The 4 day plan consisted of approx. 120 minutes (2 hours) of driving each day.
First planned stop controversially was Jedburgh, in Scotland, not Northumberland. I'm still not sure why I've found two maps, one including this part of Scotland and one bypassing it. However, it is a big enough place for us to include it and target it as our first stopover.
We set off from The Twice Brewed pub in Once Brewed (look it up), east along the Military Road, past Sycamore Gap (minus the Sycamore), towards Chollerford.
First stop then at The Riverside Cafe in Chollerford for a quick cuppa.
Then up and off to Bellingham, and this time a quick drink at the Black Bull, before a "grocery" shop at the village Co-op.
Next we head towards Kielder Forest, and the next stop is a piddle break at Matthew's Linn, having forgot to go before leaving the pub!
Then we head to our first park up in Jedburgh. Checking Park4Night, we opt for the large car park behind the Tourist Information Office. just off Canongate. It is a Saturday night and the town centre was particularly busy with some kind of horse gala event. Thankfully this was mainly on the streets and not in the pubs.
We had a drink at The Spread Eagle Hotel which was particularly dead, and the TV was broken so no footy fix for me :-( I watched the first half of the Italy Switzerland game on my phone, before heading to The Belter Bar (belter name, does it mean the same in Scotland?
Still no footy, turning in to a disaster, maybe because the Scots were already out of the competition, they've applied a blanket ban :-) To be fair, England are no better.
Anyhow, back to the Bar, and it is also dead. We have a G&T each (have I mentioned I'm on a low carb diet, and have lost 3 stones in the last 3 months), and head to the local Chinese Takeaway, the Golden River. We scoffed it back at the car, and it was OK, but nowt special.
We headed back to Belter Bar to share a bottle of wine. They called last orders at 10pm (what's happened to Scotland?), so we moved back to The Spread Eagle, after first trying Carters Rest, which had also called last orders!
One more drink for the road, and off to bed. First mistake was not making the bed up, so turned into a bit of a struggle getting everything sorted once we got back. Luckily the car park was quiet, and in our defence it was the first time for the entire Campal Estate setup including the window blinds, that we remembered this time.
So the end of Day 1, and we proceeded to have a relatively decent sleep and woke around 7.20am, so pretty successful maybe aided by the alcohol.