SATURDAY   
LONDON  TO  GRETNA  GREEN

Here is the traditional photo of the plane. It's the same as all the others.
I spent the money to bump us up to Economy Comfort. Look at all this extra legroom.
I had the pasta with zucchini for dinner with a plastic cup of white wine. The pasta was okay, kind of bland though.
The south of England from the window of the plane. My sister had to take this photo for me. She had the aisle seat next to an empty window seat so she had some room to spread out to sleep. I had an empty middle seat next to me in the center section but I couldn't really lay out on it. I got very little if any sleep at all, as usual.
There is the car for the week. It was a Volvo station wagon. A bit longer than we needed but it was a diesel which was good for fuel mileage. It also had a great sat-nav.
On the road immediately after landing. A long day driving after a long day flying.
On the way north I wanted to stop off at a town called Ashton-under-Lyne outside of Manchester. The only reason to do so was to see this house, the one with the black door. It is #8 Ladbrooke Road. It is the house in which my grandfather, Ernest Whitworth, was born in 1905.
Since it was midday when we got to Manchester I figured we would need a place to eat lunch, so before we left I found out there was a cafe in Old Trafford, the home stadium for Manchester United.
This is a statue of:

A. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
B. Moe, Larry and Curly
C. George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton
Matt Busby. Dig it, dig it, dig it.
All the chairs in the cafe had names and numbers of former and current Manchester United players. I sat in the chair of Marouane Fellaini, #31. He's the Belgian with the big fro.
The view out the window looking toward Manchester.
After the long two days and over 30 straight hours of being awake, we arrived at the Alexander House B&B in Gretna Green, Scotland. The buildings look a little nondescript, but they used to be railway cottages built over 150 years ago.
They are much nicer inside. For the record, the beds weren't wrinkled when we arrived. We did that ourselves.

TO  SUNDAY