mrph | The slightly longer Whitby review... (part 1)

So. That was Whitby - and a slightly shorter one than usual, Thursday night to Monday afternoon. As it turned out, I did get a Spa ticket after all - but only used it for about ten minutes...

My plan for this Whitby was to sleep a bit, eat regular meals and drink not more than two pints a day.

Anyway, here's how it went:

Wednesday
Things were supposed to get organised on Wednesday. The original plan was that I'd finish packing on Tuesday, get back from my driving lesson on Wednesday night and load Elaine (WINOLJ)'s car before we headed off for dancing lessons. This was slightly complicated by several factors:

I didn't finish packing in time.
Elaine didn't quite finish packing in time.
The driving lesson ran a bit later than expected.
...we discovered that, in the absence of broom_stick, neither of us really knew the way to the dance venue anyway.

Ooops. Plan B involved me wandering over with a case full of stuff - when it was finally packed - and reviewing the various alternative routes that Elaine had prepared (for use in event of traffic jams). My navigation skills are legendary - for all the wrong reasons ("Darlington?!") - so I was rather hoping that these wouldn't be needed...

Thursday
...mostly involved work. Due to the previous night's incompetence, it also involved a selection of bags containing the rest of my luggage. I also managed to finally destroy my work shoes halfway through the day, so 'stealthily' swapped them for New Rocks. Nobody appeared to notice.

Elaine turned up bearing another alternative route map - #4 - and off we headed towards North Yorkshire. We did end up using the alternative route - avoiding the M1 and going via Scarborough, not the moors. Despite this, my navigation skills didn't get us too lost.

The cottage information had stated that it was a bit tricky to turn into the yard from Church Street. What this actually meant was that you had to fold in the wing mirrors and drive in a very straight line. I should be driving by April, but I'm not sure that I'd ever want to try this particular trick myself. And after all that, someone else had parked in the cottage's parking space (we evicted them...).

Somewhere along the way, I also got a very informative text from

mister_jack. Which, um, surprised me a little. It really is a small world, isn't it? There was also a very hard-to-hear voicemail from someone who initially sounded like

ulfilias standing in a Very Loud Pub, but was actually

razornet (standing in a Very Loud Pub...)

The car survived (mostly) unscathed. Stuff got dropped in the cottage and the Whitby experience got underway. I ended up wandering to the Elsinore, collecting T-shirts from

razornet, chatting to

blooddoll3 and

colfish - and drinking beer (two pints). I finally got to meet assorted Camgoths with familiar names, too...

Eventually, I wandered off to the other side of Whitby to catch up with

broom_stick, who'd been hosting a halloween meal at her cottage. This was immensely fun and involved cider, nibbles, remarkably good company and the 'Brides of Jack'. There may also have been ballroom dancing in the kitchen. At some point in the not so early hours,

mister_jack and I left our hosts in peace and finally wandered home...