A Bit Of A Day

When I woke up this morning I had a plan ...

It was time to take Julie home. Luckily for us I had seen a tweet warning of road closures effecting Newport Road and City Road in Cardiff today, and telling Ponty fans to allow more time to get to the semi final today. So we arranged to leave in plenty of time, and I was going to go down the old road to Cardiff to avoid going to the congested side of town. We left home and I had allowed 15-20mins to Saturday traffic. It should have been no problem at all ... 

And all was well until we go past the BBC buildings and up past the Heathcock, and then things ground to a halt .. we still had 15 minutes of time to play with, nothing to panic about.

We didn't move ...

The traffic lights cycled through ...

We didn't move ...

The fifteen minutes seem to run away at double speed ...

It started to become apparent that we weren't going to make the train.

Suddenly the congestion eased .. we were on the move. Only to find the one road I needed to still make it was causing the problem. It was closed. We were stuffed.

We got to the station three minutes too late. There was no way we were going to catch up with the train at Newport, our only hope was Birmingham Central. We had no Sat Nav .. but the phone said it was two hours away and the train didn't get there for two and half hours .. we decided to go for it.

All went well ... we actually got to within a mile of the station with little problem, when the traffic stopped. We had twenty minutes to spare .. Surely not again ...

We crept inexorably towards the roundabout that would get us to the station ... I had to stifle a scream as the yellow road closed, use diversion to station sign loomed from behind the bus blocking our view.

We missed the turning ...

We got completely lost in the centre of Birmingham ...

My favourite moment, when we were approaching a split in the road. Dawn and Julie were both using their iPhone to try and find out where we were as I was driving completely blind. As I reached the fork, Julie shouted go left, Dawn shouted go right at the same time ...

We missed the train by ten minutes.

It was a very muted goodbye, I felt awful, despite our best efforts it was going to cost my sis in law fifty quid on top of the lost ticket money to get home. What a complete disaster of a day!

We were tired, stressed,hungry and thirsty, so we stopped at the first MacDonald's we reached after negotiating our way out of Birmingham. I said to Dawn, still my Aunty Barbara's street name into the phone. We are only 9 miles from Dudley, let's make the best of the bad situation.

So that's what we did. It was lovely seeing my Aunty and Uncle. I've not seen them for four years at least. It's far longer than that since I last went to Dudley.

So we had a couple of hours nattering and catching up, and watching the Grand National.

We headed back home. Julie had got back to Gosberton long before we got back to South Wales. She texted to say she had managed to blag her way all the way home without paying any extra thanks to some very understanding staff at Virgin Trains.

So the day was not a complete disaster after all ...

I've had a curry and a beer, and the Masters Golf is on ...

I had a plan for today ... this wasn't really the one ....