21st February to 23rd February

Another Friday, another weekend away in the van.

For this second trip of the year, we picked Melrose Gibson Park CAMC as we had been before and enjoyed that trip & had also picked up a Treasure Trail for the town and decided this would be a good time to put on our detective hats and take on the spy tour … spoiler alert there was one clue that evaded us!

It was a good drive and arrived just as it was getting dark and picked pitch 18

We did our usual arrival prep and then got settled in the van and had dinner which was a charcuterie and cheese platter as a starter and then a nice pasta meal, which used up some items from our fridge at home and we also found a bottle of red wine stashed in the van cupboard, a Jam Shed Malbec, result!

It was nice and warm in the van, and cold and clear outside. We loaded up some TV, including an episode of The Expanse which we have started to re-watch and happily passed our time until we were ready for bed.

It’s great not having to make up the bed at the end of the evening and was one of the main reasons we decided to change our van.

On Saturday morning, Kevin was up early and round to Twelve Triangles to pick up some baked goodies for breakfast, including an almond croissant and cinnamon bun. They were nice, but not as good as some we’ve had - we have a several really good bakeries that we can go to locally so we have very high expectations!

We wanted to go to the Trimontium museum and when I checked the website for opening times I noticed that they had an interactive experience that you could book and there were still 3 tickets left for the 2pm session so we headed to the museum to see if we could snag 2 of the remaining tickets - we were in luck and with our entry to the VR experience organised we set off to wander around the town and find the clues for our Treasure Trail.

We enjoyed our walk around the town - we’ve done a few treasure trails now and they encourage you to go down alleys you wouldn’t normally have noticed and look up & down and really see the places you are walking through. We found all the answers bar …we just couldn’t find the clue, no matter how hard we tried, and we really did try. We’re not sure if we missed something, or whether something has changed since we purchased the trail (10 months ago), still it was a fun way to see a bit more of the town.

After that we grabbed lunch in the Ship Inn. Kevin had the battered chicken wrap which he said was excellent along with a pint of Wolfpack IPA, and I had a tuna melt (a regular lunch choice for me) and a cider which was very much enjoyed.

We had time to drop our backpacks back at the van before we had to be at the museum do we did that but then we hit a snag … we couldn’t get the doors on the van to lock, no matter what we tried it wasn’t locking, it was just the alarm that was being turned on but the doors could still be opened. Fortunately we were on a site and we decided to worry about it later and trust that the van would be safe whilst we were away and we ran round to the museum and got there just in time for the interactive experience to start, in fact we had to wait a bit for an other couple to turn up but that gave us time to catch our breath.

The VR experience was really enjoyable, with the staff at the museum being very enthusiastic and knowledgeable and our wander through the museum was equally good - it’s a small museum but lots of interesting things to see. We had been to the site of the Trimontium roman fort the last time we had visited Melrose so it was good to round it out with a is it to the museum to view the various artifacts that had been discovered there.

When we got back to the van, Kevin got in to the van while I tried to locked the doors, and he noticed that it was showing that one of the doors was not closed properly, so we made sure that the side doors and back doors were properly closed and …problem solved! Phew!

After that stress, we had a restful late afternoon in the van reading, and then headed out to see what we wanted for dinner (and had another quick look around to see if we could find the final clue). After a quick look around the co-op we settled on sausages (which we cooked in the air-fryer) beans and mash (Idaho instant mash - which is perfect for in the van) for dinner…and the sausages were great and we congratulated ourselves on a good choice!

We watched another episode of The Expanse and some Cheers (almost completed our full-season re-watch) before heading off to bed.

Up early and we each made use of the shower facilities and had a quick cup of tea but didn’t eat anything for breakfast as there were high-winds predicted so we were keen to pack up and head home as soon as we could.

The engine-warning light came on again, argh, we’ll need to get it booked in somewhere for a diagnostic to make sure it isn’t anything serious.

We got home at 11am and, as expected it was very windy on the drive home and there were some sections where I could really feel the wind jostling the van - not a particularly enjoyable drive, and at one point we came across a tree had fallen across the inside lane but with early notification of this from the sat-nav we spotted in plenty of time and I was able to safely manoeuvre around it.

Melrose is a nice wee place, with some really good food places, and Kevin is very keen to walk up the Eildon Hills so we’ll be back again.