OK Diner - Lincolnshire

We were heading down to Essex for my husband's nephew's wedding. My husband was driving, all the way out and back, with me in a passenger seat and my mother-in-law Mary in the back. I could have driven, but only in Scotland.

To tell you the truth, I am not a good driver. My car is also smaller, A/C does not work and the boot does not open. If you want to put anything in the boot, you got to go through the backseats, stretching with full arms to almost climb over the backseat and drop things onto the boot space. That's not good, especially when you got full set of my husband kilt for wedding, my and Mary's outfits and our suitcases. My husband's car is bigger and manual so I can't drive him anyway, so just as well...

It is a long long drive to and from Essex, so we decided to break our journey by stopping at Scotch Corner on Thursday night, continuing on the rest of our journey on Friday, attend the wedding on Saturday and back to Scotland on Sunday.

After finishing work, I picked up Mary from her house to come back to our house. We fed Yuki the cat, who seemed to have sussed out that something was going on but with a look on her face to say as long as she gets fed by someone else she does not care. My daughter, Maria, was the feeder for the weekend. We then loaded our luggage and headed to the South.

We stopped at Gretna Green Service on A74M for a break and dinner.  We had gigantic fish and chips from Harry Ramsden. It was huge ....

We continued on our journey to our destination for the night. Soon after we left Gretna, we crossed over the border (?) to enter England.

We then drove through the Pennines - the backbone of England, to Scotch Corner.  I am used to seeing be-aware-of-deer-crossing-the-road sign but found it funny to see be-aware-of-army-tank-crossing-the-road sign. There was an army training centre.

I was wondering why the name Scotch Corner. Wikipedia informs me that basically it is the modern gateway to Cumbria, the North East and Scotland. Oh, is that all.... I then read on further. The Romans were responsible for building the first roads to meet at this point and in AD71, they took control of the North at the Battle of Scotch Corner. Interesting. The ordinary looking round-about in Scotch Corner does not look that boring any more ...

We arrived at a hotel just before mid-night, slept very well in a comfortable bed.

The next morning, we had a breakfast at a road-side restaurant, Little Chef.  I was now having a sense of road trip feel to this journey.  I got to order something that would be be-fitting to the road trip. I consulted the menu. I was tempted to have vegetarian breakfast but went for pancake. Yes, why not try something different. It was called Pancake Stack. My husband ordered the Olympic Breakfast (Vegetarian version) and Mary ordered bacon sandwich.

So here are what we had for breakfast ...

And my Pancake Stacks - three stacks of pancakes with a double filling of banana and sweet toffee sauce, dusted with icing sugar and served with a jug of maple flavour syrup.

Ok, it did not look exactly as how I had imagined but was tasty. Maybe too much toffee though. I could not finish all and just as well, especially we still got wedding to go to and I had to fit myself into a dress. 

We continued on our journey, driving on A1. I noticed that weather was looking much nicer and warmer as we headed south. I saw fields with lots of orange poppies.  

We kept driving and after one o'clock, it was lunch time again. Feels like eating all the time....

We need to find a place to eat, and to break our journey to stretch our legs.  There are not much service areas but we saw some smaller road-side cafes. Nothing however appealed to us. We even saw a road-side adult shop, rather random...

My husband put on a podcast called Serial (http://serialpodcast.org) by this American journalist on her quest on a Baltimore murder of a teenage girl and her ex-boyfriend who is serving jail term. Apparently it was released in October 2014 and ranked number one on iTunes for several weeks. Immediately I got fascinated by the story and its story telling.

Listening to the journalist's American accent all the way our journey, with weather being sunnier and warmer whilst being hungry and looking for somewhere to eat, I wished there were diners like the one in America.

Guess what. We suddenly saw a sign says 'American style diner'.  What, on A1??   It was getting even more like a road trip!

And there it was. A diner called OK Diner (http://www.okdiners.com) on A1 Southbound near Grantham.

We stepped inside. It was looking promising.  It did remind me of a diner we went somewhere in Nevada.  After listening to podcast and stepping into this place, with music from American Graffiti movie era in the background, even accents of diners speaking sounded American to my ears.

We ordered Diet Coke, bagel with tuna mayo and the OK Beanburger from the menu. 

You can get free refill....

I quite enjoyed our lunch. I thought the service was fast and good, toilet was spotless clean.  They do some deals such as Burger Bonanza every Wednesday and also Knockout Burgers for someone with bigger appetites.  If you are meat-eaters and love burgers, this place would be for you. 

It was a welcome change from uniform looking motorway services and Little Chefs or Road Chefs.
I wish I had tried their curly fries....

I was full yet thinking to my self that there are so many places to try and food to eat during this weekend, to which my husband states, as a matter of factly, First World Problem.

We continued on our journey further to the South East to Essex now.  He has a point, however that would defy the point of doing my blog. I then switched on podcast, back to listening to Serial. Before you know, I started thinking of what I would have for dinner once we got to Essex.... I also nearly forgot why we were actually heading to Essex to begin with. Yes, for a wedding and I have a dress to squeeze myself into for that ...

Our road trip continues.

That's all forks.