Friday 7th March 2025

It’s a really easy drive down the M74 towards Gretna, we’ve popped into Gretna Green several times on our travels south, but never made it into Gretna proper.

For dinner we had Chicken Parma and salad, our air-fryer isn’t very very big but we were able to double up using an extra stand and it worked well.

Then we took a walk into Gretna, dark and wet we walked as far as the outlets, not unexpectedly they were closed, it’s not a long walk, maybe 15 minutes all-in.

On our way back to the van we popped into Nandos cafe and picked up a couple of wee bags of sweets.

We also popped into the Gables hotel for a couple of pints - we were the only customers in the bar, but it was an enoyable pint.

Saturday 8th March

I woke at 6:35 and the sky was starting to lighten definitely slept well in our new duvalay sleeping bags, they’re a bit different but nice and warm.

We had discovered that the extra battery we paid for hadn’t been fitted when we picked up the van, so had an appointment to return to our dealer to get it sorted.

We had a quick coffee and tea and wrapped up electric cable before heading down to Tebay, worth going to the Truckstop for breakfast!

It took a couple of hours to get our battery upgraded to 210ah and we drove the 50 minutes back to Gretna in bright (and warm) sunshine.

We managed to setup our awning in 16C heat., not too bad for a “divorce in a bag”, it was turning into a really nice day despite being early March.

Around 4pm, it was time to go for a walk, and we made our way down to the river with the drone and flew it over the river for a bit, definitely a learning exercise.

It was nice sitting in the awning, it was warmer than outside, and kept the breeze off.

At around 7:50 we headed out for some food and into a very busy McDhabas on the Main street - I returned 30 minutes later to collect (it’s very close to the campsite).

We had a very tasty Chicken passanda and coconut rice, really nice meal.

We caught up on a few Youtube channels before heading to bed.

Sunday 9th March

I slept ’til nearly 7am, I had a nice hot shower and we had a quick cup of tea outside.

We knew we wanted to get to the Gretna Outlet stores so we packed away the awning with little drama.

After we’d pulled into the main car park we spotted a sign saying that Campervans/Motorhomes are only allowed in the South Carpark, so we headed there and got parked up.

We spent an hour wandering the stores, Gayle got a pair of shoes and a couple of other items along with popping into Cornish Bakery for some goodies and a cuppa coffee.

It’s an easy drive of eighty miles home from Gretna, we stopped off only briefly to get fuel in Moffat but it was busy so we headed home.