Last time on that road

So, notice has been handed in and my forthcoming change in occupation is now public knowledge. Couple of months to go until I actually change jobs, but I am in handover period which means just as much, if not more, traipsing around as normal and meeting up with all the customers just to say here is the new guy and good bye from me (or words to that effect). Some of the customers I will miss and I suspect some I will not. Similarly some of the journeys I will be happy to leave behind (A17 on Monday was as depressingly slow as ever but hopefully I should never need to do it for work purposes again) and some of the destinations such as Monday nights stay at the 5 Lakes Crown Plaza near Colchester are ones I would like to return too. The morning view out over the golf course being much more pleasant than the more usual trading estate or back end of a motorway. Who knows what will catch my memory in the years to come and send me thinking back to days gone by but at the moment I should try to look forward to the fact that soon I will be able to be home every night yet and see my family, yet still avoid the dreaded office based 9 till 5.

Turn left at Bath. Couple of miles down the road.

Monday was one of those days that I got completely and utterly wrong and I was very annoyed at myself. All I had to do was drive from York to Blandford Forum in Dorset. In my head it was a simple journey, not somewhere I had been before but not a complicated place to get to especially as I have a good sense of direction and rough idea how long it would take to get to anywhere in this country. I even checked it on Google Maps and it seemed so easy, a 4 hour drive down to Bath, turn left and a couple of miles down the road.

 

It took 5 hours to get to Bath. I think it was combination of that Monday morning chaos and the fact that a couple of cars had tipped themselves upside down. Cars don't look so good upside down, very ineffective way of driving and tend to get in the way. the big problem was the second stage of the journey, turn left and it's a couple of miles down the road turned out to be 80 miles cross country. Don't know what I was thinking but it made for another 2 hours driving and a very sleepy me. It became a bit more obvious when I zoomed out on the Sat-Nav (yes I had the Sat-Nav on all this and would not believe what it was telling me) and found that the English channel was only 15 miles away! I was actually closer to France than I was to my hotel for the night, Mad!!

 

By the time I got home on Tuesday I was shattered.