Friends, Fools and Freaks!

It's that time already, when thoughts turn to meeting up for a coupla nights away, and going for a nice long wizz round some ace roads!

This is really just to let y'all know that I'm on it - haven't booked a hotel yet as I'm waiting to see how the Covid thing pans out over the next month. I fully expect us to be able to go ahead, unless there's some major setback or Harry and Meghan decide it's racist not to acknowledge the role slavery's played in us all flogging ourselves half to death in our sheds nailing our cars together....even if we're only slaves to our own ambition... And no-one can accuse us of lacking diversity, as cars from all manufacturers are welcome, in any colour at all! How good is that?

Enough of wokeness, already, and a bit of info on what I'm planning. After last year's Tynemouth gig, a few peeps asked if, for 2021, I fancied re-running the Kielder route that we did in 2019, only without the biblical quantities of water. Or at least, keeping the wet stuff in the lake, rather than liberally distributing it all over the North. Well I'm up for that, not least cos it saves me having to create and type up a road book I'd be planning on staying in the good old Shap Wells Hotel again, if everyone's cool with that? Good parking, out of the way, not as posh as the Grand in Tynemouth but still not bad.
The potential spanners in the proposed works are: 1) English lockdown gets delayed/reimposed; 2) Scotland fails to lift, or modifies, travel restrictions such that we're affected; 3) SNP gets a majority in the upcoming elections and bans the hated English outright. (For those who don't know, the Run incorporated a loop into the Border area of Scotland, before re-entering England at Carter Bar on the A68.) For these reasons I'm also looking at a completely different route a bit further south, should we be unable to go with Plan A, but it's somewhat hazy at the mo (i.e. I've only spent 5 mins thinking about it).

So there we have it. Or at least, we have an intention, which is as good as it's gonna get for now. I'll post more as things start to become clearer, including hotel details, but if they remain foggy regarding Border Crossings then I'll fall back to Plan B in order that we can be (relatively) sure we'll be able to hold the event without major route changes.

Fingers and other bits crossed.... !