We will be getting up early tomorrow (22nd) because we need to be on the road b y 0530. We are travelling from Edinburgh to Brighton to spend Christmas with our son Rob and his fiancée Alessa. At best it is a nine hour journey plus break stops. However, the BBC website says that tomorrow will be the busiest road day of the year, with many people still working and many others, like us, travelling for Christmas. So we expect the worst.

There is also a yellow weather warning for high winds, and with the roof box on the car that does make us a little like a sail. We will have to be particularly careful on bridges.

I am not looking forward to it. When we are on the narrowboat we also have to be careful for winds. Particularly in marinas it can be exceptionally difficult to steer. But we are only going at 2 or 3 mph, and the beauty of being retired is that if we do not like the weather we can just moor up.

I think the biggest difference between travelling in a car and travelling in a narrowboat is that in a car, it is all about looking forward to the destination, while in a narrowboat, it is all about the journey itself.

But there aren’t any canals between Scotland and England, and even if there were, the 380 miles would take us about two months.

Christmas will not wait for us, and so we just need to grit our teeth tomorrow and face into the journey. At least we can stick on some Christmas songs to cheer us up. And when we get there I am sure we will have a really lovely week with our family and Alessa’s family,

So instead of Bah Humbug, I will be Ho Ho Ho and wish you and yours a very very merry Christmas.