Darlo's World

大きな地図で見る

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.

Starting mileage: 204,904

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.

Sebastian enters a staring contest with the local champion

Green with envy?

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.

Goodbyes can be very said, eh Sebastian

Mileage check at London Heathrow: 204,955

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.

Sebastian somehow avoided a soaking.

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

End Mileage: 205,112

The long wait is finally over, we have the internet!

Not that blogable whatnots are going to get more interesting I’m afraid. With this pending exam and my future hanging in the balance, studying has taken up the vast majority of my time here. Saying that, in these last few days I’ve been less active, finding myself getting easily distracted by the wild antics of the animals outside; the magpies, squirrel and cat. Top this off with a swollen index finger (caused by excessive studying I say) and a constant need to walk across town to buy orange juice from Tesco (I could go to a closer Sainsbury’s Local but I’d be paying an extra quid for the same amount of juice), and I’m left with a situation where things could go tits up very quickly.

That being the case, you could easily think that me getting the internet at home is a bad thing as it will lead to more distractions and procrastination (such as writing this blog entry). But thing is, I already had access to the internet from home as we JUST reach the university’s wireless connection. However that comes with a couple of conditions. First of all I can’t go on any website because sometimes certain sites aren’t “appropriate for a university” (like the BBC … ooh … so raunchy). Secondly the signal is weaker than Goldfish Scooping paper, so you keep disconnected at crucial moments like trying to find the reading of a Japanese character because none of your dozen or so textbooks have the foggiest. And the main pain in the arse is how you get online. In order for me to access the internet, I had to have my laptop on a small table next to my chest of drawers facing a wall, and I had to be crouched on hands and knees on top of the drawers. Not ideal.

The internet itself we got a really good deal on. It’s with O2, meaning we had to have a BT landline. Originally we were going to go with Virgin, but since we were outside of their fibre optic zone we could only get their £30 odd pound a month plan (internet and phone) with speeds of up to 3 Meg (don’t be fooled, that’s Megabits NOT Megabytes). Virgin also seem to have a nasty habit of telling all their new customers that unless they already have a BT line then they would be charged £120 (ish) by BT for a new line. This isn’t the case. You only need to pay that if your phoneline has been completely disconnected, and apparently that only happens if the line goes unused for around a year or so. Easy way to check is to stick a phone in the socket and see if you have a dial tone. If you have the tone, chances are very high you don’t have to pay.

Cheeky virgins. *chuckle*

Anyway, O2 do their home broadband in the form of a ‘Takeaway Box’ which you buy from a retailer after checking how the coverage is in your area, for £30. On one particular day however, during a promotional period when the box was only £15, a member of staff at the Carphone Warehouse offered to just give me one for free. Being a very scepticle and untrustworthy person I had to know where the catch was, but there wasn’t one. Just by having a box (which comes with the router etc) doesn’t comit you to anything, and you can take it back within 30 days if you change your mind. So I wander out of the shop with a £30 piece of equipment and a rather confused expression on my face.

This is where the deal gets really good. When we signed up for O2 we were given two treats. The first was a promotional 2 months free, and the second was a credit on the account for £30 for the price of the box (of course I didn’t mention I was given the equipement free). The package we’re on costs £12.23 a month, or if you are an O2 mobile customer (even PAYG if you top up £10 every 3 months) it’s £7.34. I’m a vodafone man due to a free calls offer with the family, but O2 give Sim Cards away on their website, and I’d certainly top up that much for the sake of cheaper internet. All in all this means that with the exception of the BT Line Rental of £12 (ish) a month, we’re getting our first 6 months free (12 month contract).

But wait, there’s a little bit more. O2′s free simcards also come with a range of offers on them and one of them caught my eye; O2 Your Country. With this offer, if you top up over a tenner in a month you get free international calls. Given that I’d be doing this every three months, I could use those calls to get in touch with friends in Japan and say hi. And that’s exactly what I did the other day. Just after it rolled past midnight I was on the phone to a very, VERY shocked Japanese friend of mine was really wasn’t expecting a phone call at breakfast time.

And so there we have it. I really didn’t mean to sound like an advert for O2, but let’s face it they’re not bad. That being said, this is only day 1.