Harry's Blog

My beloved L and I planned a trip up north over the weekend but all did not run smoothly. It began well enough with our train journey to Liverpool Street in London, but we were running a little late to make it to Victoria Coach Station and so we took a cab.

Alas the cabby was one of those chatty cockney types who wants to tell you all about his life, before of course getting onto the subject of Tony Blair. He knew we were running late and kept making promises to get us there on time and find the best route through the traffic. Yet whenever we had an open road he dawdled along nattering away. Suffice to say, we missed the coach. It pulled away in front of us, the jobsworth at the coach station not letting it stop for us. We'd have had to wait 90 minutes for another coach with space on it and that wouldn't get to Manchester until half nine in the evening.

So another taxi trip so us at Euston Station. The weekend was supposed to be a cheap trip north to see my friends and family. Instead it was about to get expensive. Our coach tickets had cost a combined total of £25 for two returns. But now I handed over £112 for two single tickets to Stockport.

The journey north was great though. We had a table to ourselves on the train and it only took two hours to get to Stockport. In fact we were in our B&B a full two hours before the coach we'd missed was due to arrive at Manchester's Chorlton Street Coach Station.

Friday night was great, met up with a bunch of friends in the George & Dragon in Heaton Chapel. L hadn't met these folks before but seemed to get on well with them. I drank more than my fill and was rather piddled by the time we got back to the hotel. Cue a rather nasty hangover in the morning.

Which meant our epic trek to The Trafford Centre by public transport was hardly fun. We were going to meet one of L's friends. But we ended up having to wait an extra two hours for her to turn up. We filled the time by watching the latest X-Men movie. It was a passable flick, I'm not a raving X-Men comic book fanboy, but it was spoiled by the Trafford Centre Odean's awful new premier seating. For an extra quid each we got really uncomfortable, albeit wider, seating in a very hot cinema. Thanks a bunch for that.

After seeing L's friends we made our way back to the B&B. Not an easy trip. While the Trafford Centre is around 20 minutes by car from Heaton Chapel, it's something like two hours by public transport. We got a train, then the Metrolink, then a shuttle bus. Not fun at all really especially as the Metrolink trams were packed with folks going to the Soccer Aid game at Old Trafford.

We were absolutely knackered by the time we got to the B&B. We had a lovely relaxing evening at my sister's place though and got to chat and catch up. Sunday we had a bigger family do. Back to my sister's again for dinner with her and her hubby and my dad and aunt. My brother in law did himself proud with a fantastic spread of food.

It was a rather fun if tiring weekend. Kudos must got to National Express for the way it got us back to London. It stuck all the London ticket holders not going to Victoria on one coach and put the rest of us on another. So we got a quick non-stop trip to Victoria via M1/M42 which got us to London a couple of hours earlier than expected.

So there we go. A top if tiring weekend that we haven't quite recovered from.