A little while ago ago a
colleague got a new job in Southhampton, and mentioned that moving
might be problematical as he didn't drive. I said that if he paid
for the hire of a van in which we could load all his stuff I would
drive it for him. Today was moving to Southhampton day.
I went to pick up the
van. I knew there would be a delay. We'd booked the van some weeks
ago, but still the company wouldn't get the van ready in advance.
Instead it is their policy to phone around at opening time to see
which of their nearby branches had the long-base van we had booked.
Once they located it they
went to get it. They had guaranteed they would have te van we had
bokoed; but they had no idea how far away it would be. As luck would
have it they had the van within half an hour. We had been warned that
there might have been a two hour delay if the van had been a long way
away.
I then drove over to
Canterbury and found th house we wre emptying and we loaded up. How
eeasy it is to type that. Loading up was back-breaking and took the
best part of two hours. Once loaded we had to take the keys of the
house that was being left back to the letting agents. It only took a
few minutes, and we got to see two rather demonstrative girls who
were obviously in love (with each other) being rather
expressive about the matter in the High Street.
The van came with
built-in sat-nav so we programmed it for Southampton and set off. To
begin with the sat-nav was impressive; warning us of road works and
re-routing us around the A249. But once we got as far as the A3 it
decided to take us cross country, put us onto a rather straight
A-road with no posible turning points, and then changed its mind
about where we should be going. It was at that point that the
torrential rain gave way to intense hail. Trying to do a U-turn in
that weather wasn't an experience I'd like to repeat.
Eventually we found
ourselves on the M3, and as Fleet serrvices loomed up through the
black clouds we realised that we were both rather hungry. Burger King
Chicken McWotsit slipped down very well, and as we made or way back
to the van I had a quick look-see on my geocaching app. There was a
cache not a hudred yards away, so we went and did it. Or, that is, I
did it. My colleague looked on in amazement; I won't say where the
cache was, but tens of thousands of people go right past this thing
every day and have no idea that it is there.
I think I might have
another convert to the cause.
With cache found and
lunch scoffed we made our way onto Southampton. At Junction 13 of the
M3 the Sat-Nav was insistent that we should turn off. So we did. As
we came down the slip road off of the motorway the Sat-Nav changed
its mind and wanted us back on the motorway. Oh how we laughed.
But soon enough we were
at Imperial Avenue. As we unloaded the van so the rain started. It
only rained heavily for five minutes, but that was enough to get us
absolutely soaked.
Funily enough, despite
moving to an upstairs flat we managed to unload the van in about half
the time it took to load the thing. We then paused for a little while
to catch our breath, and then on realising there wasn't a lot more
that I could do we said our goodbyes and I set off. I activated my
geo-app and found a relatively nearby geocache. My first geocache
over a hundred miles from home. One huundred and one and a half miles
to be precise.
For all that we go out
every weekend, I don't actually go very far away. This is probably
the first time since our last holiday in Weymouth (four years ago)
that I have been more than one hundred miles from home.
Having got a geocache in
Hampshire my plan was to then come home a rather convoluted route
through Wiltshire and Hampshire to colect a few more geocaches in a
few more counties. But as the rain got worse and worse so I went off
of the idea of night caching. I've never been a fan of caching at
night, and I can't pretend I was completely confident driving that
huge van about round strange roads. So instead I came home. I stopped
off for a McFlurry at Cobham services, and by the time I'd re-filled
the van wth diesel I was eventually home by 9pm.
I quite enjoyed today's
road trip.
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