Definitely Not As Planned

We went to Basingstoke today.  We almost made it to the Vyne – a Tudor house set in woodland, wetland and walled gardens.

We’d planned to take the woodland walk and pick up acorns, conkers, autumn leaves and such like.  I’ve got an empty twig wreath I wanted to decorate for Mabon (see, am trying not to get so Halloween obsessed!!).  I took my camera and warned the kids they would be my models for the day because I wanted to enter a couple of National Trust photography competitions.

About 2 miles from our destination and 50 miles from home there was a noise from under the car bonnet which sounded like a garden lawn mower kicking in.  I stopped, called recovery, bundled the kids out of the car and waited on the grass nearby.

The repair man came and said he couldn’t fix it.  When we last had the car serviced the mechanic didn’t tighten the spark plug and it came loose in the engine (or something like that).  It’s going to cost a fortune.

And we were stuck in the middle of nowhere.  My recovery service would only tow the car 10 miles either home or to a garage so my car remains in Basingstoke.  We got towed to the garage but the mechanic stopped at the bus station, dropped Paul and the kids off before continuing on.  He then dropped me at the station too after leaving my car at the garage.

I spent about half an hour in the bus station trying to figure out a route home. We needed to get a bus to Winchester, then one to Southampton and finally a bus to Portsmouth where we could then take the ferry to Gosport and another bus home.  In total the journey time was 4 hours.

Fortunately, we decided to check the train station.  We cut our time in half and only had to get 1 train and 1 bus.

It’s now 7.30, we’ve only been home just over an hour. We didn’t have lunch and had nothing at home for dinner so we stopped at the Fish & Chip shop up the road.

In all of today’s fiasco I experienced my first car towing and  Tabitha had her first train &bus ride.  I’m trying to look at it as an adventure.

Now, I’m visualising good things for the car, an easy return journey to pick it up and a small repair bill.  I’m also trying to picture winning the lottery as back up.  Just in case.