Shropshire via Wigan

We left Oban reasonably early on Thursday morning.  The rain was persistent with no break in the forecast, so we decided to head south to hopefully sunnier, warmer climes!

We decided to swing by Loch Lomond along the way and thought if the weather was good we would stop overnight to check it out.

As you can see by the below pic, we were virtually in the clouds, which was not a good start ...

We managed to see the Loch but the weather was absolutely awful ...

As we were just about at the southern most point the weather cleared so we pulled into a Loch side restaurant and ordered a couple of coffees ...

This seaplane was making the most of the break in the weather and was off.  We were hoping that he could see the restaurant in front of him, as he was heading in our direction ...

He did ...

We had only been there for about 5 mins when the bad weather returned and we had to run back to the van ...

That was it!  

We decided to try and escape the crap weather - so we headed for ...

Wigan!

We had a stop at Lockerbie to pay our respects at the Lockerbie air disaster memorial on the way ...

Crossing the border back into England ... look a bit of blue sky!

We parked up for the night at The Crooke Hall Inn on the Leeds and Liverpool canal.  It's a nice, little village and the locals are very friendly.  We stopped here once before in the boat ...

An old mate from Oz lives in Wigan so he joined us for dinner and a few drinks.  The pub was buzzing on a Thursday night, this was more like it ...

We left Wigan this morning heading towards towards Lydbury North in Shropshire, as we wanted to drop in and check out the shippers, who we will be using to send our precious pups back to Oz (Golden Arrow Shippers).

We stopped at Grandad's cafe for a lovely brekkie on the way ...

We had a chat with 'Grandad and Grandma', who have just come back from living in Tenerife for years as they missed the family!

We moored up behind the Powis Arms in Lydbury North.  Now we have water, 240v and a shower block ... perfick!

The shippers office and home was down a track next to the pub. It is in the grounds of Walcot Hall.  This sign made us laugh ...

The couple running the animal shipping operation were lovely.  They showed us around the place and told us lots of stories, as well as giving us all the information we needed for shipping the boys back to Oz.  They have been shipping animals for over 40 years, so we feel that they will be in good hands.  All up we were with them for over 3 hours!

They live in this house which belonged to his grandad.  It has no electricity, just oil burners and candles plus coal fires ...

They said that often the dogs kennels are warmer than their house!

We are not sure where we will head tomorrow, we may even stay here.  It is a beautiful area so we might do a bit of exploring.