SATURDAY 2nd JUNE 2012

YORK

Headed into the ancient city of York this morning and after a bit of a meander, found a parking space and joined the throngs of tourists who were visiting!
Perhaps I should explain that unbeknown to us the local UK school holidays had been brought forward a few days because of the Jubilee and actually started yesterday, and this combined with the four day long weekend meant that all the holiday spots are chock a block with visitors!
We jumped on a bus tour and thoroughly enjoyed the hour long very descriptive tour - in fact the tour never drew breath for the entire hour - but we learnt heaps about this old city! The girls never seem to tire of seeing the old buildings, but for Den and I it gets a bit tiresome and so it was with great relief that we headed for the National Rail Museum, at last to see the old rail stuff and not old buildings!
The Museum was an awesome place to visit and we all enjoyed it until about half way through we realized that we had only half an hour to get back to the car to avoid a parking ticket! Bloody typical - at last Den and I found something REALLY interesting, only to have to leave half way through! Grrrrrr!
We climbed up onto one of the sections of defensive wall that was built around York in the Viking days and started to walk back to the car when there was a flyover of old RAF planes! Three Spitfires and a Lancaster bomber circled the city then made several low passes over us!!! It was an unbelievable sight - having never seen any of those planes in the flesh before and having heard so much about them!
We followed the wall for about a kilometre and then found our car and headed off for Stoke -on-Trent which was only about two hours away and we had heard was a very pretty place! Most of the trip was on motorways so we made good time, being very thankful that we were heading south because the north bound lanes of the M1 were choked with traffic and in many places the traffic was slowed to a walk!
Got off the motorway and found a hotel but there were a dozen people in the reception so we decide to try another place and unfortunately things went arse up from there! I was navigating and I directed Den onto the wrong roundabout exit and suddenly we were back on the M1 heading NORTH and being stuck in ANOTHER traffic jam with no exit for TEN miles! s***! Our first major stuff up in nearly three weeks and I had to make it!!!! We lost an hour again before we reached an exit where we did a complete about turn and took the M1 south this time back to the same hotel we started at, but by this time it was about five thirty!
Booked two rooms and headed for the bar!!! Me feeling very embarrassed!!! I blame it totally on an overdose of old buildings - gave me brain fade!!!! - but I don't think anyone accepted my excuse!!!!