Thread: Ramblings from the UK.

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Wednesday 1st June.

Left Travelodge heading for a Rum Museum at Whitehaven. Lucy. the gps, played silly games for a while by refusing to recognise anywhere we plugged in; instead just showing the position of the car at the moment. We finished up pulling off the road entirely and going through the rigmarole right from square one about three time before the message finally sank in.

I noticed that the local farmers are busy harvesting their spring surplus growth as silage, whereas the cockies in the Orkneys are only now shifting their cows outside. These fella's season must be six to ten weeks ahead of Orkney.
Got to Whitehaven eventually...and then spent about half an hour driving around and around the place looking for somewhere to park...every time I saw one the car two or three in front of me pulled into it.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers; we'll wipe this one off the list and head for the Beatrix Potter Centre.

Lucy was behaving now; so off we went. About five miles along the road and we saw a sign saying 'Museum of Mining', thought: "That sounds interesting", so swung off the road to investigate, and almost immediately passed a hotel boasting a Coffee Shop. That sounds even more interesting as it's about time for tucker, so did a U turn and headed back.
Came over the top of a slight rise, there was one helluva BANG, the car did a wobble...we'd had a blow-out.
Thankfully it was a quiet rural road and at about 25-30 mph.
These are 'drive-flat' tyres (I know; 'cos I'd queried the lack of a spare when we picked the car up,) so limped back to the hotel car park...about 100 yards.
The nice lady at the hotel rang the car hire people, they told her to ring AA Breakdown, which she did, and they said they'd have a man there in about half an hour.
Yeah right!
Hour and a half more like.
But on the bright side we'd had a very good lunch by then...bacon, chicken, and cheese in a toasted roll...bloody gorgeous.
The AA man eventually showed; they have various discs with various stud patterns drilled through them,; but all have protruding studs to suit their (AA's) spare tyre.
But...such was the offset on their rim it jammed into the disc-pad mounts...didn't fit.
So he tried it on a rear tyre...nah...same thing.
So nothing for it but to mount the car on a dolly and tow it back to civilisation.
Which was Kendal; over an hour's drive away...where it was all fixed (at no cost to us,) and we were back on the road by 4:30...in a strange town we knew nothing about...looking for reasonably priced accommodation for two for the night...during rush hour.
Sheesh!
It got a bit fraught. (Understatement.)
But we found one...the County Hotel Kendal.
Sixty-five quid a night including brekky...but no wifi.
Ah well; beggars can't be choosers...we took it.
Saw a lot of countryside but no 'sights' and yet the whole day was filled.

I'd prefer to carry a spare tyre myself; and save myself from this sort of hassle/aggravation/irritation...I'd have been back on the road inside twenty minutes tops...

Bah humbug!