Holiday!!
Day 1: The Journey
19th July 2022. It has finally come. The day we go away.
We are both off for a couple of weeks from work. We have been planning this holiday since March. Yesterday we packed most of our things in the new suitcases I purchased from Aliexpress. There is a problem with one of them. The wife’s bag is a couple of inches shorter than the one I had ordered. It’s not that big of a deal though still annoying. We realised this, long after they were delivered.
Our journey doesn’t start until tonight. I purchased tickets for the overnight coach with National Express. We will begin our voyage at around 8 pm, giving us plenty of time to get to London Victoria Coach Station. The cast-off is at 11 pm.
With this heatwave, we are having at the moment. I’m hoping that leaving later will lessen the blow from what the sun is putting out.
The wife has had to go out and collect some medication. I am sitting here and writing this. We are pretty much ready to go.
One of the things I have been worried about has been suitcase security. I know there is not a lot I can do about it. But I have to stick to the mentality of making my bag less appealing. Similar to the way the security of a motorcycle is maintained. The idea is the more trouble your bike looks to mess around with hunters, who will go for easier prey.
So what I have done is purchase bags with side locking to them. TSA approved. Although, I don’t know when we will be flying. Anyway, with the bags, I bought some cross-lockable straps. And finally some covers for them. The problem was that one of the covers was too big for my wife’s bag. I bought them believing that both bags were the same size. I hadn’t checked or thought I needed to. I know that we will be pretty close to them during the trip. I wanted them to stand out from the crowd. So they would also be less likely to be stolen. I created Qr codes from a site online and stuck them down on the luggage Tags and the insert on the back of the bag.
The wife has arrived home and brought some goodies for our trip down. She has also surprised me with some, My Hero Academia badges. I have been binge-watching them recently. I am enjoying it.
Earlier, whilst I was having a bath, I cooked up some Greggs sausage rolls. The wife made some rolls. We have plenty of liquids for our trip. I know it is essential to drink water. But they don’t tell you to have a sugary drink as well. So, we have two bottles of water. Two bottles each of Dr Pepper and Cherry Coke. Plus a flask of cordial Ribena and another flask of water.
We had to water all of the plants. I was happy that one of the plants had a couple of babies shooting up.
The time came to leave. I was a bit apprehensive. But we made our way outside into the real world. Now it was time when the stress began. We arrived at Grays station by bus. The train we were waiting for had been cancelled, as were many others. There had been a fire that was a little too close near the tracks.
I was half right about the weather. The heat had calmed. But there was still enough that the breeze was still warm. It did try to rain even though that wasn’t cooling enough.
I had set it up so that we would have three hours to do an hour-and-a-half journey. The extra time I had planned. I am glad we had it. We barely made it waiting for the first train that had been over half an hour late. We got lost rushing around near Victoia station. Whilst trying to find Victoria Coach Station. We made it with five minutes to spare. All of the rushing around left me drenched in sweat.
Getting on the coach, we couldn’t sit next to each other. The window seats were all taken. So we had to settle with sitting next to each other across the aisle. The wife wasn’t happy and wanted to ask someone to move. I dissuaded her from this. And our coach journey began.
You fail to mention where you going to….enjoy where ever. 🙂