The Wheat & Meat Free-wheelers

Pint of Eden Black for the gentleman, apparently a very nice porter, and a GF, vegan lager for the lady. Not a bad one either for a warm summer's evening.

An acceptable breakfast. Not quite enough to keep a farmer going all day, but would get them to lunchtime.

Rather tasty bacon for the GF, hash browns for the veggie. Toast a little Goth, but still more tanned than our own personal gothic child.

Handy for the M6, Cafe Ambio is just off J36 at the auction mart. An alternative to the busy Tebay services during the day, though there's no shop of local Cumbrian produce here. You could however, buy yourself a mahoosive tractor here if you so desire...

Kind of used now to having a third of my meal go missing before it reaches me when dining out. But a third of my GF bread going missing?

Thanks for bringing the dining out experience to my toaster...

1st Video!!! The Western Lake District to the Southern Lake District. Quiet roads, even in July!

https://youtu.be/B62w2cpQ73E

Our first video 😁

Two Sides of the Lake District - Silecroft From a deserted Silecroft to an equally deserted Coniston, summer in the Lakes doesn't have to be crowded! Gentle strolls, near empty roads and a dinner tha...

Lounge Lizards instead of damp ducks.

Well not traditional Lounge Lizards...

Father's Day dinner was supposed to be a chippy tea at Arnside, overlooking the beautiful bay, but Mother Nature didn't like that idea.

So it was dinner in the dry at the Cortillo Lounge in Kendal instead, where Mr Meat Free and Mrs Wheat Free played snap with the menu, each having our own 'dietary safe' version of the Halloumi Burger, followed by GF Banoffee Cheesecake.

Picky Bear braved the Tarter Sauce on the massive fish finger sandwich and The Gothy One ploughed through a Chicken Kiev burger and a bucket of Churros.

The Lounge chain (over 200 restaurants in the UK), has a massive GF menu and an equally impressive vegan/vegetarian menu. You're never short changed on the food and it's tasty, interesting and well priced. Plus I love their eclectic decor.

It's a restaurant chain that I always look for when we're travelling around because I know I'm not going to be left Hangry.

Gluten Free Grasmere.

It's got to be Baldrys, especially their cheese scones, which don't look much different to the Muggle ones, which is rather satisfying.

They have a good selection of gluten free offerings from soup to sandwiches, scones to cakes. Plus a range of interesting loose leaf teas.

Grasmere is, on the whole, rather good for the gluten free, vegans and vegetarians, the pubs, cafes and restaurants all have good options and don't short change you on the food.

Day 2 - Wheat Free and The Gothy One brave the Scottish Weather

After a very quiet night (at a slight lean to the left), and a breakfast of part browned toast, we headed off early towards Selkirk, past the lovely St Mary’ Loch and then on towards Peebles. We were aiming for Traquair House, a property closely linked to one of the greatest escapes in history.

Inhabited since the 1100’s, at that time just a single tower used as a hunting lodge by King Alexander I, it was gifted to the first Earl of Traquair in 1491, and the Traquair family extended the house over the centuries, with one adding additional wings to accommodate his 17 children...

With strong ties to the Stewart’s, the house has accommodated many a royal, including, of course, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Mary Queen of Scots, the latter spending time there in 1566, when possibly pregnant with James Stuart.

Her delightful husband is reputed to have said, when Mary declined to hunt ‘What, ought we not work a mare when she is in foal? For this alone, if true, did he deserve his timely end in 1567!

The great escape is possibly one that you have heard of. It involved Lord Nithsdale, imprisoned in the Tower of London, his cunning and brave wife, her trusted friends and a cloak. Lady Nithsdale, visited her husband several times, until taking the opportunity to sneak him out under a cloak as one of her entourage. She then demonstrated extremely good conscious and morals by retrieving the decoy after rescuing her husband and then bolting off to France. It did make me wonder though how the guards didn’t notice in time to stop their escape to France. Though in saying that, they didn’t recognise that the prisoner had changed, so probably wouldn’t notice a completely empty cell for a few days!

The Gothy One was most amused at the tale of the Grey Lady ghost, who was great friends with her lady companion, a relationship that clearly couldn’t be stated as it was, merely be alluded to in the most vaguest of ways!

The grounds include a maze, which the Gothy One and I got thoroughly lost and soaking wet in! Take 5 minutes out to give the Pygmy Goat a good scratch, he practically demands it by leaning against the fence and giving you a pleading look – too cute to refuse.

