'twas a Mini Adventure

FRIDAY: Glorious sunshine in the south of England, and a 4 and a half hour business meeting was a great way to start the day... By 1:30pm I was totally Hank Marvin and raced home to have lunch on the go, do the rest of the day's work and then load-up the wagon and head west...

It got grey and it started to rain...

The journey was pretty uneventful apart from getting hit by a stray hubcap and laughing my arse off at some twat in a Jag on the Severn Bridge. He stopped at the automatic toll booths where you throw your coins in a hopper and the barrier opens to let you through. Having only a filthy five pound note I went to the "manned booth". Only it was a woman - so why was it not a "womaned booth"? As my queue got shorter, the twat in the Jag was still at the front of his... either there was some malfunction with the machinery or it was his karma biting him in the ass for throwing some dodgy foreign coinage in there to pass-off as pound coins, not actually having any change, not having the right change... whatever.

The Rock & Fountain in Clydach was cool. The landylady had a lot of front, so that was a warm welcome :D A couple of local beers and a sirloin steak dinner and I was ready for bed. 9pm to be precise. Far too tired to be sociable. At 10 I was awoken by "the Summer of '69" belting out of the karaoke night...

SATURDAY: 8am and off to Merthyr Tydfil and Brecon to get a bacon roll and some cycling. Then back to the hotel for a wash and a change of clothes. Only one problem - I hadn't packed any underwear. Socks, yes, undercrackers, no. I asked the chambermaid where I could purchase replacement keks and she directed me to the nearest purveyor of pants - Tesco.

So, after a pantless dash to le supermarché and back, it was a time for a quick wash & scrub-up before heading off, complete with shiny new boulder holders, to the borders again for some Mountain Mayhem. The lads had got there only minutes beforehand so the timing was excellent. Mind you, they had stopped for a pub lunch on the way there. B*st*rds. LOL

Most of us had waterproofs & sturdy boots, so these were topped off with race suits & skid lids ready for some hot TomCar action...

It was too damn wet & muddy to even risk taking the camera out, so we just bombed 'round a Welsh field in our cars with jumps, drops, park-ups and the infamous water-run and got completely plastered in mud.

The mud up my nose had a distinctly "more than just mud" aroma to it... and I wasn't the only one to notice...

So the rain came down and we got wetter and eventually very cold too. But this was all forgotten when some modest old soul won the first prize - a trophy and a bottle of bubbly to shake & spray at the crowd ;)

SUNDAY: After an evening of much boozing we had a big fry-up for breakfast. The groom couldn't handle his eggs & bacon, but then he did sleep with a bin by the side of his bed...

The day was sunny and the event was hovercraft racing. We passed the field we raced in the day before and found a couple of horses in there... so yeah, it wasn't just mud...

The hovercraft were so much more difficult to control than the tom cars, needing a lot of leaning to coax the machines 'round bends. I was totally crap at it and, in complete contrast to the day before, came an enjoyable & most impressive last.

The best laugh came when *somebody* attempted a jackass-esque kamikaze manouevre and ditched the hovercraft violently into the deck before performing a commando-roll out of the lurching vehicle & then springing to their feet in jubilation. For a brief moment everybody was "having kittens" and then fell about the floor with laughter. Needless to say that was not the last I heard of it :D

Oh, yeah, and I "just popped in" to a castle that I saw on the way home too... Longtown Castle. I saw the castle on the map for the way home and then the sign at the roadside in the village of Longtown and made an impromptu stop to have a quick looksee and grab some photos...

And that was it, a thoroughly pleasant and enjoyable couple of days :D

How was your weekend?