Transit days are never fun.  My watch, Ian’s phone, and the neighbouring church bells, all told us it was 5am and time to get up. We embarked on a major repack, wondering how we’d accumulated so much food! We ate mounds of cornflakes for breakfast, and sloshed down lemonade for morning tea.  It was a good thing Munich Airport is so enormous – we reckon we walked about 2 kilometres INSIDE the same terminal, from the car drop off to our check in desk.

Two flights later (Munich-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Newcastle), we were in Ye Olde England. Formalities quickly dealt with and new stamps in our passports, we were given the keys to our rental car.  You guessed it – after expecting a Vauxhall or Kia we were upgraded to a Mercedes! This one is slightly larger, but slightly older than our German version. It lacks the voice assistant, which in spite of her dulcet tones, was rarely of any assistance anyway, and tended to sulk when we asked her to tell us a joke. But it does have a reversing camera, so we feel we have the better end of the deal.

Now to find Toft Hall Cottage. We’d been warned that the satnav might take us to Toft Hall Farm, which was 500 metres away around the corner. So we punched in the directions and hoped for the best.  We followed narrow roads lined with stone walls and stone houses, through villages and around corners.  We had no idea which direction we were heading.  After about half an hour we saw signs for Kirkheaton, so we knew we were in the vicinity.  We passed a driveway with a sign “Toft Hall”.  Was this the farm, or the cottage?  It was a long drive with a large house at the end, so I decided it was the grander farm.  We drove on, trying to decipher our host’s instructions.  Ending up in Kirkheaton, which is an odd collection of stone buildings at the end of a dead end road, we were scratching our heads.  We U-turned and drove back to the mysterious Toft Hall sign.  We bailed up a couple driving the other way, and asked. “Is that the Air BnB? If so, you’re there – just go up the drive”.  We felt a bit silly.

Maggie was waiting for us, and she showed us around.  She had baked a loaf of fresh bread, still warm, and left us some eggs from the chooks.  The cottage was roomy and well equipped, with a big comfy bed.  We settled in to the rocking chairs on the sun porch, while I munched slabs of bread and butter (sorry Ian), and watched the sheep.

The downside of being out in the countryside, is that the supermarket is a fair drive away. We settled on Tesco at Hexham, and followed more winding roads.  We stocked up for a good few days, and found a wide range of GF everything.  It was nice to be able to read labels and signs again!

Driving home was a challenge. We’d forgotten to tell the satnav where “home” was, and it refused to locate Toft Hall, instead trying to send us into Newcastle. We ended up on another back road even narrower than the previous ones.  Nothing looked familiar from earlier, but finally we found ourselves at the foot of our drive.  We quickly told the car where its new home is.

After dinner, I took off my shoes, to discover that my ankle had swollen like a balloon. It had been hurting all day, which I put down to running yesterday, but obviously the flights had caused it to puff up.  Luckily a bag of frozen veggies was applied, and the swelling subsided.  It was with relief that we sunk into bed after a long day, knowing that we could wake up whenever we pleased in the morning.