A Long Day's Journey to Long Melton.
Passing Mudchute - I guess you had to be there!
The Black Meriva - being given the evil eye by TP!
Food at the George & Dragon - we won't hear a word against it!
The View - ahhh, the disco has finished!
The plan for today was for us to join Sian and Owen on a road trip to visit Owen's parents in Norforlk.
Even though Norfolk is only 2-3 hours out of London, we figured we might need an overnight stop at a B&B to avoid a rush. We were planning to leave London about 4pm.
So the day started with Julie booking a car from a website called rentalcars.com. It looked like a good deal with a Renault Megane 5 seater manual being booked for 3 days at a cost of about 60 pounds per day, including insurance. (Keyword: "looked".)
We then went for a leisurely breakfast at Costa's, home of the massimo coffee cup with two handles! We took a nice stroll through Greenwich Royal Naval College, now better known as the University of Greenwich, to get a feel for the broader Greenwich area.
We checked out of our Ibis hotel, which was functional and cheap - easy to recommend, especially with free daily wifi (simply meaning that you have to register for it each day, presumably to avoid use by patrons who have checked out). We took our cases to Sian's and Owen's flat and they helped lug our suitcases up three flights of stairs.
We spent a bit of time just chatting and reorganising baggage for the trip. As packing is only perfectly done in hindsight, we of course expected to forget a few crucial items. We did.
We left to catch the rail across to London East Airport (just beyond the Olympic Park) for the car pickup and had a couple of changes of train to get to the actual rental car provider, Europcar, whom we've used before. One station along the way was called "Mudchute" and we wondered what this was a euphemism for! Much merriment and jollity was had, probably indicating that we were getting delusional from the heat!
We had some iced coffee at the airport and finally left to collect the car a few minutes later, closer to 5pm than 4pm. The car turned out not to be a Renault Megane after all (much to Alex's chagrin) but a Vauxhall Meriva. We took out extra insurance on the car (which Alex always does) and that raised the cost of the car to around 80 pounds per day. The usual upsell squeeze!
We received some basic instruction on how to get out of London East Airport (actually a hand drawn mud map with about 27 roundabouts on it). The goal was to get onto the M11 out of London and head east as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately the Meriva was a pretty average car to drive. Alex couldn't work out 1st and 2nd gear and stalled and bunny hopped like a beginner, at one stage conking the car out in the middle of a (thankfully non busy) roundabout. A quick detour into the Lyle & Tate Thames-side factory (actually a sugar refinery) to practice (which took Alex back around 35 years) and things had improved sufficiently enough for him to feel he might be able to get onto the road proper.
Once on the M11 the drive was okay but Sian was concerned that she could smell something overheating, possibly the engine or Alex's residual frustration at the car, which was persistently unforgiving of being in the wrong gear. A sportscar the Meriva is not!
As there is no standard handbrake on the Meriva (just a mysterious button marked "P"), Alex couldn't be sure that he wasn't burning out the brakes but the car appeared to move smoothly enough, so this theory was discounted. Possibly it was all the over-revving whilst in the wrong gear.
We passed a tow-truck and Alex joked that the burnt out heap it was carrying was a Meriva; when we got closer, ironically it was!
The traffic on the M11 was as slow as treacle, which gave Alex an opportunity to master 1st and 2nd gear. However he was still unsure of the changeup to 3rd so when we went around a roundabout the car fairly zipped along. It was evident from the passenger noises that this was "rather a thrill".
We travelled along and stopped at a grand Services which sported a Waitrose! Julie bought a UK A-Z to help her navigate (not that she needs much help!) as the Meriva came without SatNav. Alex's Windows 8 Phone had the entire Nokia UK maps which could have been used but when you have a JPS (Julie Positionng System), you find you have no need of any other technology.
As we fairly zoomed along and around 7pm, Sian and Owen in the back seat used their iPad and were "teethering it" (as Sian insisted on calling it!) to their iPhones to get internet access so they could hunt for a place to stay for the night. As we passed through really quaint English towns (they are so incredibly pleasant and peaceful) near Braintree and Sudbury, we settled on a place called the George & Dragon B&B in Long Melton.
Sian and Owen booked the place online and we pulled into the town about 15 minutes later. Long Melton, true to its name, is a very long town - we thought at one point that we were passing out of it without having seen the B&B, but no! - more was to come. Sian with super sight spotted the place in the distance because of the Dragon motif, and we parked.
The receptionist did not have a record of our booking despite us having received a confirmation through the internet! It didn't take long for her to find the two rooms booked however. She asked if we wanted to stay in the main building (on the second floor) as there would be a disco starting soon and ending about 11:30pm. We said we didn't mind. In retrospect, a foolhardy decision ...
We moved straight into dinner as the kitchen was closing soon and it looked like we were going to have the restaurant to ourselves. It was a very nice feeling to sit down to a proper ale, secure in the knowledge of a comfotable bed at night after a long day's travel. Alex was relieved that finally he didn't have to drive.
Our brief hiatus was broken however by the proprietor asking if we could move table as they need to join the one we were at to another couple of tables, as a late booking for 12 had come in. End of tranquility we thought. Boy was it ever!
We ordered dinner and ate heartily (hmmm chips three days running), the 12 arrived and weren't too noisy. The disco started around 9pm and Owen and I had a good time trying to guess the music - which was initally and deceptively pretty good, eg The Cure, The Smiths, Street Life. Then ... Michael Jackson, Aerosmith ("Walk This Way") and the invasion of the entire population of the town, around ooh 25 people or so! The youngest (excluding the DJ, whom Sian thought was around 13 years old) was about 40 or so, and most were already "well pepped" and jolly. The dancing was demonic, three of the ladies doing the same "wiggle bottom" dance to every song! This ain't London ...
We ate dessert outside (most of us were swungry - refer Day 3 blog for definition) and then moved inside for final drinks before hitting the hay around 11pm. However Owen thought the disco actually concluded around 1pm; he and Sian had a room located directly above the disco's sub woofer!
Julie's and Alex's room was quite peaceful, however there were stairs to the left as one entered their room which if taken at night could easily have proven fatal, being steeper than Gibraltar!
What a day. And oh, what a car!!! More travel tomorrow.
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