Racing the clock to Nashville

Thank goodness for coffee! At 5.30ish we were up and (staggering) about, and best of all, just about on time. So far so good. Jo locked up the cabin while I psyched myself up for another epic drive. The worst part of it was going to be the first 5 minutes, gingerly inching down that bloody hill in the dark. Not much fun in daylight, so you can imagine how it felt when you couldn’t really see the edge of the road you were about to drive off.

We made it down without incident, the satnav lady gave us the quickest route to Nashville, and it wasn’t looking good. We had about 3 and a half hours to get there, if all went to plan, and while we weren’t convinced we would make it, we definitely pointed in the right direction, so not much to do other than get on with it. Besides, everyone drives so fast, and it was still early morning, and we probably wouldn’t need to stop for McDonalds…

With Jo keeping an eye on the satnav and me keeping both eyes on the road, our ears were listening out for country music on the radio because our big plan for that night was a show at the Grand Ole Opry, and we had no idea what to expect!

Humming along to the radio and probably driving faster than we should have, we got a bit of a surprise about two hours into our journey. It turns out that when you cross into Middle Tennessee (where Nashville is) from East Tennessee (where Cosby is), you move into the Central Time Zone. And it also works out that it was in our favour, we got an extra hour! At first when the timecheck was done on the radio I thought the announcer was doing a John Humphries and getting mixed up with his hours, but sure enough the clock on our clever wee car changed as well.

We were still cutting it fine, though, and after a bit of trouble just outside Nashville where we hit the tail end of rush hour, we hit Nashville Farmers Market with 10 minutes to spare. Thank goodness you can’t miss the big pink bus in the car park!