A walk in the woods

Day one of our trip really started the day earlier on Friday all of us had been working hard. Johnathon and Andrew where at college Elona at school and me driving. 

Our trip started in earnerst with the packing which we had promised to get done by the previous Wednesday as is our want it was left to the wire, it seemed difficult to get the others to understand that although we were taking two suitcases each, a large one for in the plane hold, forever after known as checked luggage, and a smaller " carry on case", due to the necessity of weight and Elona,s quite understandable requirement to use every possible kilo of permitted weight by taking "luxury" commodities  back home. Elona's definition of luxury is things like custard powder and cous cous which apparently are not to be found on supermarket shelves.

 So the final part on Friday evening was taken up by us shifting heavy items from overweight suitcases which still had capacity, replacing them with lighter baualker items from underweight suitcases.

I think we might just have invented a new game similar to the unbicious children's favorite of buckaroe although this was not a game it was deadly serious and the whole outcome of our journey rested on getting the maximum number of packets of custard powder whilst not comprising by losing one pair of socks, or as always in our house that how it felt. Eventually we made the final cut, each case duly marked with its respective weight. All that was left was to pile them in the car and we were good to go, the only problem was this charade had taken the whole evening and not left me any time to get my head down as I had promised myself, we lumbered out of Hilary road at midnight shattered. 

The drive up was uneventful, well nearly, I had earlier in the day heard a radio broadcast announcing the closure of the M4, "for urgent bridge repairs" and  as a result did not have to toss the coin to decide which route to take M5 M4 or A303 

Heathrow being almost equal distance from Taunton , a quick check on the internet confirmed it, sure enough the M4 was closed, perhaps a longer research would have been a good idea then at least I would be have been aware that the A303 also had significant delays and closures, probably greater than the M5. 

No matter how often I drive to an airport, for me, it's a panic, I can leave with hours to spare and still I have that sickening thought, through no fault of my own of arriving late, I have visions of sitting on a closed motorway at the scene of some dramatic incident realizing that I am totally powerless to stop the relentless countdown to impending doom and despondency. 

This time was no different and it almost resulted in a disaster, we were traveling along some unknown road between one closure of the A303 and another, tired after the long day when I found myself three abreast in a two lane piece of road on the right of us was the milkman in his milk float, we were obviously in an an affluent xxxzz area  as this particular  milk float was a converted Mercedes sprinter obviously driven by a moronic  idiot as suddenly I found that we  were three abreast in a rapidly closing three into two lane piece of road and had little chance to do anything other than accelerate through the narrowing gap much to the annoyance of the milk float that charged pass us as soon as he could,  I expect lots of his customers later wondered why there was no cream on their gold top as it had all been shook to oblivion. 

probably a good three quarters of an hour later than I had planned we were parking the car at Purple parking, the excellent off airport parking where for a not to expensive amount your able to leave your car and be whisked away to your relevant terminal with  a similar arrangement for collection at the other end of your holiday