Helen has a couple of horses which are stabled on the edge of town. She offered to take Bella to feed and care for the horses, so the two of them were already gone before I even got to the tire-changing.
I got the tire changed, though it took me a little while longer than it should have. I'm unfamiliar with locking lug nuts, so Les educated me (my cars are so old, they just have plain old lug nuts). I also made the mistake of not setting the parking brake. So as I jacked up the car, it seemed like the jack was leaning a little. I asked Les if it looked crooked to him. He asked if I set the brake, and just then the car rocked forward and fell off the jack. Luckily, no body parts were crushed in the learning of this lesson.
Les and I took the car to his tire place (or tyre place, as they spell it here). This is a locally-owned business that Les has used for years. He trusts the owner. I understand the value of a trusted mechanic. They didn't sell the brand that the rental car had, so I called Alamo and they said I needed to take it to a Kwik-Fit (a big chain) because they had a contract with them and no money would have to even change hands. Luckily, there was a Kwik-Fit just half a block farther down the road. I didn't have the rental contract with me (or I didn't think I did) so we went home first and had breakfast.
It turned out the contract had been in the glove box all along (it's a really deep glove box, and I hadn't seen it) so Les and I headed back to Kwik-Fit. They said they were really busy and it would take two (maybe even three) hours. This was around 10:30 am, so we walked home. Our original plan was to drive to Liverpool and see the sights and be back for dinner. But with the car in the shop till 2 or so, that plan was in jeopardy. We thought if they finished the tire early, we'd still run to Liverpool. If not, we'd do Liverpool the next day on our way to Scotland. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
While we waited, Helen took Cristina and the three kids on a walk, while I stayed home and worked on my blog, which I was woefully behind on. It was nice just sitting in the front room overlooking the street with Les, him reading the newspaper, me clicking away on my laptop.
the "front room," which is the reading and TV room (this photo taken Friday evening)
By 3, it seemed really strange that Kwik-Fit hadn't called, so I called them to check in. It turned out that they had been trying to call me but they had the number wrong. They hadn't been able to replace the tire because the rental agency wasn't answering the phone on the weekend to give them authorization, and without authorization they couldn't change the tire. Since the spare was full-sized, he recommended we drive on the spare and go to a Kwik-Fit on Monday in Edinburgh. If only we'd known this earlier we could have gone to Liverpool on the spare.
Liverpool is about an hour away, but the center of Manchester is only 20 minutes or so. So as an alternative to Liverpool, we drove into Manchester. Some friends had recommended Unicorn grocery and Barbakan bakery across the street. Helen and Les thought they'd be closed, but we got their at 5:30 and they closed at 6. It was a pleasant little health food grocery, though Cristina was disappointed that all their products used agave instead of sugar. Unfortunately, Barbakan was closed.
We headed for the city center, but it was so crowded and parking looked difficult that we settled for just driving through. I felt a little cranky and didn't care too much about Manchester at the moment. I just wanted to get home (home being Glossop).
We spent the rest of the evening checking out the library across the street, shopping for an English flag for Alex's collection, and preparing for dinner. When Helen heard that some members of my family had never eaten lamb chops, she decided to cook lamb for dinner. This is certainly the part of the country for fresh local lamb.
the gorgeous Glossop library across the street from Helen and Les
Dinner was wonderful and everyone enjoyed the lamb chops, the fresh peas, the spinach and boiled potatoes. The second course was a variety of cheeses and crackers. After dinner, I drove to Tesco to get cash from an ATM, breakfast things, and picnic lunch items (a pattern is forming). Fun fact: eggs in stores here are not kept in a fridge. The eggs looked washed (unwashed eggs, like the ones in Costa Rica, don't need to be refrigerated) but they are not kept in a fridge. And bacon like the bacon we have in the States is called streaky bacon, as opposed to back bacon, which is more meat than fat.
In order to facilitate getting to Liverpool earlier, we got a head start on packing a little before bed.
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