All the Way To Liverpool !

The instructions couldn't have been more straightforward as we left Dr Simon in Edinburgh after breakfast at the Manna House down by the waterfront. "Cycle straight ahead and you won't get lost" - "You can't possibly miss Edinburgh Airport"! Those words were going to come back and haunt us !

We left our Premiere Inn accommodation early on the Saturday after completion of our cycle tour. Henley had been thoroughly checked out by a Dr at the General Western Hospital the afternoon before and found to be relatively healthy for an 85 year old !

We donned our panniers for the last time and cycled down to Sth Queensferry for breakfast with Dr Simon our friend who'd helped us to kickstart our tour some 5 weeks prior with a warm up ride around Edinburgh.

After swapping travel stories and listening to Simon's dreams of one day cycling around the world we said goodbye and set off on a directish route to the airport to pick up our hire car.

All went well for at least a couple of kms until the rail trail ran out. Exploring options I descended a series of wooden stairs down an embankment with my fully laden bike to find that I was now trapped by a locked gate. While H wisely back tracked from the trail to the nearest road I had to unload my bike and lift it and all my panniers over the gate to get on to the same road.

Onwards another 4-5 kms and after a series of wrong turns we finally could see the airport. The only problem being was that following the advice of some locals who tried to help us avoid the main road we were now at the back of the airport riding along a series of country lanes that were taking us further and further away.

Again we backtracked 4-5 kms with much cursing and went around to the front side eventually cycling to the car rentals area to pick up our car.

After waiting nearly an hour in the Hertz queue and picking up an obvious too small for our bikes car we went back to plead for a bigger model. Mission achieved another 30 minutes were wasted working out how to turn the bloody GPS from German to English !

Fast forward 300 miles, the usual arguments between driver and navigator ( we weren't sure if our GPS was set up correctly) and we finally arrived just outside Liverpool to our hosts for the next 2 evenings Ian (a keen cyclist who I'd met on a Tajikistan trip 12 months back).and his partner Anna.

It was great to catch up and plan for a days cycle around the local area, while unleashing our cultural ambassador (H) on these poor unsuspecting Scousers !

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