400 miles
Driving 400 miles in one day isn't so hard. Age 21, I was asked to accompany some clients to a software development exhibition in Switzerland. As I'd never flown before, a friend and I did a test flight to Edinburgh and back to ensure I wouldn't freak out at the sight of a folded tray table. In these early days of EasyJet's popularity, we found a cheap flight to Edinburgh one Saturday morning with no problems. But a flight back at any price was impossible - so instead, game girls that we are, we decided to hire a car and drive back after lunching by the castle.
Newly graduated and used to the vagaries of a 12 year old one-litre/two-tone Ford Fiesta that would catch fire with frightening regularity, my eyes were like saucers when I saw the week-old Fiesta Ghia with 1.6 sport engine and gleaming burgandy paintwork. Although I've since driven Porsches and BMWs* this Fiesta remains the most comfortable car I've ever had the pleasure of driving. We had trouble negotiating Edinburgh's one way system and actually drove round three times as if we were in a rocket planning a gravitational slingshot from the city's magnetic core. Upon escape, it took 10 hours to drive home. It had taken 25 minutes to fly there. Admittedly we stopped and had a good faff near Leeds, but otherwise it was solid driving. And it didn't feel too exhausting.
Yesterday I drove 400 miles too, but it seemed like one of the hardest things in the world. Herr Powers and I were due to drive up to Preston to see his family on Friday night, but the radio-advertised 18 mile tailback on the M1 made us postpone it until 6am yesterday. We arrived by 11am which gave us plenty of time to take a day trip to Lytham sand dunes, drive home through Blackpool's golden mile, and have an indoor barbecue. At 9.30pm we were just in the middle of a game of Password - a cross between Taboo and a violent game of pass the parcel - when Herr Powers' mobile rang and he was called back to work for a 7am start. We knew this might happen, as he was 3rd in line on rota BUT there hadn't been a peep all week and we thought we'd get away with it on the final day. He'd been hitting the booze and I was knackered from the morning's drive, but we got ourselves packed up and on the road in ten minutes. Sing songs and copious amounts of red bull and werther's originals kept the sugar flowing until we returned to Luton at 1.15am. And here we are. I've had a lie in but Nick has to work until 7pm. Darn it.
As we didn't expect to be here there's no bread (or any breakfast related food) in the house. I had to steer myself away from Nick's birthday cake so I've had an entirely werther's original based breakfast. I expect the sugar crash sometime around noon.
* For work, I hasten to add. Another client at the time was a tyre manufacturer. As tyres are inherently dull things, you have to woo journalists into coming to product launch events by holding them in exotic locations, giving them champagne helicopter flights, and arranging road tests in top of the range supercars around medieval castle grounds. The bonus for me was that I got to experience it all too, but the down side was that being a girl meant all the male journalists would go into automatic showoff mode. When I am old, so old that I no longer remember my name, I will still remember the motoring editor of the Daily Telegraph driving me round hairpin bends on a dry track at 130 mph. I literally kissed the ground when I got out.
Newly graduated and used to the vagaries of a 12 year old one-litre/two-tone Ford Fiesta that would catch fire with frightening regularity, my eyes were like saucers when I saw the week-old Fiesta Ghia with 1.6 sport engine and gleaming burgandy paintwork. Although I've since driven Porsches and BMWs* this Fiesta remains the most comfortable car I've ever had the pleasure of driving. We had trouble negotiating Edinburgh's one way system and actually drove round three times as if we were in a rocket planning a gravitational slingshot from the city's magnetic core. Upon escape, it took 10 hours to drive home. It had taken 25 minutes to fly there. Admittedly we stopped and had a good faff near Leeds, but otherwise it was solid driving. And it didn't feel too exhausting.
Yesterday I drove 400 miles too, but it seemed like one of the hardest things in the world. Herr Powers and I were due to drive up to Preston to see his family on Friday night, but the radio-advertised 18 mile tailback on the M1 made us postpone it until 6am yesterday. We arrived by 11am which gave us plenty of time to take a day trip to Lytham sand dunes, drive home through Blackpool's golden mile, and have an indoor barbecue. At 9.30pm we were just in the middle of a game of Password - a cross between Taboo and a violent game of pass the parcel - when Herr Powers' mobile rang and he was called back to work for a 7am start. We knew this might happen, as he was 3rd in line on rota BUT there hadn't been a peep all week and we thought we'd get away with it on the final day. He'd been hitting the booze and I was knackered from the morning's drive, but we got ourselves packed up and on the road in ten minutes. Sing songs and copious amounts of red bull and werther's originals kept the sugar flowing until we returned to Luton at 1.15am. And here we are. I've had a lie in but Nick has to work until 7pm. Darn it.
As we didn't expect to be here there's no bread (or any breakfast related food) in the house. I had to steer myself away from Nick's birthday cake so I've had an entirely werther's original based breakfast. I expect the sugar crash sometime around noon.
* For work, I hasten to add. Another client at the time was a tyre manufacturer. As tyres are inherently dull things, you have to woo journalists into coming to product launch events by holding them in exotic locations, giving them champagne helicopter flights, and arranging road tests in top of the range supercars around medieval castle grounds. The bonus for me was that I got to experience it all too, but the down side was that being a girl meant all the male journalists would go into automatic showoff mode. When I am old, so old that I no longer remember my name, I will still remember the motoring editor of the Daily Telegraph driving me round hairpin bends on a dry track at 130 mph. I literally kissed the ground when I got out.