London! day 6

Cotswolds!

Today's journey started with Fenny and me going to pick up the rented car from the outlet at London City Airport. And with that, started a minor nightmare of navigation. Since I was the only one who could drive, I became the designated driver for the whole trip (sigh...). So Fenny had said that she should be able to navigate with the map. We started driving out of the airport at 1030am. By 12.30pm, we were still stuck in London city, not knowing which direction to turn to in order to hit the motorway (sighx2.....). By sheer luck of a turn based on my gut feel, we had finally saw the roadsign of A40 to head out of london, toward M40 and finally towards our destination.

Another nightmare ensued after we reach the area of Cotswolds, after getting off from M40, in trying to find our B&B at Mickelton. In the end I decided to just stop the car, asked Fenny to call the B&B, and while holidng the line, we reached the place with directions given real time.

By the time we found our B&B, it had taken us 6 hours. From the website, it would have had only taken us 2 and half hour to reach (sigh x3....................)

Our B&B Brymbo was a homely B&B ran by a couple in their 50s (?), Barry and Gene. By sheer luck, there was a local event called the Olympick Games at Drover Hills. Barry (who was the one giving us the direction over the phone) told us the best way to catch the actions. So with a couple more of missed turns (that was the point that I wished I had another set of eyes and brain in order to read map and drive at the sametime), we headed towards Chipping Camden, which was also the nearest town near Mickleton. Found a place to park, ate some pub grub, and we were off to Drover Hill.

Photos of the Olympick actions are on Facebook :)

The event ended with the finale of a great bonfire. At first we stood downwind from the pile of firewoods cos the weather had turned so chilly with the sun going down (at 10pm that was..) and the wind blowing, but then we quickly learnt that it was a SUPER BAD IDEA as when the fire started burinng, we saw the fire and burning bits of firewood coming towards us. Scrambled like mad :s

And then there was the procession down Drovers Hill, and from there we picked up our car and drove back to Brymbo, and had my first experience of country road driving - no headlights, cars coming from opposite direction travelling like 150km/h, hard to find road signs.

By the time I washed up I was so tired and knocked out once I hit the bed..

What an exciting day.