Border Raid!

We had a nice visit to Preston/Leyland/Chorley this weekend. It was actually Alyson's first time 1. Across the border, and 2. in England at all. I hadn't realised that she had never even flown through to Heathrow or Gatwick etc.. It was also her first time to the Preston temple (our local temple, inasmuch as Preston can be defined as local).

It was great to get to do a session, but even just to be back at the temple. Going to Preston is, as you can imagine, a much bigger deal than popping down the I-15 to Bountiful. From Edinburgh it's roughly 4 hours by car, so not exactly something you'd like to do just on a day-trip. From Aberdeen it's almost 7 hours. For me, it brings back many fond memories and positive emotions from my time in youth. We would go down for 5 days during the summer as a youth group. They have a hostel style accommodation centre there for members to stay in. The rooms are relatively nice, and fine enough when all you really use them for is sleeping and changing. We actually stayed with David (who lives 10 minutes away in Leyland). The temple is called the Preston Temple, but it's actually in Chorley - which is south of Preston.

There are several medium to large sized cities near Preston, including Manchester. One of the luxuries of our visit, as you can see, was a trip to Krispy Kremes on the outskirts of Manchester. This is one of the very few "hot light" stores (where they make the doughnuts on site) in the UK. The rumour is that in the next year or 2 they are going to build one in Edinburgh. Unfortunately they had slightly fewer flavours and didn't have the cinnamon ones I like so much, but regular glazed is always good. David was a good sport over the weekend and had set aside most of his time to hang out with us. It was nice to catch up. Deb was unfortunately at a conference over the weekend so we didn't get to see her.

As you cross the border there are several interestingly named villages and towns on the Scottish side such as Ecclefechan (the 'ch' is a hard 'K' sound) and Gretna. Gretna has become quite famous because of its situation just on the border. It is almost right on the border, you could probably walk there from the England.

Time for a short history lesson... Scotland has always had, and still maintains a separate legal system to our English neighbours. We are proud of it north of the border, and strive to maintain the distinction. One of our many differing laws in times gone past was the age of consent for marriage. In Scotland it was, and still is, 16 years old. In England it was at least 18. Many couples would come to the nearest town on the Scottish side of the border to elope to avoid this issue. Gretna was one of the main beneficiaries. It's quite fun to visit and see how they have done it up for the tourists.

Thankfully the weather was fantastic for the whole weekend. The temperature rises gradually the further south you go in the UK. We had some pleasant scenery to enjoy on the drive down.

We also made a quick trip to the "LDS Bookstore" (an English equivalent to Deseret Book, where almost everything is imported in, presumably from Deseret Book). They have exuberant prices, somewhat fueled by import costs, and otherwise fueled by people with fewer options except online shopping here to get mormon culture items. The one thing they normally have that I like to get is A&W Rootbeer, which they also import (no mormon culture reference, but it's one of the only places to buy it!). Unfortunately they were all out when we visited.

David and Deb are currently planning on emigrating back to the US after summer, so we hope to go down again before they leave. It really was nice to take a short trip, and to be back at the temple.