The plan for today was to pick up our hire car from Hertz, and begin our multi-day journey through the British countryside to Oxford. But as they say about mice and men... it soon became apparent that a new plan was going to be required.
It has been quite a while since we booked our hire car – it was in fact one of the first things we did in organising the trip. We had the car booked for three days – pick up in Edinburgh on Monday morning, and drop off in Oxford on Wednesday afternoon/evening. Or did we?
This morning, as we were preparing to head out to the hire-car place, we noticed that we had actually booked the car for 4 days – starting from yesterday. No problem, right? We’re not trying to get any extra hire-time, just picking it up a bit later than they would have been expecting us J
Mmm, well, it doesn’t work like that. The “you snooze, you lose” policy seems to be in place. Pick up your car too late and you’ll find that it’s already been rented out to someone else. 24 hours is indeed “too late”. And they had nothing else for us either – so we left empty-handed and headed back to Berian’s place again to forge on with our new plan for the day which was: “Make new plans for the next few days.”
And that was how we spent most of the first part of the day. Investigating various options for getting from Edinburgh to Oxford by Wednesday night. After considering hiring a car from somewhere else, buses, trains, planes, what else to do if we stayed in Edinburgh longer, what we could do on various stop-over options if using public transport, costs, convenience, and a bunch of other things we came up with this revised itinerary
Tuesday 21 July: Bus from Edinburgh to Leeds. See Spooky Men’s Chorale in Leeds that night.
Wednesday 22 July: Bus from Leeds to Oxford. See Spooky Men’s Chorale in Oxford that night.
Well, there is some redundancy built into that plan. The Spooky Men shows are apparently very popular and often full, so we’re setting up for both possible show options. (There’s actually another whole story behind this involving prizes in a video clip competition and a sold out show which is not really worth writing here)
Well, after the excitement of not-getting-a-car, and spending a reasonable amount of time preparing and booking for the next 2 days, the rest of the day went by quite uneventfully. Xavier had his third flavour of Fanta for the trip (Grape in Japan, Strawberry at Mosque Kitchen, Fruit Twist at lunch today). We completed the computer puzzle game “Braid” and got to enjoy the mind-bending twist at the end of the story (which was already mind-bendingly incomprehensible to begin with).
Quote of the day: “I’m never travelling again” O.Dive, upon leaving the Hertz rental centre without a car.
It’s now 1:30am – so I’ve forgotten what else happened today...
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