We had a weekend away booked. Well, it had started out that Helen had a spa day booked with a colleague from work. It got delayed a couple of times and with Covid still lurking around, her friend didn’t want to make a train journey to get to Basingstoke. (To be fair, that probably isn’t just a Covid thing.)
And so, I was enlisted as a replacement for the spa day. And rather than driving there and back the same day, we tagged a couple of nights either side of it at the local Holiday Inn. I was a bit freaked out to get an e-mail from IHG before leaving the house on Friday morning to say the welcome amenity points had been given, wondering who had checked in on our behalf, but it turned out OK.
On the way over we had decided to visit an English Heritage site – Silchester Roman Fort / Town remains. The website said it may be a bit muddy, so I dragged some old trainers out of the cupboard and slung them in the boot of the car. The path leading to the site was quite muddy, and so I’d tucked my jeans into my socks to prevent splash and rub marks on them as they were clean on.
I needn’t have bothered. We had got around to the North Gate remains, and it had been a bit slippery, but that was only the prelude. Not far after the gate I got some sideways motion on and went down. So much for tucking jeans into socks, I’d have needed socks six feet long.
We carried on progressing our way around the large site, and I was just about to say that I wasn’t sure that this was the kind of lateral flow I was looking for when there was more sideways sliding and down I went for the second time. We were nowhere near half way around and so decided it was probably better to head back.
Only for me to go down for a third time. Now, my knees aren’t great to start with, so lateral sliding isn’t great. Plus being tall and fat it is likely that I registered on the Richter scale each time I went down. It hurts, and trying to get back up looks less elegant than a new born calf trying to stand for the first time would. Additionally, I hate being muddy. So, as I sat on the muddy ground for the third time trying to build up to trying to get back on my feet, I did what any insane person in this situation would have done. I sat there and sobbed for thirty seconds.
Old trainers may not have been the best choice for muddy paths, but I doubt that rugby boots and ski poles could have kept me upright.
Back at the car, I’m thinking it’s fortunate that we were on the way to the hotel, meaning our luggage is in the boot and it meant I could scare the locals by changing into another pair of jeans, and change my coat. Perhaps I would have been better off with the waterproof. I could have just washed that down, but the parka just absorbs the mud.
We found a nice old pub along the way to get some lunch, well at the second attempt (the first had said with some glee that they had stopped serving quarter of an hour before), and had some very nice melted camembert before getting to the hotel sometime after three.
Checking in was overly complicated. I’m not sure what planet the receptionist was from, but it didn’t appear to be Earth. She made it seem like she was doing us a massive favour by finding a double room for us. It must have been difficult when they had more than a hundred rooms, yet seemed to only have about twenty guests for the weekend.
Having dumped the bag we headed back out to wander into the centre of Basingstoke, which we had just driven through on the way to the hotel. There are some preconceptions about what Basingstoke is like. (I’ve been a couple of times for meetings with work, and having gotten to the train station, tech firms’ headquarters were within walking distance, but that was as much as I ever saw.) The main one being that it’s a commuter town that is a concrete and chrome soulless shit hole.
But it wasn’t as bad as all there. There is an old core to the town that has a nice park and some lovely buildings dating back centuries. If you ignore the horribly bland shop fronts and look up, it does look a lot better. It is definitely another look up kind of town, as so many are these days.
We had a good wander around as the light faded before heading back to the hotel to shower and change before going out for dinner.
Helen had booked at Pizza Express, and I’d found that a bus went from near the hotel to near to Pizza Express There was a sign in the bus stop advertising the “Night Rider” ticket – unlimited bus travel after 7pm for £2.50. Which would have been great if the bus we were going to catch wasn’t the last to go past our hotel that night. The bus driver tried to sell us the same ticket, but when asked what bus we could get back to the hotel, she scratched her head and gave us singles instead as there aren’t any.
Pizza Express were actually quick with the food. As if someone had given them amphetamines before their shift. It was good as well, and we probably ate too much as usual. And then when we needed to hurry to pay as the taxi we’d ordered was arriving, usual slowness had returned.
The taxi had a plastic screen installed between the front and back seats. A reasonable idea in these Covid times I suppose. But it did lead to fun and games as I tried to get out of the back of the car without being able to pull myself up by the back of the front seat blocked off by the screen.
The day definitely improved from the mud bath.