Good A Roads to Perth where we pick up the M90 which then morphs into the dual carriageway A90, so dual carriageway all the way (after Perth). Except for the tedium of getting around Dundee, slow, lots of roundabouts, lots of traffic. Still the fast road elsewhere makes up for it. Actually the first several miles after it becomes downgraded to an A road the A90 is full of heavy goods vehicles. Dual carriageway it may be but hard work to drive
Scotland is interesting. Many Scottish place names I have only gleaned from the football results, such as the infamous East Fife 4 Forfar 5. But that means you do think any town with a prestigious club must itself be prestigious. Forfar is surprisingly small, much smaller than anticipated. We discover the tiny town has more than its fair share of bakers though, three of them in fact. We also discover that by 12:30 they've all sold out of bread!
Not too far out of Forfar the A90 becomes empty, boringly so. But soon we are passing the junction for Stonehaven so Aberdeen is just around the corner. It's only just 3pm so we will just sit in Tesco's for a couple of hours. Of course, what we'd like to do is go wander around the shops for 2 hours but Aberdeen instigated a low emissions zone this summer and a 14 year old diesel van isn't compliant. In fact we have to be ultra-careful, the LEZ starts immediately after the ferry terminal junction, miss it and it's £60!
Liz has selected Tesco because it has a café. Er, since when did a Costa machine and a Dunkin' Donuts dispenser constitute a café? Still at least it was large enough to have a loo to save using the van's So Costa and fruit loaf back in the van, books out, two hours killed.
The astute reader will have pieced together a 3pm arrival time + 2 hours chill equates to rush hour. The ferry terminus is across the river, via the bottleneck bridge. It's sloooow. Signage is poor (to say the least) and only an intervention from Liz got me into the right lane and onto the correct feeder road. Seeing the sign for the harbour I pull into the right filter lane only to realise it's the next turn 50m ahead I need. Lights change, traffic starts to move, I indicate I've made a boo-boo and want to rejoin the main lane, car behind slows to leave a gap and I start to pull into it. Car behind accelerates and overtakes just as I'm about to pull out. It's all electric so fortunately gets past before I hit it. I can't only hope that the illegitimate son of a cess-pit cleaner gets a terminal battery failure whilst out in the middle of Scotland's wilderness on a night where the thunderstorms are particularly unrelenting.
Squeeze in past next car and next lights turn right past a sign that Jodrell Bank might have spotted indicating ferry terminal. Next left into the signed terminal. Wrong! This is the freight entrance. I gave the man at the gate my best demented old duffer look and he relented, let us in and told us how to drive through another gate into the car passenger area.
In lane, and 1¼ hours early so we sit in the back to read for a while. Barely 10 mins later the row starts to move. We run round to the front but by the time I've started the ignition the van behind has been waved ahead of me and we are held. A much longer wait, now in the front of the van like dutiful travellers and another row eventually starts to move, then another, then another. Oh, looks like my punishment is to be put on last! **
The crossing was fairly smooth, the first couple of hours spent in the bar, the rest of the night some restless sleeping in the reclining sleeping pods which we won't bother with again! Fortunately we have a cabin on the way back.
Here's the trip
** Spoiler, all's well that ends well. Going on last meant we were in the centre row of cars, the one that comes off first!