Sadly the chickens were caged, so we didn’t get footage of how fast a Goth can run…

Lunch at the Walled Garden, oat, soya and almond milk are offered, the sandwiches have a gf alternative and normally they have fresh gf cakes and scones too, though unfortunately for me, we landed the day after the medieval weekend and there was not a scrap left!

Though not cheap at £15 per adult, the history, exhibitions and staff make it good value. There’s also a brewery on site, with the shop selling traditional Jacobite ales.

We decided that, as the day was still young, we would visit New Lanark Mill next, something that my legs are still regretting... The drive from Innerleithen to Lanark is rather lovely, winding up and down hills and through valleys. It’s very green and, whilst we were there, wet.

If you can put aside your feelings about the source of the cotton that fed these mills, and focus solely on the history of this particular one, then this is a fascinating place of social history and social politics.

Owned by Robert Owens, the mill was one of the leaders in social reform, offering above poverty housing, ‘reasonable’ working hours, medical welfare and education to his employees. No, they didn’t get to live in the big house with him, but they did get the opportunity to stay in education until 12 and only work 10 hour shifts.

Cotton mills were awful places to work, employees lost their hearing to the machines and their health to the cotton dust. But Robert Owens genuinely tried to better the lives of his workers and their families.

Social reformers from around Great Britain visited his mill, as he showed off his workers village.

The exhibitions are interesting and very much focused on the workers, and the trust are continuing to build the mill up.

There’s an opportunity to put your feet up to enjoy the immersive Annie McLeod story, or to wander up to the roof top garden through the clattering off the spinning machines.

The café does offer GF alternatives, though all cakes are all pre-packed, rather than fresh and definitely not as generous a portion as the muggles offerings.

There is one warning I can give, for those who, like myself, have mobility issues that haven’t yet reached the criteria of a blue badge, the car park is at the top of the hill and its bloody steep!

Blue badge holders can park practically in the visitor centre, and once in it’s really accessible throughout, but if you’re a bit wonky, convince your fellow travelers to drop you off at the bottom before they park up!

At this point, The Gothy One was keen to move onto Falkirk, rather than pass the night at New Lanark Mill car park (which you can do for the extortionate price of £3). So we plugged in the Falkirk Wheel postcode and set off. Don’t do this. Put in a route that sticks to A roads and M roads, because Google Maps hates me and I’m pretty sure I left my exhaust in East Lothian and my suspension in West Lothian... Also do Tesla offer free brakes for life, as we followed one who spent more time on them than off them!

We arrived at Falkirk Wheel with 15 minutes to spare before closing. The Gothy One registered us and we headed up to the top-level car park for the night.

Dinner was practically Michelin star worthy, Gluten Free pasta coated with shop bought carbonara sauce, who’s rather dank flavour had to be elevated with a mix of herb de Provence, pepper, sliced ham and a lot of parmesan (always travel with herbs and spices!)

DAY 1

We set off late, it’s hard to organise Goths and the weather wasn’t very promising in Scotland during the day. The aim was to cross the border into Scotland (not a massively hard target as Gretna is only an hour away from us), and to find somewhere nice to break the journey overnight.

We use Park4Night or Search for Sites, though I’ve noticed that the latter is used mainly by people with much larger motorhomes than our LWB Transit conversion, so has less of the out of the way spots on it. We headed to Moffat, Park4Night said that you could park over in the main street car park, but the site of the local teenagers changed our plans immediately!

The Gothy One directed us to a different location – Grey Mare’s Tail car park at the foot of The Roaring Linn waterfall. (I must forewarn you though, this is a logging road, and though perfectly tarmaced, the logging lorries have pretty much destroyed the verge line and the drop off the road at the sides would remove even the heftiest of camper axles.)

The falls are under the care of the Scottish National Trust, and the parking is free overnight, though we paid the day rate as a contribution. The river from the falls passes between the car parks, the hills are absolutely chock full of sheep and the air is just filled with song birds. It’s a beautiful quiet spot. The foot of the falls are a short walk away, and there’s a stepped path leading up the hillside to the top of the falls, though I’d take oxygen as they looked rather steep! The embankment at the side of the one car park turned out to be a Giants Grave, a 2000 year old earthwork. Sadly when it was excavated in the 1980’s there was no sign of the Giant...

