Day 277: unexpected rest day Elgin

Best bits: beautiful guest house and fabulous food

Worst bits: Storm Floris

Distance: rest day

Today was an unscheduled rest day due to a severe weather warning for Storm Floris. The weather warning included threat to life, power and travel disruptions. It was an easy call not to walk today and I had been doing extra miles over the last few days to enable me to have the whole day off.

Unfortunately, that meant an early start this morning rather than a long lie in as I had to move Priscilla to our new location at Elgin. I was just getting ready to depart and waved to Susan and Jenny whose house I had inadvertently parked opposite. they popped out to see me and say goodbye. We had a nice little chat before the rain started and I had to jump in Priscilla and drive off.

The journey to Elgin was reasonably straightforward, but there were several times when very strong gusts of wind made me hold on tight to Priscilla’s steering wheel.

I popped into McDonald’s for a quick breakfast and a cup of tea before parking up on the large driveway at the Pines Guest house. What a fabulous house this was with an amazing entrance hall and stairway with beautiful details.

Eric and Ann, let me stay in their room whilst they went out to purchase whiskey and have a quick wander around Elgin. I spent most of the day doing logistics for the latter part of my journey. It’s extremely time consuming and complicated trying to work out distances, terrain, stopping places and handover days for support crews. There seems to be a certain amount of anxiety from friends and family about my safety on this section. Also when I checked the original route it included stretches that were not suitable for motorhomes. I have decided that this section needs to work by ensuring I’m close by my support crew as much as possible on routes that are accessible for Priscilla with drivers who may not be that confident.

While I was doing all of this, the wind picked up and started howling, the windows started rattling and the rain lashed down. I could see all of this through the window and was glad I wasn’t outside. However, Eric and Ann were outside but they called me to say they had popped into a pub for a drink to wait for the wind to die down. Apparently more than 43,000 homes in Scotland are without power.

I had a long chat with Lee and Lyn the owners of the guesthouse. They kindly offered me a bed for the night but I politely declined and said I would be fine in Priscilla.

By the time Ann and Eric arrived back, I had done two sections of the route and Eric check them over in case I made some obvious errors.

By late afternoon the storm had subsided and following Lyn‘s recommendation we went out for dinner at the Drouthy Cobbler. The place was very cozy and the food was fabulous.