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58 CARAVAN DAYSby ferries, most of which are incapable of carryinga caravan of the size of SIEGLINDA. Thus we werecontinually boring into the West, only to bepulled sharply back again. We stuck to it to thelast, and it was in the extreme North-West cornerof Scotland that we made our final attempt. Butit was not till the following summer that wesucceeded.The great moment of our departure lost somethingof its effect through gloomy weather thatdid not make for enthusiasm. But it was with aheavy cargo of good wishes that we turned up thelane among the dripping beech trees,picked upa milk bottle and a last coil of rope at the corner,and drove away to the North. We had a thousandfeet to climb before lunch, and all the way up theOld Edinburgh Road from Moffat we rolled alongin the centre of a small moving circle of streamingtrack and glistening sodden moor, shut in bymist and rain.That was a long, slow, steady pull, but whenwe stopped to water the horses at the summit wefelt that we had made a bold start upon ourenterprise. Already we had reached a higheraltitude, with one single exception, than any thatwe were to attain on our whole journey. Alreadywe had crossed our first watershed from the