An impromptu picnic

The poor old Vixen went for her MOT yesterday.  And failed it.  She needs two new tyres (this, I suspect, is because the last time we bought her tyres we bought cheapo ones. Cheap things seldom do last very long!).  But she also failed her emissions test.  It's not allowed to be >3 and hers was 3.4.  The mechanics think it might be a consequence of the problems we had with that valve thingy a few weeks back, when she was definitely puffing out lots of very black smoke. So they put some pipe cleaning stuff through her and instructed The Builder to take her for a good spin and not to spare the horses.

He came and picked me up from the station.  Where shall we go?

Let's go to Bakewell.  It's a nice drive, and we can continue on down through Rowsley, towards Matlock and then make our way across country to Alfreton and come back along the M1. You should get up a bit of speed on the M1.

Off we trundled to Bakewell. We decided to park outside the co-op in the market square.  Should be parking in there at this time on a Monday.  Except, of course, that it was Monday. And Monday is market day. And markets tend to be held in market squares!  And it was only quarter past five so they were just starting to pack up.  We went and parked somewhere else.

Bakewell has one of the absolutely best fish and chip shops anywhere in the world.  So we laid in some wine (we don't usually drink wine during the week, but then we don't usually go to Bakewell for fish and chips during the week either) and hit the fish and chip shop (it seems to have been joined in the town by several others.  I suppose we ought to try those as well, one day).  In the meantime, it had started to rain, so we had our picnic in the car, watching the rain and the tourists.  We decided not to drink the wine - we had that when we got home.

The fish and chips were lovely

The drive down towards Matlock and then across to Alfreton was lovely too.

The Vixen got a nice long run, although we couldn't not-spare-the-horses on the M1 - there was quite a lot of traffic.

We really must go for impromptu fish and chip picnics more often.  And go out and explore the countryside a bit too.  There were roads heading off the roads we were on that looked quite interesting.

Ian is loitering in Glasgow.  While we were munching in Bakewell, he was ambling along the Clyde.  I haven't ever been to Glasgow.  Might go for an inspection tour one day.