Dinner was a classic affair, take one smoked pork sausage (the sort that rhymes with Hattisons), a pepper (sliced), a carton of passata, herbs of your choice and a couple of packs of microwave rice. Sauté the peppers, add the sausage to brown, then whack everything else in and stir till hot. To raise the culinary spectacle, we added slightly charred sausages that I’d put on to cook before leaving home, but got distracted packing and they ended up ‘well done’

Day 2 to follow...

Follow us on Instagram too - for bits in-between the bits!

Falkirk Wheel – Food Roulette on a weighted wheel for the Gluten Free

Ok, the basics. It’s £12.50 to stop the night, the pitches are level and there’s fresh water, the electricity isn’t in use, and you get 10% off breakfast (more about that in a mo).

The wheel goes round, yes, it’s a feat of modern engineering, but it’s not exciting, definitely doesn’t move at waltzer speed and it’s surrounded by coach holiday tourists and school kids.  Evenings are much nicer, the walk by the canal is lovely, or a short climb up the side of the upper canal takes you to the Roman Fort walk, which I would love to do one day as with the excavated holes at the fort, it looks like a giant ‘whack a mole’ game!

Now the sh*te, the 10% off breakfast, that for the GF is actually 10% off the price and 37.5% off the plate. Yes, in place of the potato scone you get 2 slices of Shar bread (e.g. tiny), but there’s nothing to replace the Lorne sausage, haggis or black pudding that are on the Muggle offering

I was asked if I wanted anything doubled to make up for the losses, I said yes to mushrooms and bacon, however, after witnessing a hushed conversation between the server and another member of staff, my breakfast was delivered to our table.  I got 2 small rashers of bacon, 1 fried egg, 1 mushroom, 1 part cooked tomato, 2 slices of toast and a bowl of baked beans.  The fact that my gf meal was only 62.5% of the meal listed on their menu has pi**ed me off.

So caterers and restaurateurs JUST STOP DOING THIS! STOP RIPPING US OFF AND TRYING TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE YOU’RE DOING US A FAVOUR!

How would you like to pay full price for 62.5% of a meal? How would you like to end up still hungry when your family have been able to have a full meal? Imagine being a child that gets just a plate of chips when their siblings get nuggets or fish fingers as well.

Just stop f**king doing it! Stop lying to us, stop taking our money under false pretences.

Today I think I left my exhaust in East Lothian and my suspension in West Lothian...

The Gothy One and I departed early and headed to Traquair House (got rained on), then on to New Lanark Mill via flooded roads and downpours. A brief debate on which car park we wanted to stop the night in led to Gothy winning and me driving along some of the least tarmacked A and B roads I've ever come across. I swear Google maps was testing me!

So, tonight we are in the higher level car park at the Falkirk Wheel, a level overnight stop with views of the wheel.

A short stroll down the hill is the very peaceful Clyde Canal, the link between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The morning promises a Scottish breakfast at the cafe, and from prior experience, I know I'm not going to go hungry.

Outside the van is the sound of the river and ewes calling to their lambs. Inside the van I'm enthusiastically being read extracts from 'Eat Me, a Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism' by the Gothy One.

I'm glad there's other campers around...

Not saying where I am, aside from it's a beer festival Oop north. Mr Meat Free diligently checked in advance about allergies and was told that they could cater for GF, with a low risk of cross-contamination, so we thought we'd have a look, worst case scenario I'm just on the beer...

£4.50 a slice for the muggles, Mr Meat Free is happily chowing down on a slice of garlic mushroom pizza, which is apparently 'delicious'. However at £15 for the GF option, because we have to buy the whole pizza, Mrs Wheat Free is going to be the Pi**ed Hangry Coeliac tonight...

Please don't say that you can cater for dietary restrictions if you can't cater for us in a similar way to muggles. Especially when we know that we're going to pay 3 times as much as a Muggle for something the same size as their 'slice'.

In the meantime Mr Meat Free is currently enjoying 'Draft' (3.9%) by Marble Brewery, whilst I'm risking 'Mr Cat' (4.5%) by Handsome Brewery.

I'll be hitting the supermarket on the way home for my dinner...

Beamish Open Air Museum is a family favourite of ours. It’s an hour and a half away for us, over the mighty Stainmoor, with its spectacular views (when the cloud and/or fog allows!)

Beamish a huge open air museum depicting North East life over the last few centuries. Easy to navigate using the vintage trams and buses, each area is interesting, educational and engaging for all ages.

