After Black Friday…
Sod it, there’s still unsold stuff in the warehouse Saturday…
Further reduction Sunday…
Cyber Monday…
Time out Tuesday…
Where’s my delivery Wednesday…
Totally fed up Thursday…
Flaming delivery still hasn’t arrived Friday…
Send it back Saturday…
Deals, or no deals?
Somewhere in Europe… but we’re going to the country next door!
It’s Black Friday and despite all of the emails, television coverage and advertising, we have proved that resistance isn’t futile.
Yes, there is money to be spent today, but that’s going to be at the farm shop, newsagent, supermarket and petrol station.
I’ve had deal information on hotel bookings, electrical stuff and a load of other gubbins, but most of it has come in far too late for yours truly.
And that because the deed is done – the next trip has been planned, largely booked and paid for because I found our own deals for our visit to Andalucia by delving into the search engines of Skyscanner, Expedia and Booking.com last week.
The end result is a trip that’s a day longer than originally planned so we can make full use of our time in Spain and one that is currently running under budget, despite that extra day!.
Although a fair bit of research had been carried out using both the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet books on Andalucia and Spain, the time taken to book the flights, overnights and the bus travel between the destinations on our trip took a little over 24 hours.
Whilst that 24 hours also includes sleeping, eating and the other things that make up a day, it also reflects that there’s been some due diligence in checking out the various elements being used to put the trip together.
The flights we’ve chosen aren’t at silly times of the day or night (but there was a £46 premium paid for choosing our own seats and taking advantage of an ‘offer’ on priority boarding).
The hotels, guest houses and hostels we’re using are all highly rated whilst the bus travel is more cost effective than using trains – the only time we’ve paid full price for a bus ride is for our travel between Seville and Cordoba, largely because that journey is on a Saturday and no discounts are available.
With airport transfers being paid on the ground when we get to Spain, all we have left to book in advance now are the rail tickets to Manchester Airport (cheaper to get to by rail than it is to drive and park the car for the duration) and for two tickets for the Alhambra in Granada.
Will we do these bookings on Cyber Monday?
Might do…
We the people…
The result is in and it’s going to be interesting to see how the next four years pan out – something that was always going to be up in the air no matter who was first past the post.
In the meantime, there’s another four and a half box sets of The West Wing to get through (I’ve watched them a few time to see whether my post-stroke memory is still up to scratch, Caroline is watching them for the first time) and the first series of the Kevin Spacey led House of Cards to watch too.
Will the U.S. version be better than the original U.K. House of Cards?
You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment…
Especially as I’m taking another look at the original before taking a look at the relatively new kid on the block.
And waiting for my Bartlet For America t-shirt to arrive!
What’s the frequency?
Took some time out today to head over to Leeds for a few things, with one of the items on the shoppingmlist being a 2017 diary for Caroline.
The name of the shop has been witheld to protect the innocent, but the reply to my question “Have you got any diaries?” was met with the words…
“What’s a diary?”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
An unexpected pleasure was watching a rather entertaining documentary on BBC 4 last night – Peter York’s Hipster Handbook.
York is an astute observer and this hit the spot on several occasions during the one hour of airtime. I’d presume that the show is available to viewers in the UK via BBC iPlayer and there’s a fair chance that BBC 4 will also be repeating the programme in the next few days.
The reason for the title of this piece?
The revelation that there’s a cafe in the US serving coffee at $12 a cup…
Don’t think that I’d be partaking at that price if I was in the States, but I do wonder how much it would cost at a motorway service station here in the UK!
Let the games commence…
You don’t always need Heathrow to get to places like this…
The decision has been made to allow a third runway at Heathrow Airport and there’s already conjecture that it might never happen if last night’s TV news reports are anything to go by.
I have flown out of Heathrow on several occasions, but if memory serves me right, the last couple of times were in 1999 and 2000. I was living in the North East at the time and access to Heathrow was usually by taking an overnight coach to the airport.
Fast forward sixteen years and I’m now living in Yorkshire so it’s easy to use either Leeds Bradford or Manchester to access international destinations by either direct flights from Leeds Bradford or Manchester or by flying via Schiphol or even via Heathrow.
Travel forums are already buzzing with comments as to what might happen, Boris Johnson has stated his thoughts on the matter and we’ve already had one MP resign his seat in the House Of Commons in protest at the decision and this is leading to a by-election.
Given that the legal niceties, planning and building processes are going to take year to implement, who knows how long it will be before the runway is actually up and running and whether it is the answer to the questions that have been asked over goodness knows how many years?
In which case I’ll stick to flying from and to airports closer to home here in the Northern Powerhouse!
Luggage matters
Our faithful packs – Osprey Farpoint 40
After watching a couple of episodes of The West Wing series two last night, we switched the DVD player off and up came one of the presenters of The Travel Show on BBC News who was talking about the latest in packing technology for travelling with both hand and hold luggage.
