Just another ordinary day, nothing unusual to report. We wish! Today was a combination of interesting, frustrating, exciting and exasperating. Read on.
Before leaving Salisbury this morning we had a brief look around Salisbury Cathedral. We didn’t go in, just did a lap around the cloisters and marvelled at the height of the spire (tallest in England apparently). You can see it from a very long way away. This was interesting.
Then it was off to Cardiff. The plan was to arrive around lunchtime, have something to eat and look around the city before I went off to the rugby. It was a good plan, except that (as noted in yesterday’s blog) it takes a jolly long time to get anywhere. We stopped in Newport for lunch, as it was 1:30pm and we hadn’t even made it to Cardiff. This was frustrating.
After lunch we rejoined the traffic for a stop-start crawl into Cardiff. The last 10 miles took about an hour and a half. No chance of a car park within cooee of the city centre or Millenium Stadium. We eventually spotted a Tesco car park that wasn’t full, so slipped in there and walked down to the stadium.
The match was great and so was my seat. 71,500-odd spectators and most of them Welshmen. Fiji gave them a good scare and were in it to the end despite the 23-13 final score. This was exciting, and just as well – the ticket cost me £175.
The fun started when we left Cardiff to find our accommodation, about 33 miles north at Monmouth. We didn’t have an actual address, just directions from Monmouth. Good, it’s dark (9pm by this stage) and we have no real idea where we’re going. I decided that we should use the farm postcode and the GPS to try and track it down, despite a warning from our host that the GPS “gets people lost trying to find this place”.
The GPS decided it would be a good idea to turn off well before Monmouth and go cross country. The result was an hour of touring narrow country lanes in the dark. These are described as ‘single lane’ tracks. They are not kidding. Some of the lanes were that narrow that the car was brushing the hedges on both sides. This was exasperating.
Eventually we abandoned the GPS and headed for Monmouth so we could reset and follow the directions we were given. Even this was tricky as there is a lot of difference between ‘turning left after the school’ during daylight and after dark. You can’t find the school in the dark!
We did make it. The girls should recover in a day or two and the farm cottage is a ripper, fortunately. We have 3 nights here before moving onto Leicester.
Tomorrow we resume normal service with a boring travelogue.
Cheers, Steve J.
Update:
After reviewing the maps last night I decided that we must have made it to within a stone’s throw of the farm before we turned around and reset the trip from Monmouth. I was right, our turnaround point was 150 metres up the road! The signposting (typical example below) didn’t help much.
Signposting? What signposting? They are completely bloody useless at giving you any hint on where you are and where you are going. Wouldn’t want to waste money on a little detail like that, would we. If your lost, why not just turn around? There should be a spot where you can somewhere in the next twenty miles!