Today is just a travel day - around 300 km from Newcastle to Stafford so Paul can spend the weekend war-gaming.
When I originally booked our stay at the Staybridge Suites here in Newcastle, we were going to be here on Friday night as well - that was going to be the last night of our pre-planned travel (except for London right at the end of the trip of course).
However, the war-gaming comp but a bit of a crimp in that plan, as we now need to be in Stafford first thing on Saturday, which realistically means driving here on Friday. And, when I booked the hotel in Newcastle I prepaid, at a lower but non-cancellable and non-refundable rate. I contacted the hotel at the time on the off chance that they'd allow me a refund for the Friday night, but although they initially said yes I didn't hear anything else and I assumed they had decided to stick to the letter of our booking - which would be fair enough. However, they actually refunded us today for the night we're not using tonight. Very nice of them.
Once we checked out, we went around to Thrifty for the next re-negotiation. Our original plan was to hire the car today, then I'd drive it to Chester tomorrow and drop it off there before doing a day of sight-seeing, and then I'd get the train back to Stafford. However, I still can barely lift anything with my left hand, and driving is completely out of the question. So we decided to see if we could keep the car until Monday afternoon and drop it off in Manchester rather than Chester. This was less of an issue though; I couldn't imagine they'd knock back more money and I was right. We have another Hyundai i30 - slightly older than the other one we hired. We probably wouldn't have noticed the difference except that the luggage space on this one is slightly smaller than the other one but just the same it's quite a good car.
We got underway without any real drama - the rental place is just a couple of streets off the A1(M) which was the road we needed for the start of our trip. This trip was almost completely on motorway level roads, and most was actually on official motorways. There was a lot of traffic compared to Australian freeways I'm used to - I'd compare the traffic level for the whole trip to at least "Hume Highway leaving Sydney just as peak hour is starting". However the drivers here are far more considerate. When you enter the motorway you're given space to merge and I didn't see one single example of the great Canberra (and Sydney) game where indicating that you need to change lanes is almost a guarantee that the person in that lane will speed up to try to stop you. None of that here. Even when the motorway was reduced to around 10mph for quite a way due to an "incident" people were still allowed to merge onto the road. And, very few people if any bother with that other Australian freeway game of changing lanes every three seconds just in case it gets you there ten seconds faster - probably because they know it's a completely wasted effort. All very civilised.
Another surprise was motorway 'services'. At home, 'services' is at best a service station and maybe a McDonalds or some sort of restaurant. We stopped at two separate services areas today and in both places there was a huge service station, plus a really large parking area and an actual shopping centre. The shops in both included a Marks & Spencers, a number of Costa Coffee bars, some food places - eg a baguette shop, a pastie stand, Burger King etc, a WH Smith (stationery, newspapers etc) and one of them also had a motel. Again, incredibly civilised. And, I expect they make a fortune - people were just pouring into and out of these places.
We got to our hotel with no problems, but it's back to Premier Inn here. The Premier Inn hotels are excellent value for money, but they're quite cheap and so there aren't a lot of facilities - no fridge in the room, no iron, no spare towels, no on-site laundry and in this one, no air-conditioning either. It's quite a step down from the fully equipped one bedroom apartment of the Staybridge Suites but of course there's no comparison in price either; the Staybridge cost almost three times as much. However, Premier Inn does promise a quiet night's sleep or your money back and so far they've delivered this in both the ones we've stayed in.
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