Darlo's World

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Well here we are, the final day of the trip. The main priority was to get my friend to the airport on time as to not miss her flight.

The route to the airport was very well sign posted, so we had no need for the Shat-Nav. We still had it on, and twice it wanted me to turn around and go back through Reading for some odd reason. Bog off Shat-Nav.

We arrived at the airport with just over an hour to spare before my friend could check in, giving us plenty of time to nose around the shops and check her luggage wasn’t too heavy. Of course this amount of time was nothing in comparison to when I flew to Japan and arrived in London over a day early and had to try and kill many MANY hours.

The time came to say goodbye to my friend who had been on the trip since we met at Glasgow airport over a week before.

I left London and proceded to head back home to Shropshire. The car trip seemed really quiet, even though the radio was on. Often I noticed I was singing songs to myself that weren’t even on, but thankfully I wasn’t too distracted that I had any accidents or near misses.

I got off the M54 and pulled in to Tesco to fill the car with petrol. Since I borrowed the car from my Dad, I figured the least I could do would be to return the car clean and full of petrol. I filled the car up and went to pay, also asking for the cheapest car wash on the menu, but unfortunately I hit a problem. My card was refused!

Shocked and taken aback slighlty, I left the car at the petrol station and went to the nearby cashpoint to use my non-debit card. It was here I hit another problem, it too had been rejected! Shit! I need money to pay for petrol, but I only had about half of it in cash on me at the time. I went in and explained to the cashier who, having already known my card had been rejected, sympathised and understood my situation fully. After presenting my driving license and taking details from the car, I was given a credit slip that I’d have to pay within the month. I said it wouldn’t be a problem and I’d be back later that day.

I shot home and saw my Dad on the driveway. I hadn’t seen him since the start of the trip, so naturally my first words to him had to be a really interesting greeting.

“Dad, can I borrow £50″ … typical child eh. I explained what happened to him and then headed back to Tesco to pay my bill and wash the car.

When I pulled into the car wash area of tesco, I opened the window and put the code I was given into the machine. This prompted the machine to start up incredibly quickly and shoot me in the face with warm water. Damn electric windows, damn slowly rising electric windows.

I then went home, to which my road trip of Great Britain was officially over. It had cost a big chunk of change (petrol isn’t the cheapest thing ever), and my back was incredibly painful. I was still walking like a bit of an old man. But the trip was really fun, and it was an experience I know I’ll never do again. It had highs, it had lows, it had moments of pressure and frustration, and it had me getting sodden in a car wash. I’m definately glad this was the highlight of my Summer.

Start Mileage: 202,521
End Mileage: 205,112
Total Miles: 2,591 miles travelled
Average Miles Per Day: 259.1 miles

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With a relatively full tank of petrol I turned out of my road enjoying a slightly jumpy tune on the CD player (thanks to a rather bumpy road), with Sebastian, my brothers’ travelling monkey, in the passenger seat.

To be honest, I was expecting day one to be a doddle, owing to the fact I’d done this drive between Telford and Leeds many times. I did forget about two little things though: traffic and weather.

The M6 was (as usual) a mass of cars crawling along at slow speeds, but today it was met with horrendous weather. Cars were sliding, horns were blaring, and I didn’t particularly want to crack on with the motorway, so I left and had a crack at using the Sat-Nav (something I will end up reffering to in this blog as the ‘shat-nav’ I guarantee).

After circling around every part of Manchester a few times I finally made it back to the motorway. By now the weather had cleared up. Before arriving at my destination for the night I stopped in to Ikea for a couple of Hot-Dogs, gotta love em. It’s going to be a long drive up north to Glasgow tomorrow, so I’d better try and get to bed early (er than what I have been).