Start at The Pit Village with its colliery, school and cottages. Watch the steam powered Winding Engine at work, used to raise and lower coal carts and miners up and down from the mine shafts and to whistle the miners to work. For a different ‘experience’, you can shuffle and crouch your way down the drift mine in a fetching hard hat too... Mr Meat Free-wheeler came out somewhat dusty because mines weren’t cut for giants!

From there, wander through the bird filled woods to the Georgian manor of Pockerley, with its beautiful gardens and it’s snuffling boars, then down the hill to the church with its family pews, and Joe the Quilters cottage with it’s living heather roof. Poor Joe’s claim to fame was as the victim of a shocking murder, the perpetrator of which was never identified.

Up the hill from Joe’s cottage is Pockerley Wagon Way, where you can ride the steam train pulled by Puffing Billy.

A very short tram or bus ride takes you to the 1950’s town. Here you can enjoy a bit of rock and roll in the village hall, or pop to the hairdresser’s for a set wave and soon, visit the cinema or record shop. They just need to add a Woolworths to make it perfect!

Round the corner is The Town, with its shops and town houses (including a rather gruesome dentist, who takes far too much delight in describing his job in great detail!) and most importantly the sweet shop. (Top tip: the queue for the sweet shop is always huge, so park a willing family member in the queue to hold your place, it’s not cheeky it’s encouraged!)

At the far end of The Town is Rowley Station and a reasonably priced old fair, then another short tram/train ride away are the 1940’s and 1950’s farms, in season stuffed full of vegetables.

This is most definitely not a stuffy, dry museum. Staff and volunteers interact with visitors, bringing exhibits and houses to life. Demonstrations of crafting skills, cooking or the different jobs at the time engage adults and children alike. It’s also rather lovely seeing all the different costumes as you wander around.

This visit coincided with Flag Week and the museum was teeming with Rainbows, Brownies, Cubs, Scouts and Guides. The 1950’s town residents were benefitting from bob a job, encouraging all the children visiting to have a go doing little chores, like dusting the police house, or sweeping paths under the eagle eye of a 1950’s housewife, who helpfully ‘mucked up’ the path for each new willingly sweeper.

When we arrived, the Pit Village fish and chip shop was still warming up the coal fired fryers, so we decided to try the chippie in the 1950’s town later in the day, which caters for both vegetarian and GF customers. The Pit Village uses dripping, so definitely isn’t good for vegetarians, and there is a risk of cross contamination for the GF, but the 1950’s chippie is better equipped for us (the awkward pair). The GF still get the delights of greasy dripping fried chips, and the veggie gets safe veg oil.

There isn’t a huge offering for coeliacs at the museum, outside of the chip shop, the café in The Town offers salad boxes or baked potatoes and a few individually wrapped brownies and slices, as does the café at the entrance. Unfortunately, there seemed little to nothing for children with dietary restrictions, so either do as we do and take a picnic, (there’s dozens of places to sit and eat), or sugar load the kids at the sweet shop and enjoy the peaceful trip home as their energy levels bomb out!

The town bakery is a definite no for the GF, but the best news is that, as mentioned before, the sweet shop is a definite yes for us!

For the extra dull, like myself, there’s oat and soya milk available at all the cafes.

Should you be lucky, like us and live within reasonable distance of the museum, then the bonus is that the tickets allow unlimited entrance for 12 months (though events like Halloween and Christmas need to be booked separately). It’s well worth visiting several times as it’s always changing and growing.

Just don’t forget your picnic (and sensible shoes)!

GF birthday cake and a Pizza Express birthday dinner.

Not the cheapest dinner ever, but being able to eat the same food as Muggles, without having to sacrifice half the meal, makes Pizza Express a winner.

It's nice to be able to say yes to pizza out, especially when you can have the dough balls too!

Shout out to for the fantastic rainbow cake recipe.

Non crumbly scones!

Our garden is looking a bit sad, so a trip to the garden centre was in order.

My particular local favourite is Farleton View Nursery, run by Simon. They're not a massive, showy garden centre, just very healthy plants at extremely good prices and they just happen to have a rather good cafe too...

Aside from GF soup and sandwich offerings, they also wowed me with absolutely delicious, and most importantly, structurally sound scones - such a rare treat! If you're GF you'll know the annoyance of a gf scone turning into a jigsaw at the mere sight of a butter knife!

Their caravan site has 6 touring pitches and lovely views across their fishing lakes along with secure gating.

https://www.farletonview.co.uk/farletonview-tearoom/

https://www.facebook.com/farletonview