road trip!

Well I had  a bit of a road trip this last week, I went from Essex over to Dover, then to the top of kent, and over to Salisbury & then finally over to Wales. Am absolutely exhausted now and boy was it an expensive trip! I must have spent over a weeks wages on petrol *insert super shocked face*

The idea of the journey was to spend the weekend with e'strange'd dad in Wales, but obviously had to pick up hubby & older son on way through....turned out it was hardly on the way through and i ended up going a few hundred miles out of my way! Now of course doing all this travelling I was being super organised (for a change) and decided to print out directions to all of these places & back again :D

Until, of course, the printer ran out of ink. Great. So, not one to be deterred, i sat there for hours on end writing them all out in ink! Next morning all ready to set off, i load up the car, settle babies into car seats, even have dvd player ready for them with hundreds of hours of Peppa Pig, Ben & Holly, back to the future & toy story ready (super mum!) So i go back into house after doing all this to fetch the directions, and make sure I haven't forgotten anything, and ahh, the directions are missing. Bloody brilliant! I find them several minutes later on the kitchen table, under kids books,where I had stupidly left them to peruse over breakfast, found them with porridge and nail varnish all over them. Hmmm. I desperately try to scrape as much off before leaving as possible and then realise that i actually can't read my own writing. B*gger. Now I remember why I print EVERYTHING! So anyway I set off, and head to get son from school then stop at mums overnight, I go back onto driving directions website and again try to write it all down. I eventually crack and hastily drive to tesco and pick up a half price sat nav. Job done! No more writing! Yey!

So i get sat nav back to mums, plug into computer like man said and hey presto i can't even get the damned thing to switch on. I end up sitting there for over an hour fiddling with buttons and actually reading the instructions to still be none the wiser as how to use the stupid thing! Again i crack and ask 12 year old son to come and work it out for me *very embarrassing, but I knew it would happen so am unsure as to why I didn't just hand over to him in the first place* five minutes later and he has programmed in the home address, the address in salisbury and dad's address....ok, ok, no need to show off. So next day we set off after figuring out how to get to screen with map *felt like knocking head on brick wall several times trying to figure that one out* and the stupid bl**dy thing decides to take us through London on a bank holiday Friday over battersea bridge, instead of just saying to us, look the M25 is longer, sure, but hey you know going through London at this time of day, at this time of year, well you'd rather pull your own teeth out.....so for all it's clever cloggness (yes probably made up word, beware) it doesn't think very smartly! Of course my son could argue, and did in fact argue, that if i had let him do it he could have zoomed out and told me it was going to take me that way before I reached the point of no return (south circular)...whatever. It was my toy and i was determined to have the first play of it. Of course, sensibly after that fiasco, I did actually hand it over to him and ask him to direct us whereever we needed to go after that!

We finally made it to dad's house, and my goodness it's not really a house but actually a mansion (no really) so of course the first thing I want to know is where the ghosts' reside, and take a tour to the exact spot they have all been spotted in. This of course resulted in a 32 yr old very nearly wetting the bed that night because she was too scared to get out of bed for ghosts killing her *sigh- i never learn*

So the next day the news is broken that we are going to spend the day on dad's fishery, I almost run for the hills, or indeed the south circular again, but realise i don't have the skills necessary to find either, even with a sat nav :/

So off we go up to our room (we all shared one- even though there were 12 to choose from- i was scared the kids might get eaten by ghosts, or countryfied monsters) and it is then that I realise we 1) have no coats, and 2) no wellies oh and 3) i have left my jeans at mums. F**k. I'm in the middle of the welsh valleys, it's freezing cold and I have hot pants & wedges (ok slight exaggeration, but i was not prepared) so off I tottle to town, Cardigan, lovely place and had some very cheap charity shops which thankfully had jeans in my size & cheaps coats. I guess the name of the place should have pre-warned me of what sort of attire I should have brought...alas i'm not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to ruddy great big hints though!

After dressing for the arctic we set off to Lampeter and find there that the weather is even colder than in Cardigan. Brill. So i sulk off to find the club house, make the manager turn on all the heating and sit there holed up for pretty much most of the day, apart from when I enthusiastically walked round the lakes, and of course by enthusiatic I merely meant I tried to run round them as quick as possible to get back to the warm hut!

Later on back at the house and I have the same issues with the dark and the loos, oh and also the spiders, they are frigging huge in the country, they look like they actually could eat me. So luckily for me there were about 6 toilets to choose from so I avoided the spider's den and went in search of a spider-less one each time. Even though it was pointed out to me each time, 'there is one there why are you going all the way up to the third floor', me- 'oh i like the view thanks whilst sitting on the loo'....This little trip if nothing else, made me thankful i live in a tiny house, with minimal cleaning (compared to that house!), my house was warm (do you realise how much energy you can exert trying to warm up a big old house) ..THE only thing i wanted to pack up and take home was the garden! It was huge and the kids loved it! Oh and I could fit THE biggest trampoline in there ;)

So the final day of our trip was spent at the beach, it just has to be done really doesn't it, if you are British and you are on holiday you simply MUST go to the beach. EVEN if the sand is actually being picked up off the floor and being thrown 10 feet in the air and into your face. Even if the sea is too cold for the fish to swim in, never mind you, and even if you have to go in coats, scarves, gloves, it just has to be done. So we went and sat there all padded up in clothes to build sandcastles. The sky was black, the sea was out, yet the beach was surprisingly (or not) busy??! Just goes to show we are all as mad as one another! After that we headed to the only restaurant for 10 hundred miles, well it felt like it, and had lunch. I had a small heart attack as a side dish when I went to pay the bill too. seems when you are the only restaurant for miles you can charge whatever the hell you like. Even if the food is rank. (actually food was O.K, but nothing special, and certainly not worth what we paid)

On the way home that night we had to detour back to salisbury to drop hubby off, and I found THE most beautiful village full of thatched houses, looked just like the shire from lord of the rings! lovely! Not that i could afford it of course but i could still dream! After dropping hubby off I had to do the rest of the driving, I still didn't trust the sat nav so after cancelling the journey several times and resetting it, i finally followed it (it didn't change once so i assumed all was well) and great, it took me over the M25 right where all the road works were. great. So it being nearly midnight and me being up waaaaaaaaay past my bedtime i decided to ignore the speed limit (which had been dropped cos of roadworks, BUT roadwork men were tucked up in bed & noone was on road) so I am expecting a ticket in the post this week....oh and I made it home with 1 mile of petrol left. Now how is that for exactness! So i've learned my lesson here, don't go back to wales unless i'm am either dressed like an eskimo or global warming has hit there a little more and it warms up to the temperature that the rest of the country is!

But all in all, a good trip, one most definately to remember, AND i now LOVE my sat nav :).....couldn't imagine even going to tesco without her now ;)

Happy Bank Holiday all!