ever notice how sometimes the best things happen when your plans get waylaid?

the weekend started out according to plan. friday night i cleared out of nick’s place in streatham, where I’d been staying for the last 2 weeks, and got picked up by jonno in the very pretty new car, whom i have named “bruce” (surprisingly enough, boys don’t tend to name their cars?!?) we went for a quick dinner, and then headed over to tooting for a birthday drinks thing at the pub, which then morphed into after-hours drinks at a friend’s house.

woke up saturday morning with a whole day in front of us, sun outside the window, and no concrete plans except a vague notion of going to bath for the day. bath is the site of roman ruins (including the eponymous baths), about 100 miles away from london, and is supposed to be quite lovely. neither of us had ever been, so we set out shortly after noon, decided to make a quick stop in peckham to drop off my junk and pick up my camera, and hit the open road.

one hour’s worth of saturday inner london traffic later, we had yet to even reach the motorway. by the time we even got the first glimpse of the m4, it was nearly 3:00. finally broke free of traffic, and were cruising through the lovely green countryside, eating sweets, enjoying the views of cows and rolling hills, listening to tunes and basking in the glow of sunshine filtered through the windscreen. as we got closer to our intended exit, we passed a sign saying that the motorway was closed between exit 17 and 18, and upon consultation, decided that the motorway couldn’t just be *closed*, that there would probably be detour signs as we got closer.

20 minutes later, we found ourselves at a complete standstill, the motorway having become, for all intents and purposes, a large carpark. this was at 4:30.

around 5:00, we began to see people starting to drive along the shoulder and quickly decided to follow before our escape route was blocked. followed along a dirt access path, to suddenly find ourselves on the road to “tiddleywink”. i kid you not, that is the actual name of the village. having come this far, we decided to press on, but agreed that there was no way we’d get to see anything of bath that day, so we decided to stay overnight, and see the ruins and such on sunday.

with no need to hurry, we took a short detour through the quaint little town of “box”, (again, no aliases have been used)stopping in to have a pint at the bear pub in front of a roaring fire, and take a few scenic photos.

we finally arrived in bath at 6:30, and went in search of a b & b to stay at. drove around for a bit searching quite aimlessly (forgot to pick up my lonely planet guide when we were in peckham), until we finally stumbled upon the “cedar lodge”, which looked rather cute. the proprietor told us he didn’t have any vacancies for the evening, but that he could give us the number of another place which did.

phoning up, we spoke to “margaret”, who said that she would be happy to accomodate us, but she didn’t want to give us confusing directions over the phone, and as she was “just around the corner”, she’d come and meet us in the carpark. she would be in a “bright red robe”.

we thought this a bit odd, but all became clear when she pulled up in a bright red *range rover*, and we proceeded to follow her “around the corner”, i.e. halfway up the mountain, and fully into the next county. however the room was lovely, and were tired, so we registered, then headed off in search of food, taking with us, margaret’s trusty handdrawn map to get us safely back up the mountain in the dark.

by this time, choice of restaurants were limited, and we ended up at a nondescript chain, which took an hour to serve us, but the burger was the size of my head, and went down particularly well with a beer, and after a quick stop into the safeway for toothbrushes, we decided to head back to the b&b for the evening.

at which point we unwittingly entered dante’s circle of driving hell. all attempts to follow margaret’s “map” (a misnomer if there ever was one) lead us nowhere, and when we passed the restaurant for the fouth time in 45 minutes, we became fully hysterical. apparently the 5th time is the charm, however, and we managed to somehow wend our way back to the b&b.

morning came, dreary and drizzly, but we had breakfast (8:30 sharp! as margaret warned us) and headed out optimistically into the rain. we drove around in circles looking to park bruce, and finally (after completely abandoning the “map”), managed to make our way to the famous baths. at which point, the batteries in my camera died.

we bought a disposable camera, and spent some time climbing around, touching the water (no, i know you’re not supposed to, but it’s *right there*) taking photos, and then went to explore some more of the city. only to walk right out into torrential rain and tornado-strength wind which soaked us through to the bone in 3 seconds flat.

we bought an umbrella (which promptly turned inside-out) and slogged around some, but eventually just began looking for a warm place to have some coffee and wait til it let up. seems that most of bath had the same idea, as coffee shop after coffee shop was packed to the gills. wandering down a side street, we saw a sign advertising coffee and strudel “downstairs at the strudel bar”, which turned out to be downstairs through the “hansel and gretel” shop, specialising in all things bavarian and alpine. which is why we found ourselves in a bizzarro-land room full of cuckoo clocks and swiss woodcrafts and stuffed teddybears, sipping cappucinos and eating strudel, whilst listening to yodeling playing in the background. it felt like we’d fallen into some sort of heidi-world/alice in wonderland rabbit hole.

eventually we left the rabbit hole and the rain had stopped. we walked through the park, watched a marathon which was going through the city, stopped into the pub for a pint, and then went fruitlessly in search of a roman glass souvenir. we stopped and had some lunch (an italian place whose “oven had exploded” and could therefore only do pastas), and decided to head home. which is exactly when the sun broke through the clouds.

the whole weekend was unexpected and funny and fraught with potential disaster, but I had the most fabulous time. the pics are not up yet (many have to be developed and then scanned), but I will let you know when they are.

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