h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

All in the space of one weekend!

A friend from my time inb Edinburgh had a baby recently, so I and some other friends organised to go and visit her in england this weekend. This coincided with what is apparently the worst flooding the country has seen since 1947, so the travel arrangements were a little more complex than we anticipated...

Kerry & I arrived in Birmingham from Dublin early Saturday morning, and Jen flew in from Edinburgh shortly after. We had heard that there were problems with the trains, but the main problem seemed to be that everyone we spoke to had a different version of what was running! At one stage we were told flatly that there was no way of getting to Ludlow, in fact we weren't even going to get out of Birmingham... After an assortment of phone calls to Nicci, with her partner calling the local bus depot, we got directions to the right bus stop and made our way to Kidderminster, some more confusion, hours delay and another bus we got to Nicci's house around 10 hours after leaving Kerry's in Dublin!

So then we went to the pub We wandered around the town a bit, and looked at the river (apparently about 4 times as wide as normal), with a good 5 feet of water over the football pitch etc. The rest of the time we spent lounging around eating and drinking (as usual) and admiring Nicci's baby - something entirely new! He's a fairly placid and appealing little thing, who seems to do all the normal baby things - eats, sleeps and fills nappies! All in all it was a very sedate and grown up get together, especially compared with our normal pastime in Edinburgh, which was going out & drinking like fish til the early hours! It was great to catch up with the girls - I can't believe it's been a year since I left Edinburgh!

Getting home again was even more exciting - once again, it looked smooth enough - catch a rail replacement bus to Shrewsbury & a train thru to Birmingham in plenty of time for our flights. Except we waited 2 hours for the bus, and eventually realised that by the time it came we wouldn't get to our flights. So we got Jen's fiance Vince on the the phone and got him to start looking at flights the next day (starting from £100 - OUCH!). Jen's flight was a bit later, so she went in a taxi to Shrewsbury with 6 other people who were waiting and we thought all was well there. Kez & I went back to Nicci's, and managed to get hold of a taxi who could take us straight to the airport - an hour and a half away, and £120 later, but we made it! Back in Dublin, we heard from Jen that she had got thru to Shrewsbury and on a train, but then someone threw themselves in front of it, and she didn't get to Birmingham in time after all... Such dramas!

So anyway, I'm back in Cork now, and made it into work after catching a bus at 7am down from Dublin. Somewhat shattered, but it's pretty quiet so I should make it thru to 8pm.

At this point I have one more month before my visa runs out, then I'll travel round Ireland & visit France for a few weeks with Mum & Dad. Then I'm vaguely planning a trip thru eastern europe for a few months (depending how long the money lasts) and probably heading home in November/December...

Hello to whoever is still checking in on this! Hope all's well

Right, time for another cup of coffee...