adventures

Today we (my old housemates and I) did something I've wanted to do for a long time. We selected a random place on a map and drove there. That had not been the original plan. I had had the wonderful idea of going to Bowood house, a beautiful stately home, to have a nice stroll and a cream tea. I'm not very good at organising fun events for friends, but it's something I want to be better at, and was quite pleased with myself that I had thought of a unique place to go, and that all the girls were excited about going. However, my lack of observation meant that I neglected to read the part of the Bowood House website that mention that it doesn't actually open until March 19th. Fortunately, Sarah had the wisdom to look on the website for directions, and spotted this rather crucial fact.

So we adopted my approach of let's just look for somewhere vaguely exciting and go there. I suggested finding a farm, and Rachel loved this idea, so I found a farm in the middle of nowhere (Mangotsfied, to be precise), handed Sarah the map and said with glee, 'Let's go!!' Delighting in the fact that as the designated driver, I was not responsible for navigating us, therefore we were guaranteed to at least get within the remote region of where we were hoping to go, rather than an hour away in the wrong direction, which is what would have happened had I been the navigator.

We found the farm with very little trouble. (Except for the part when I ignored Sarah and followed the signs, and ended up going the long way round.) It turned out that the farm was not the type that you can go and visit and we got some funny looks from some young lads on dirt bikes. It also turned out that we got more than expected - we thought we'd just be finding a far but lo and behold, there was a quarry too! And an old sofa and dead kitchen equipment.

Having been disappointed by the lack of cows and other lively livestock, we decided to head on to our next destination: Pucklechurch. Why? Because it had a good name. Sadly there was nothing exciting there either. So we headed to Chipping Sodbury and managed to get lost in this little village. That was because I was the only one of us who had been there before, and so they were relying on me to get us to the main strip of shops. Funny thing is, there is a well known fact that in Britain, the main strip of shops is called the High Street, so you'd think that looking at a map of a small villge, it'd be quite easy to find the 'High Street'. Having stared at the map for a good number of minutes, I announced to my friends, 'I have no idea where we are or how to get where we're trying to go.' Sarah took the map from me and said, 'oh look - there's the High Street - maybe we should head there.' Why on earth does all logic evade me?

My lack of any internal compass continued to shine through once we got to the High Street, and my friends, who have known me for four years, were astounded at just how non existent my sense of direction is. Fun times.