SAYING GOODBYE TO THE GIRLS

It rained very heavily during the night but we all managed another good nights sleep in the motorhome. When we awoke the next morning the rain had stopped. We had a slow start to the morning, lazing in bed again chatting and laughing and having cereals and a bacon sandwich that I quickly russelled up. It was so nice to have the time to spend with such good friends. All too often life gets in the way. And although we are all sixty we felt like the young women who started nursing together and lived in the nurses home all those years ago.

The girls did the washing up and then we packed up the motorhome, I knew now that I needed to take the grill out of the cooker and wedge it in the seat under a blanket and the glass tray out of the microwave and do the same, so they didn't rattle when I was driving. I checked that all the skylights were firmly shut. That the gas cylinder was turned off, the grey water was emptied and everything was secure in the cupboards. I didn't want things falling out as I drove along. We then headed off to a carpark in Ambleside by the side of Lake Windermere. There is a very steep bit of road just as you head towards the carpark ,at a junction and I struggled with the handbrake start and panicked a little. Thankfully the girls kept me calm and Ann encouraged me by saying "you can do this" and we slowly inched to the top and got over the road and made it to the car park. That just reaffirmed to me that I still have someway to go before I feel truly comfortable driving the motorhome. Then I struggled to line the motorhome up in the area earmarked for motorhomes to park. The parking spaces were at such odd angles and I was back and forth and back and forth for ages before I finally settled on my parking slot. The girls just sat quietly and let me get on with it.

I think we were all so pleased that we made it in one piece we got a bit giggly and wandered along the edges of Lake Windermere. But it was difficult to find a path that went very far along the waters edge. So we decided to check out the boat trips on the Lake. We opted for a trip that went at one thirty.  As we were looking at the boat times the most delicious smells of fish and chips were wafting over from the Ambleside Fish and Chip Shop amblesidefishandchips.co.uk, so we decided that we had plenty of time to get some fish and chips. They were delicious. But we had such a laugh because both Ann and Maggie wanted to pay for them and the guy serving us sorted it out by taking both their bank cards, closing his eyes as he did it and juggling them, before choosing one to take the payment from. Ann won and Maggie was not a happy bunny, she said she was going home which was so funny. I managed to catch the whole thing on video.

When we finished we popped into a gift shop next door and spent so long inside there we realised that the ferry boat we were planning to take had just left five minutes earlier. 

As if we hadn't eaten enough, we spotted an ice cream place, so we grabbed an ice-cream each and went for a wander.

We did find a really nice walk that went along the edge of Lake Windermere then it cut through some Roman ruins and along a river that was very swollen because of all the really heavy rain we had been having. There was one point where Maggie suggested we take off our boots and wade through the flood water in the field to get to the next part of the walk but both Ann and myself chickened out and persuaded her that it was probably better to just retrace our steps back to the Motorhome.

Our time in the Lake District had come to an end and we had had a blast reconnecting and going over old times and updating each other with what our lives were like now. We had a very scenic drive back through the Yorkshire Dales to Leeds where we spent the last night at Maggie's house playing cards and eating and drinking the odd glass of wine in front of her lovely open fire. The perfect way to end our girlie trip.

Next Day Maggie was straight back to work and Ann and me went for a final walk around Waterloo Lake in Roundhay park, where we would go sometimes when we were all nursing at St James' hospital in Leeds in the late seventies and early eighties. 

 I took Ann to Leeds Bradford airport to catch her flight back to Cork. She insisted on giving me fifteen pounds that she had left in English money. A fiver and a tenner as they would be no use to her and she had had them from her last trip over. So I thanked her and said my goodbyes.

When I tried to pay for the carpark with the fiver it would not take it so I tried the tenner and the same thing happened. I then noticed that they were the old notes and not legal tender anymore. It did make me giggle.