Today's plan was meant to be quite simple: check out of the apartment in Manchester, catch a bus - well two actually, one to Milton Keynes and then another on to Cambridge - then find and check into our hotel. Easy.
It all started out quite ok. There was a bit of concern because our street was supposed to be closed in preparation for the Gay Pride parade, but although lots of barriers were already set up there was no problem getting to the coach station.
The first bus ran a bit late because the traffic on the motorway was held up because of an accident, but we still got to Milton Keynes on time.
Unfortunately, the second bus was exactly on time - I say "unfortunately" since just before we pulled into our stop in Cambridge it started raining. Not the light sprinkle we've been getting every few hours in Manchester, but a torrential downpour including hail.
Fortunately the hail had stopped by the time the bus stopped but it was still absolutely teeming with rain.
And, there was absolutely nowhere to shelter and the driver wouldn't let any of us stay on the bus.
Luckily I had decided to carry a (small) umbrella in the backpack, and we also eventually managed to get a raincoat out of the backpack while standing there being pelted with rain. Seriously, this was tropical storm level rain, complete with thunder and lightning, so it was quite a challenge.
And of course, my instructions to myself on how to get to the hotel were just written in a notebook, so it was another serious challenge trying to get the notebook out without getting it drenched.
We managed to find our way to the hotel - getting wetter and wetter all the time, as practically none of the buildings has any sort of awning over the street.
Once we got to the hotel, we discovered they're having problems of their own - chunks of the ceiling in the main restaurant have fallen in, and there's water running down through at least one of the light fixtures. And our room wasn't ready, even though it was more than an hour after check-in time. Anyway, they found us a room, and we went upstairs to check the water damage which in the end wasn't as bad as we feared. I had visions of waterlogged computers (eek!) but in the end we've basically got a few wet items of clothing strewn across the spare bed, our suitcases and backpacks are fairly damp, but nothing got permanently hurt.
So, by the time we sorted that out, we decided to duck out and find a shop to pick up a few odds and ends - by this time the sun was shining. We decided to stroll the long way back and found a Gourmet Burger Kitchen, so we decided to go back there for dinner after dropping off the shopping.
And on the way back out, another storm hit, if anything heavier rain than the first one. We spend about 20 minutes huddled under the umbrella in the doorway of a church while this storm raged - teeming rain and more hail. We were only about 5 minutes walk from the restaurant by this, but we would have been completely drenched if we had tried to go out in it. Finally it died down, so we made the brave attempt, only to be attacked one final time - this time, just hail. Not nice.
Fortunately the food was excellent, and there was only a tiny amount of drizzle on the way back.
Before this holiday, a few people warned me about English weather, but no-one suggested that tropical downpours were on the cards :-)
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