Back to Ju’s Roots in Carlisle

When we’d left the M6 to head to our last stopover at Beacon View, we went into MILD PANIC mode when we drove past a set of prominent Clean Air Zone signs and cameras. Sheeeeeet! This looks expensive!

Zagan’s over 20 years old now, and although he’s running well (touch wood), no doubt he shoves out enough particulates to take Manchester back to the Industrial Revolution. He’s not clean enough to enter many of the low emission zones we’ve come across in Europe. Although he does erroneously sport a Level 4 Umweltzone sticker for Germany (a garage there gave one to us in desperation when they got confused by our V5C). On arrival we fired up Google. Turns out the Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone doesn’t actually exist (yes, I was tempted to say it went up in smoke).

Yup, the signs and cameras are there (with big red Under Review signs attached to each of them). But the zone itself was never formally approved and has been scrapped. Central government forced the local authority to put the signs up in anticipation of the zone being signed off, but following a massive backlash, it was canned off. An alternative strategy was picked instead. Over £100m of taxpayer money was spent on the project, ouch. The cameras alone cost £375,000 a month, although they’re now being used for other purposes (tracking down criminals and the like). Anyway, we’d dodged a bullet.

The UK doesn’t have that many clean air/low emission zones, and they’re mainly in city centres where we don’t normally drive. The Greater Manchester one was very large though, 493 square miles (the London LEZs cover about 600 square miles). The Sheffield one is awkward to avoid if you’re crossing the city, and we’re always aware of the Portsmouth one when we head that way (although you can get to the ferry port to Spain without entering it).

Back onto the M6 we headed north on a Bank Holiday Monday. We’d checked the traffic on Google Maps and it looked clear to Carlisle. True to the Great Google’s word, we cruised along unhindered, eyeballing the surrounding dales and fells, mottled and full of character under a broken cloud sky. Those poor souls heading south had no such luck, with many miles of crawling queues. We’ve all been there, but this time we had an easy ride and we finally ambled through a semi-deserted city and into the parking area by the castle. Somehow I managed to miss the ‘no entry’ sign as I drove in here through the exit, under the critical eye of a fellow motorhomer, whoops.

Ju has roots in Carlisle and the Scottish Borders. Her mum Judith grew up lived here, meeting Ju’s dad Malcolm when he visited from Langolm, a town over the border in Scotland, for a dance. They later relocated to Nottinghamshire for Malcolm’s work in the clothing industry. As we drove through the city Ju (a little too excitedly) pointed out an underpass. Hmmmm. Seems holidays up here to see her gran weren’t that lively. A highlight appears to have been enjoying shouting ‘duck’ every time they went under it on the double-decker bus.

We’re in a designated motorhome parking spot, one of 15 extra-long spaces marked out in a shared car park below the castle walls. It costs all of £4.10 for 24 hours to stay here, and most of the motorhome spaces were taken up last night. There’s plenty more space if these are full, even on a workday almost half the huge car park is empty. It’s a few minute’s walk in one direction past the castle into the city centre, and a few the other way to green parkland and a large play area for nippers. The only downside is the train noise. We’re adjacent the tracks and the trains are frequent. Didn’t keep us awake though.

Carlise is currently being nobbed up. A large area of the center is being resurfaced with cobbles and flat stone. It’ll be cool when it’s done, but is all building site fencing at the moment. It was also oddly quiet for a bank holiday. I guess everyone’s partied out, and we’d timed our wander to coincide with shops-shutting-pubs-not-yet-open o’clock.

The path took us past the famous Tullie House museum. We’d both run 8 miles along the canal that morning and driven a couple of hours to get here, so we couldn’t summon the energy for exhibit peeking – also as it was a bank holiday, we’re pretty sure it (along with everything else) was about to close. Instead we headed into the cathedral for a slow-motion self-guided tour of Christendom in the north. Tons of information there, especially in the excavated underground treasury room.

We can’t claim to have done much more. We’re on the route of Hadrian’s Wall here and see folks in walking gear striding past from time to time. Ju’s been out running this morning, while I’ve sat tapping this out. We’re off across the border (via Morrisons) to sunny Gretna this afternoon, booked into an aire for the night.

Over the past couple of days we’ve plotted out some of the places we fancy visiting in the west, including the local Parkruns. We fancy a mixture of aires, campsites, paid parking and maybe a few nights of freeloading/wild camping/whatever you call it. The beaches and landscapes up there look fantastic, we can’t wait but at the same time don’t want to drive more than an hour or two a day if we can help it.

It’s getting down to just a few degrees at night, so we’re hoping the midges won’t be out yet, and there won’t be too many fellow campers up there. Not sure how much island hopping we’ll do, we’ll probably eyeball the ferry prices before deciding.

Cheers, Jay