Thursday, May 11th, 2023 Carlisle and Bath, England
Updated: Sep 1, 2023
This morning we checked out of the Airbnb in Largs, visited family, and then began our long road trip for the next phase of our vacation; we are heading to Bath in southern England – it’s about a 7 ½ hour straight drive, but I’m expecting it might take us about 10 hours with rest stops and traffic. We headed east along the M8 to Glasgow and then turned south on the M74 towards Carlisle and after 2 ½ hours we arrived at our first planned stop, Linton Tweeds factory.
Over the many years that we have travelled from England to Scotland or vice versa, it is rare that we have not stopped at Linton Tweeds – it’s Sandra’s go-to place for high-end fabric that she transforms into beautiful gowns and dresses. The consolation for me is the fantastic tea shop! The borders region between England and Scotland has long been a place where sheep thrived and by the late 18th century industrial style woolen mills began to appear.
In 1912 Scotsman William Linton started Linton Mill in the Caldewgate area of Carlisle, a small city situated close to the Scottish border and near the famous Lake District. Initially Linton employed two salesmen with ponies and traps who travelled the Lake District buying wool and selling woolen suit lengths. William Linton’s great friend, Captain Molyneux, was a Parisian couturier who in the 1920s introduced him to a dynamic young lady called Coco Chanel. This began an association which has flourished over the years resulting in the house of Chanel being Linton’s biggest and most prestigious customer. The Mill has a factory shop where Sandra has always managed to find high quality material; shipping to the US is also very reasonable. The cakes and sandwiches in the “Bobbin” café are excellent; everything baked on the premises and all the sandwiches freshly prepared, great tea and coffee.
The drive south down the M6 to Bath was long and arduous with many traffic jams, roadworks (with no one actually working!) and speed controls. The UK has replaced almost all of its traffic police with automated systems to control vehicle speed; there are many speed cameras, but also long stretches where your average speed is calculated by clocking the time when you enter and exit the stretch, using number plate recognition systems.
We eventually arrived in the city of Bath at around 10PM and located our Airbnb, a flat in the Georgian House on Duke Street – the street was originally developed in 1748. Duke Street is pedestrianized and so there was no parking outside the flat; it was raining, dark, and we were very tired – but I followed the given information and found a city car park about 1 block from the flat. Having dragged all the luggage to building we then could not find our flat, as with many of these very old house conversions there were many nooks and crannies and doorways off the main stairwell – a kind neighbor eventually helped us. We had fun with the very old, but functional elevator. A good night’s sleep was had by all.
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