Glitch

So far, our best-laid plans haven’t really gone aglay in a big way. OK, we had a bit of problem with the trains getting to Tenby, and Sattie has occasionally taken us on an eccentric route, but we’ve been able to cope.

I was confident that our flights would be OK, because they’re not supposed to cancel them with less than 24 hours notice, are they? And yet…that’s exactly what BA have done to us. I got an email at quarter to six telling us that the flight was cancelled, would we like to rebook? After holding for half an hour they kindly informed us that there was nothing available until Monday. BASTARDS! We’re rebooked onto that flight at 06:20 (double bastards! I’d booked a much friendlier 13:45 flight originally). I’ve secured a hotel room at Gatwick (no way are we going to try to get to Gatwick at 0420 from anywhere without a car), and will be claiming compensation from BA for this.

BAstard Airways

I’d like to give a big shout out to BA’s call centre staff for being incredibly unhelpful. After spending two minutes trying to locate my details (I’d given him the booking reference), his next question was “How can I help you?” my response? “How do you think you can help me?” Monkeys could do better.

Our trip down here was quite nice, though. We stopped first at Stamford, which is famously picturesque, and boasts more listed buildings per head of population than any other town in the UK. An odd claim, to be sure, but there it is. It also has an inordinate number of churches!

 

After lunching in a café there, we headed down to St.Albans to visit the Roman Amphitheatre and museum. At the moment you can’t really walk into the amphitheatre, because they’re preparing an open-air production of The Importance Of Being Earnest, so the stage is set up and there’s lighting and wires everywhere. Afterwards, we went to the museum, where we discovered that we should have been offered a discount to visit the two sites. The ticket guy said he couldn’t retro-apply the discount, so he instead sold us two seniors tickets.

The museum has various artefacts from the Roman times and explains the importance of Verulamium. There’s bits about Boudicca as well (she wasn’t a big fan of the Romans). All very  historical and stuff.

The drive to Sussex was largely extremely boring, involving the A1, M1, M25 and M23. We experienced M25 traffic at its finest! I miss it (not!). It was only as we were approaching our lodgings in West Hoathly that a strange feeling of déjà vu overcame us…this is the same place we visited a week or so ago to go to the Priest’s House! We found the location without incident, decamped our stuff, signed into the wifi, and read our emails….