(10 minute audio version above for your delectation and delight, or otherwise…)

It’s several roads, to be honest. Motorways galore from Auld Ayr to the Granite City – M77, M74, M73, M80, M9, A9, A90. Two hundred miles. Yes, you can take the M8 across the Kingston Bridge and through Glasgow but I get vertigo flying over the Clyde, and prefer sightseeing past Dalmarnock, Rutherglen and Calderpark. Look, there’s Nicola Sturgeon’s old house! That’s where the Camper Van Called Caledonia was parked! As for that allergy to heights, I have to close my eyes on the Friarton viaduct at Perth, which is always a worry for passengers. Thank goodness for the power of auto-hypnosis. And prayer. 

Anyway, here’s a tale of the roadtrip I take frequently and oft, from the ferry port of Aberdeen to south Ayrshire, and in this case, vice versa. Most recently, in a hired Dacia Sandero, the butt of old Top Gear jokes, made in Romania by Renault using old bits of Clio and one of the cheapest new cars you can buy. But that’s still £16K, for which you could certainly get a good second hand Lexus, Audi or even a Bentley Arnage. I’m here to tell you that the Dacia Sandero I hired from Europcar had every conceivable touchscreen toy including Apple Play, but was barely adequate on a motorway, rolled like the old St Clair in a force 10 easterly, had a transmission made of porridge and bodywork flimsier than that of a 1978 Citreön 2CV. Check out its safety rating. But it did have keyless locking and it played a tune when you sat in it.

Speaking of Citröens, the thumbnail on the Europcar webpage promised me a C2 “or equivalent”. The Sandero (Stepway Expression edition) is bigger than a C2 but nothing like as chunky. At home I drive an old Toyota pickup and an even older Vauxhall Astra (admittedly a GTC CDTi diesel pocket rocket) but both of these appear to be made of steel as opposed to the Dacia’s recycled sticky backed plastic.

Here’s another thing. The Ringo parking Artificial Intelligence employed by Glasgow City Council doesn’t recognise Dacias. What Maryhill folk thought at me shouting Dacha…Dayceeaah…Dahceeahh into my phone in an increasingly irate fashion I shudder to think. 

Enough Daciatising. 

The other day I set off very early in the morning to return the Transylvanian troglodyte to Aberdeen Airport, crash out in the old Speedbird Inn and then get the redeye flight home to Shetland. Of my various medical issues, irritable bowel syndrome is the most problematic on a road trip, and flags up the biggest issue with the Ayrshire-Aberdeen route: a lack of toilets. And then there’s my naturally uncaffeinated state, which needs frequent attention.

I sometimes wonder if I’d have been better running for political office on a “Mair Cludgies” ticket (translation: more lavatories) Or Cludgies and Coffee. Could’ve been a winner…possibly more beneficial than my dalliance with the Labour Party.

Anyway, off I set into the gradually lightening gloom, and I was just at the Monkton roundabout when I realised that a comfort break was going to be necessary. Kilmarnock? The Hurlford roundabout? No, I can get further, and besides, that’s a corrugated car park from hell, rammed even at dawn, and the McDonalds there has seen better days. Can’t handle the aroma of fried dimethylpolysiloxane in the morning, and anyway, Silverburn awaits just up the road.

My internals are rotating like an overloaded tumble drier by the time I pull into the suspiciously empty Silverburn car park. Tesco, open 24-hours  will have loos, but the ones in the actual shopping centre over by Marks and Spencer are, I know from past experience, luxurious and clean. However the massive retail edifice, although the doors swoosh open, is closed. There is a red no entry tape across the marbled lavatories. Undaunted, I duck underneath. Freedom!

Costa appears to be functioning, if groggily, but I decide to press on, M74 and M73, then the M80 and past the awful Old Inns so-called service area at Cumbernauld, only to be used in the utmost emergency. There is a toilet in the bombsite filling station there but it is in my experience always grimy and queued. I remember being warned in no uncertain terms not to stop at Umtata on the N2 through South Africa during a motorbike trip there. I did and it was a lot nicer than Old Inns. Anyway there’s  a services at Stirling. Sort of. 

Built for cars when they were smaller, always festooned with trucks and with difficult access off the enormous Pirnhall roundabout, potholed and unwelcoming, the Moto site off the M8 at Stirling is one of those places I always end up stopping. So, it appears, does everyone else. It has a Greggs, a Travelodge, even a Marks and Spencer. And a Costa where the lasses are always cheery but the coffee is never strong enough. That is NOT a flat white.  I enter in a reek of school antiseptic from the just cleaned floor but the place still feels mockit. Toilets, though,  have been recently upgraded and while Burger King isn’t open yet, Costa is. I instantly regret ordering the cheese and ham toasty. Fortunately I remember, somewhat belatedly, that I have Imodium Instants in my emergency bag. 48 hours of toiletness beckons, but what the hell. Bring on the Loperamide! I add a brownie to celebrate.

One of the better McDonalds operates at the Broxden roundabout on the edge of Perth – it’s worth remembering that McDonalds’ coffee  is both good and cheap but I now have in my head Glendoick Garden Centre or possibly the best Starbucks on the entire road, which is in Dundee’s Afton Way opposite Morrisons just off the A90. Slightly awkward to get to but ideal for dog walking (big field adjoining) and always quiet.

Unlike Glendoick which is even more jammed than usual. I rev past, flat out at 70 in (I’m guessing) sixth gear and then…despite the Immodium… IBS is kicking in again so I have to swerve off the Kingsway to the Starbucks at the West Gourdie Industrial Estate, just coming into Dundee. From bitter experience I know this joint to be very busy, with a weird smell of burnt milk and…it’s worse than that. THERE’S NO TOILET PAPER! A quick adjournment to  the disabled facility, complaints, and a double espresso because I can’t drink milky stuff in here. And by now I don’t have time to stop at Afton Road as Aberdeen is looming.

There is another good (and very busy) McDonalds on the wrong side of the road at Forfar, and of course the truckstop Ye May Gang Far and Fare Waur, infamous and not for the likes of me at Brechin. Peggy’s at Finavon has a black mark for demanding that you buy something if you want to use their cludgies, and it’s not what it once was, not to mention a difficult re-entry to the road. People rave about the Horn’s bacon rolls, and I love the rooftop cow but again, it’s the wrong side of the road heading north and one bad experience there was enough. 

So anyway. Safely and securely and fully, not to say over caffeinated, I get to Aberdeen and give Europcar their pile of soluble Romanian Lego back. The Speedbird is now the Leonardo Inn and I have a clean room with an en suite, there to crash before catching the 7.00am flight to Shetland. To the local garage for two Babybel, a packet of crisps and bed. Well, I had to get something that would settle my stomach…

The Costa in Aberdeen Departures is slow but excellent, hidden away at the end of the lounge. The expensive restaurants at Duty-Not-So-Free are best ignored. Though if you have time, the Granite City bar and diner in the main concourse is actually very good indeed. Great burgers.

Conclusion? Imodium before leaving Ayrshire. Remember Silverburn opens at 10.00am. Glendoick is good but busy and with a strange service regime. Go to the Starbucks on the way out of Dundee that you can’t see from the road.

Don’t buy a Dacia Sandero.