 500 mile journey it was quite fun. We stopped for regular caffeine intake, listened to the tennis and waved at small children who thought we looked interesting. The Wimbledon Men's final went to 5 sets just to keep us entertained for longer.

More shadow-based proof that it's still there. 

We briefly considered copyrighting a method of determining the time based on the angle of Tandem-Shadow, but thought it might not take off in Scotland.

And many many slow and precarious hours later, we made it home. This, incidentally, is the darkest it's been in Aberdeen in about a month now. 

So we did it. There is a bike. It is huge and heavy and very scary to ride. I am not strong enough to steer. It doesn't have enough gears and one of the brakes is always on. It has the turning circle of a Tesco lorry. But it's gorgeous, and half of it is mine, so none of those things matter.