The afternoon started off fine, it was quite warm as we leftt Thornhill and headed into rolling lanes. The intended route was Forest of Ae, but instead we continued a parallel route to the A76 intending to cut the corner to Lochmaben. We (I) overshot one of the turns we should have taken and ended up doing a detour around a big hill to get to Lochmabem, where we bought fish and chips for tea. Time had really moved on,we still had almost 30 miles to go, and whilst we ate our chips by the lake, we heard the distant rolling thunder. Skies had darkened as we set off towards Lockerbie, and we'd only done three miles when I spotted the curtain of rain heading towards us. With perfect timing we raced on to a bus shelter, and got there just as it started spitting. Seconds later it was thrashing down with rain, and thunder and lightning passed almost overhead.

After the storm the roads were flooded. For most of the way down to Gretna the rain was on and off with lot's of lightning and distant thunder. It was virtually dark when we hit the final 10 miles of A7 to Carlisle and we were treated to an encore, arriving at the YH in the pitch dark and saturated! The lighting was impressive, better than many firework shows!