So we are on the road … we picked up a great little Renault Mégane from Avis, and headed to Cambridge.
My technology toy this year is a portable Satellite Navigator, a TomTom One unit, which I ordered online in UK, and had delivered to our London Hotel. Today it proved itself several times, just type in where we wanted to go, and it told us distance & time to get there, better than trying to follow the high level street maps…. occasionally small hiccups (like it finds it hard to navigate to a street you can’t drive down), otherwise it was absolutely fantastic.
I have had lots of problems in using my Australia Credit cards online, and I am finding most UK Online retailers do not accept them, even BT, when I tried to buy WiFi access… where is this global online economy??
The kewl thing so far, is both our London hotel & our first B&B tonight, offer free Wifi internet access… amazing!!!
Anyway stopped on the outskirts of Cambridge and took a Park & Ride bus to central Cambridge, then walked around a few hours, without having to worry about parking. Cambridge was really interesting,… the markets, the hundreds of bicycles, and buildings, nearly drives one to think about going back to uni… and Kings collage Chapel was impressive.
Then about 4pm, we decided we would not make to the Peak district our preferred destination, and using the advice of our ‘trusted advisers’ and tried to book into our first B&B…. easy they said… no stress they said …. you don’t need the B&B book, just ask the local Information Centre they said….
So we rang 4 initial ones that looked OK in some guidebooks, all were booked up… not only were we booking on a Friday night, our trusted advisers forgot about the Doctors Exams being held nearby, or the high tourists still around popular areas… so we drove 30 minutes to the Huntingdon Information Centre, located in the city library, in a mall .. closed to traffic, and there was no parking nearby, so after parking miles away, and getting guidance on the phone as we walked/ran the streets, we finally arrive at there at 5:20pm, and it closed at 5:30pm… we were kindly given four B&Bs that might have rooms, or they did early in the day, however it is very busy due to the Doctors Exams, and other local major events.
So sitting in a local pub (bitter lemon is best I can get in small 150ml bottles), we rang a few, to find they were full… then finaly West Perry B&B had a room, and we set the SatNav unit to West Perry, and oft we went…
The West Perry B&B is very nice, and across the road from WheatSheath pub, which served a great dinner. As for our experience in a B&B, I felt it a bit intrusive walking into someone’s normal home, and talking around the dining table, and then shown a room… once inside, no different to a hotel room really. …so 15 more nights of B&B’s to go!!!!
So how do we feel after our first day’s B&B experience, ‘trusted advisers’=0.5, technology =2.
