The joys of driving northwards from London to Scotland over the Christmas holidays

M6: Queues: 40 mph

Today we drove up from London to Newtonmore – nine and half hours driving to cover the 520 miles. The lovely M6 north of Birmingham lived up to its poor reputation being the slowest part of the journey with us coming to a complete halt on several occasions.

We revived ourselves at the journey's end with a glass or more of Tio Pepe.