We got up at 6am this morning!! You all know how difficult that is for us!! Matt & Kelly were scheduled to arrive at 6:55am at Heathrow, but a quick check on the laptop when we awoke showed an anticipated arrival time of 6:21am; panic stations! We got on the road at 6:35am and made really good time to Heathrow on the M25, though we were surprised at the volume of traffic at that time of the morning. Once we got onto Heathrow we hit our first queue of the day to get into the short term parking for Terminal 3; there were an amazing number of cars trying to get in and we figured that if we had arrived 15 minutes later we not have been able to park there.
Once parked, we arrived at the exit to customs/immigration just as Matt & Kelly appeared; what great timing...ha ha. They had had a good flight, but could have landed probably an hour earlier, but then spent that time circling London! They did manage to get some good aerial photos of London, so not all wasted time.
We then drove back to Beryl's and enjoyed a hearty English breakfast during which Vala, Malcolm and Sarah stopped by to collect the Sarah's wedding dress and the bridesmaid's dresses and then set off for Suffolk. Malcolm told us that the one of the two V Festival sites is in Chelmsford, on the route that I had planned on taking, so I'll need to find another route to Suffolk.
Matt & Kelly disappeared for a jet lag recovery sleep and I'll admit that Jilly, Beryl and I also rested our eyes once or twice while they slept.
After fitting all of our bags into the back of the car, no mean feat, we set off for Suffolk at about 3pm planning to get to the hotel in good time to then go and meet Sarah & Oli at Southwold next to the pier. However, the M25 had other ideas! We crawled all the way to the Dartford Tunnel and a journey that would normally have taken 30 minutes took an hour and a half! Along with adjusting our route to avoid the V Festival in Chelmsford meant we did not arrive at the hotel in Scole until 7pm, and then we decided that as we would only get to Southwold as everyone was leaving we would stay at the hotel for the evening instead.
We met up with Janet, Ken, Freda, Michael and Sue in the bar and had an enjoyable evening catching up on everyone's news and having a few pints and a bar meal.
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| 2009-08-21 Scole Inn |
The Scole Inn was built in 1655 as a coaching inn and unfortunately, it is showing its age! Not a hotel I would recommend to anyone as the beds are bl**dy uncomfortable and the showers in some of the rooms worked only intermittently. However, we made the best of it while we were there and it was very convenient to the wedding location, of which more tomorrow!
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