The weekend I’ve been looking forward to for months has finally arrived! I am going on a mini travelling weekend that will culminate in me running the Great North Run half marathon race up in Newcastle on Sunday.
Today’s itinerary was to travel from London to Manchester by coach to surprise Tracy’s grandson, who was having a birthday party, and then catch the train from Manchester into Leeds to book into my hotel.
Things actually started well and there were no problems with the Megabus journey up to Manchester, anyone who has either read my blog before or travelled on a Megabus coach will know all too well of the problems that normally happen with this budget service.
Once into Manchester I had to catch a bus into Wythenshawe, it was on this bus that I received news that the groundsman and referee had not turned up to Custom House’s game, so I had to leave the bus to sort it out. I ended up standing in the middle of the Curry Mile shouting at the league chairman on the phone who said that unless I asked a member of the public to ref the game then we’d lose the points.
With that sorted out I boarded another bus and made my way to the birthday party. Justin was thrilled to see me and I was thrilled to notice that the social club had a rather lovely bitter on draught at £2 a pint.
After a couple of hours, and about 7 pints, it was time to make my way back into the town centre to get the train to Leeds. The bloke at the station spent so long trying to print my ticket that I missed my train. I had bought it several weeks ago for a cheap price and it couldn’t be used on another train. Thankfully the bloke put his hands up and issued me with a ticket for the next train at no expense to me.
Once at Leeds it was a short taxi ride to the hotel I’d be staying in and the owner showed me to the smallest room I have ever seen, how they managed to squeeze a bed, chest of drawers and a wardrobe into this room is beyond me.
I was more annoyed at having to walk for over 30 minutes to find something that was open in order to get something to eat – and even then it was only a poxy Tesco Express which had hardly anything left on their shelves.
It’s only for one night, and at least I don’t have my dad constantly waking me up every ten minutes.
