foolhandy

Yesterday evening I returned from my brother’s stag weekend which we spent on the Pembrokeshire coast at the excellent Upper Neeston Lodges. According to the AA, Google Maps and Dad’s TomTom the journey would take me about five and a half hours from Essex… On the way there on Friday it took me ten, as the M25 & M4 were both gridlocked. On the way back it took me nine hours on almost completely free-flowing roads, and even allowing for the hour I spent asleep in a motorway service station trying to recover from the sickness of the previous night (not drink fuelled I might add - most probably a stomach bug which I continue to be sore from) that’s some way off the AA’s suggested time. I would like to know what I was doing wrong and/or what car the AA man was driving to get there that quickly…

The weekend itself was very enjoyable. It wasn’t the most wild of weekends but it was supposed to be a group of my brother’s friends getting together for a relaxing weekend - and that’s exactly what I think it was. We went for a walk on Saturday and enjoyed the spectacular views through the thick sea-mist (but still caught the sun - be warned!) and on Sunday I was reminded just how inconsistent my golf is. The wedding is on October 20th, so I suppose I ought to think about committing the best-man’s speech I have in my head to paper…

Finally, a thought about how lucky I think we are in this day and age. Two hundred years ago ordinary people spent most of their lives in the town or village they were born in. A journey of ten or twenty miles would have to be undertaken over a weekend and, as most people only had one day a week off, not very often. This time yesterday I was at the far western point of Wales. Today I’m in Essex. This time tomorrow I shall be in Northern France heading for the Loire Valley. It’s not global travel but it does mean in excess of 1000 miles in three days, without too much prior planning, and would be far beyond the comprehension of mankind until relatively recently.

As I shall be travelling to wedding number three of four for the latter part of this week updates to foolhandy.com shall be by Twitter only, visible either on my Twitter page or in the sidebar to the left… Have fun!