First up was a hand luggage pack with wheels that could also be used as a scooter that came in at an unladen weight that was fast approaching what some airlines have as their fully packed weight allowance for bags being used as hand luggage.
Somewhere in the mix was also a bag that you didn’t have to hold onto whilst negotiating the airport terminal or a hotel lobby as the bag is designed to follow you around as you make your way through fellow passengers or people seeing fellow passengers off.
Yes, it was a motorised bag that homes in your movements – a handy thing to have you may think, but dare I allege that it could cause problems when used in proximity to those with visual problems, children running around or even a potential passenger using the same type of bag (especially if they look identical as they haven’t been personalised!).
We phased out big time though when the hold luggage that could store flight and destination information was talked about, largely because we don’t travel with hold luggage any more.
The last time we did this was back in 2008 when we headed off to Austria for a walking holiday based in a hotel that was offering half board as part of the last minute deal. Since then it’s been hand luggage all the way when flying or getting a ferry to Bergen in Norway.
There have been a few posts on travel forums over the last few days as to what pack to take when travelling light and even a few from one person who is designing a potential hand luggage system as part of his third year projects for a degree course.
Osprey Farpoint 40 packs have been mentioned once more on these forums and it was purely coincidence that I had some time to take a look at a 2016 version yesterday whilst wandering around shops in Leeds city centre.
Yes, it’s gone up from £80 to £90 since Caroline and I bought our examples, but I had to look long and hard to see what changes had been made to the pack. From the outside at least, all I could spot were changes to the zip pullers for the two main compartments on the pack.
You may not be able to use the Farpoint 40 as a scooter, but you should be able to pack it for a trip and fly on an airline with a 5kg hand luggage limit.
Not as much fun if you’re a scooter fan, but at least we may not be handing over cash at an airport for last minute bags in the hold charges!
Back home…
Two weeks have flown over, even though we haven’t been on a plane…
One week in Herefordshire, one week in Somerset and a whole lot of cider going on!
I finally got to see a De Haviland Comet, a Vickers VC10 and the only surviving TSR2 at RAF Cosford Air Musum plus a whole lot more, even though we were only there for just over two hours.
Not much in the way of phone signals in the last two weeks and virtually no Wi-Fi either so no postings or checking emails!
Back home now though and the posting start again this week…
London calling…
Kings Cross Station, London
Just spotted what’s being shown as part of the Keith Richards’ Lost Weekend thread on BBC 4 here in the UK tomorrow night (Saturday 24th September) at 9.15pm.
It’s Julien Temple’s ‘London – The Modern Babylon’, a fascinating documentary about London since the beginning of the 20th Century. It’s a mix of archive material from the BFI (British Film Institute)library, interview footage and clips from various films too. And it has a cracking soundtrack too… starting with The Clash and London Calling.
Will be watching it as it goes out, even though there’s a DVD copy on the shelf in the lounge.
No brainers…
Sometimes you just have to roll the dice to see this…
Or this…
One of the ‘joys’ of looking at travel forums on a regular basis is spotting the number of posters who have done their research using guidebooks, Google, Yahoo, Bing or even travelogues to plan, loosely plan or even not plan their break, holiday or journey.
There are some who want fellow forum users to suggest where they should go or even plan out their trip for them.
Others want so much validation for their plans that by the time they’ve made multiple posts on a similar theme that forum members either ignore them or become sarcastic after offering the same advice again and again and again.
Those who haven’t done their research are easy to spot because they’re so vague in their requests for places to go or for someone to do their planning for them that they can’t even be bothered to include basic information such as their budget, their time frame, their interests or passions or whether they have specific dietary needs or accommodation preferences.
And the usual answer to this lot?
Suggestions to buy at least one guidebook for where they’re going – my response is normally to get hold of both a Lonely Planet guidebook AND a Rough Guide book to whatever country or area they’re visiting or to point them in the direction of either the forum’s own search function or the search engines mentioned above.
There isn’t any excuse for such laziness when you’re heading off somewhere. It’s your trip and I take the view that it’s up to you to do due diligence and do your own research into where you’re going.
Do the research and you have a good idea about what to expect.
Don’t do the research or let others point you towards sights, places, areas or countries and there’s a fairly good probability that the brown stuff could hit the fan, leaving you to scream and scream and scream when in fact there’s only one person to blame…
You!
At the other end of the scale are those who plan everything to the nth degree and want so much validation that they become a pain in the butt…
Even when they’ve been told by several posters that the weather may not be in their favour, that their choice of clothing for walking is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, or that they should loosen up, relax and go with the flow rather than ticking off every box on their long list of things to see and do.
Then there’s the lot who want to see as much of an area, country or even Europe in a few days rather than taking time to immerse oneself in one area or just one country as a means of exploring what’s on offer.
To those posters, I’ll invoke memories of a popular 1980’s t-shirt slogan:
“Frankie says RELAX!”
Don’t do it…
wisepacking 
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