Engerland!!! Part I!!!!

So, I had me a short trip to good old Engerland last week. I'll try and blog about the trip before I start forgetting stuff... I am old and frail and my memory isn't what it used to be. Now where was I? Oh, yeah... Engerland!

I flew over last Tuesday night with an old colleague to have a look at the Jurassic coast area, which boasts fossils, cozy villages, weird stones and sweet, sweet chalk. We had a rental car ready for us and decided to splurge on the extra insurance that would rid us of any and all deductibles, etc. As I understood it, we could basically ram the vehicle into the nearest brick wall and they'd still say "have a good day, Sir" when I handed over the steering wheel. Good thing, since I managed to scratch the back bumper when I was was backing up on our last day, but I'm getting ahead of things.

We first drove down to Swanage in eastern Dorset, where we spent the first night. None of us had done much checking up on exactly where our hotel was, except that it was in High Street. I had turned off the GPS, since it was constantly spewing out self explanatory directions, like every time we came to a traffic circle (which is OFTEN in England). Now the damn thing would not come back to life again even though it was plugged in and charging (it did not wake up till the next morning).

Anyways, we hit Swanage shortly after 11PM, and we found the street easily enough. But we could not find the effin hotel anywhere. We drove up the road. We drove down the road. We wondered if maybe we were in the wrong road and went down another one. No hotel. There was however a fork in the road about midways, where a one way street was coming down... it later turned out to have been "our" half of High Street.

Finally I admitted defeat and called the hotel. The guy who answered was some Eastern European bloke with atrocious English, so it was all I could do to give him instructions about where we were. I had no chance of following HIS directions to me. But I did get that he was talking about a traffic circle in town; a place where we'd already been once and had dismissed as beeing too far away. Goes to show what WE knew.

So we went down there and finally my dear passenger spotted a sign that said High Street. We were back in the game. Following the main roads I at last saw the sign for our hotel. The Eastern European guy was waiting outside (probably smoking) and gave us directions to the parking lot. T'was well past midnight when I could finally rest my weary head against a pillow. Still, I was in sweet, sweet Dorset and had survived another English drive. Chalk (ahahaha!) one up for the Ghost!