The final leg of the journey was to be the longest mileage but I was familiar with the roads from here and knew I was heading for home, at some point that day.
A really good breakfast was consumed before I lowered the roof and stowed the side screens and headed on. I stopped briefly at a friend’s in Holme before rejoining the A6.
I made my way through Kendal before heading up and over Shap. A number of my family had text to say that severe weather warnings were in place for parts of my journey with a real risk of flooding in place. As I climbed, so the clouds came down. Visibility was really quite poor and slowed my progress.
I was glad to reach the summit, but not before I had stopped to check wafts of steam coming from the radiator cap. This was caused by the climb and the fact that the wind was coming up behind me, the radiator was not being cooled. I have experienced this before, as I was near the top, I was happy to continue.
From here the road winds down towards Penrith, Carlisle and then on towards Gretna, where I found (to my horror) that it was very easy to (almost) find yourself on the M74! Just south of here, near Longtown, I was photographed by an A7 owning trucker, the photo looks like I am being tracked by a helicopter! I had put the side screens up as I was still getting messages from family to say that incredibly heavy rain was due...
The old A74 is now called the B7076 - this follows almost exactly the same route at the M74 but has almost no traffic on it, at all. It is an absolute delight in a Seven, just be aware that very few Petrol Stations, if any, still operate on this route.
After a few hours of enjoying no traffic, at all, I started to enter the outskirts of Greater Glasgow. Hamilton and Rutherglen were awash with traffic lights and flooded roads. I had to turn back on several occasions to find alternative routes. I still had the side screens in and with no rain, just flooding, I removed them again so as to be bale to see out of the car properly. The centre of Glasgow is busy, but I know the roads well and soon I had navigated the city and was on the homeward stretch. I pulled up, past the cross, off the main road and into our own road.
I, and the car, had made it. 440 miles with no mechanical issues, on 44 litres of petrol and a pint of oil. The hood remained down for the entire journey and the car was happiest between 38-42 miles an hour. My dash cam recorded a highest speed of 46 mph, over the entire journey, the tortoise had, of course, won the race!
I must admit that the three days allowed a lot of wonderful childhood memories of the car to surface and these did result in some emotion, as I pulled up outside our home. Luckily my entire family were out shopping, so none of them witnessed this!
A new chapter, for VF, begins here and I am sure you will all hear about that, very soon.
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