The big breakfast

With the Coast to Coast behind us, we promised ourselves a full English on the morning of departure. It's been almost three weeks of muesli and fresh fruit first thing. As we're not walking we can indulge, though with these two pesky early risers, I don't get a lie in. I'll have to wait until I get home for that little beauty.
I pitch up to breakfast sporting the t-shirt we all wore at Uncle Mick's 70th birthday party. He's completely taken aback and chuffed to bits.

After our slap-up feast it's time to say goodbye. Uncles Paddy and Mick are returning to London via their cousin Molly in Manchester and I'll mooch around Whitby for a while before heading home. So there they go, the Bog Cotton Boys, off on another safari.

It feels a bit like waving off my two new Dads. We've been thrown together so intimately these past few weeks. I feel so glad that I had the time to spare, not to mention the good sense to say 'yes' to the adventure. 
Of course, none of it would have happened without Mick's singular approach to organisation, booking hostels before Paddy and I had given the itinerary so much as a cursory glance. Mick's an asset in any hostel, too, hale and hearty at all times, even 6am.
Paddy's pronouncements on 'that bloody Wainwright' have kept us laughing – not to mention the pantomime that ensues when he grapples with his gear – but all he needs to help him forget the pain is a meaty conversation about abbeys. Fortunately the Coast to Coast turned out to be peppered with monastic gems.
And like the good younger brothers they are, they proved to be terribly tolerant of me, whether I was being a bossy boots or a crack-of-dawn curmudgeon. 
Dear Uncles, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.