holiday - wedding

I didn't blog last week as it was all a bit hectic.

I had a lot to catch up on having been away for a good chunk of my leave, and having not really paid much attention to things while I was here.

The holiday started with a friend’s wedding (I went to the reception only).  This was the friend whose stag do I went on a few months back.

I was determined not to spend as much money on the wedding as I did on the stag.  This meant booking into a cheap Travelodge that was further away than some of the more expensive hotels.  My intention was to get a taxi there but walk back.  This didn’t quite work.

The problems started with the journey up.  I live in Farnham, which is near Guildford and the wedding was in Chelmsford in Essex.  This meant I had to go around the M25.

I could have gone north.  This would be a lot further and would mean risking the M3 & M4 junctions.  I also know that that stretch is riddled with road works and bits where the speed is always limited.  And as I say, I wanted to save money so going the long way round isn’t a good idea given the cost of petrol.

I therefore went the south way.  This took me through the Dartford crossing.  I wasn’t aware that the cost of the toll had gone up so much - it’s now £2 for a car so any petrol money saved was probably cancelled out.

But the real issue was the time - I set off at 2:00PM.  I had to get some petrol, but the reception was due to start at 7:00PM - that gave me 5 hours and the journey was only 90miles.  Surely even with the tunnel I’d be ahead of rush hour so I’d be okay, right?  I mean 1.5 hours for 90 miles is a reasonable journey time, so double it to 3 hours just in case and that still gave me a 2 hour margin, right?  I could have a leisurely shower and shave and still be there early.

Er, no - it took me 6.5 hours to get there!

The A3 was really busy, the M25 was solid and then the road to Chelmsford (I forget the number) was rammed too.  I took me 5 hours to do 90 miles!  So I had to rush to have a shower and shave and get a taxi there.

The next thing that happened was that the taxi dropped me at the wrong place!  The problem was there are two venues with basically the same name.  When I got there the other issue was that there was another wedding going on, so the taxi driver said “is that them?” and I said “I guess” and got out and paid.

But of course they were just distant figures in wedding gear so it was only as I wandered up that I realised they weren’t my friends!  The actual venue was over a mile away up the road, and of course both were in the middle of nowhere so I had to walk!

When I did get there all the stress and lateness meant I bolted my drinks and got far drunker than I intended.

So then I had my plan of walking home.  This would have worked except for a few things: I’d already walked a mile and a bit.  I was drunker than I should have been.  It was absolutely freezing - having had lots of nice weather it had suddenly turned cold and it was a miserable walk after a while.

I therefore ended up hailing a taxi who took the main roads, so even though we were only about 2 miles from the hotel it cost me £10 (the journey there, which was obviously too short, cost £15) so I think overall I hardly saved anything at all.

I’ll continue with the holiday details later in the week.