Travel

 

It's been a busy week, but not as busy as it was going to be. As previously mentioned, I'm a bit strung out at the moment. Absolutely shattered. There's no sign yet that my SAD light is making the entrance to winter any easier.

Originally my week looked like this, Tuesday morning 06:00 travel to Lee-on-the-Solent, stay in hotel overnight and then back to Lee-on-the-Solent, then stay in different hotel and on Thursday an all day meeting just outside Southampton and then travel home. Get home about 20:00 and get ready for alarm to go off at 04:45 for flight to Glasgow.

For weeks I've been wondering how I'll cope with all that, whilst being strung out. Last week I bit the bullet and managed to wriggle out of a few things. As a result all I needed to do was to get up at 05:00 on Tuesday to leave at 06:00 to get to a meeting in Lee-on-the-Solent, then travel home in the evening. The night before around 20:00 I was in the sitting room with my eyes sliding into the back of my head with tiredness. So at 20:30 I was tucked up in bed and I think I was asleep within a minute.

As it turns out - with this early sleep I didn't need my alarm, I woke up at 03:45! Though this did mean that after I'd returned on Tuesday I was once again on the sofa with eyes sliding back into my head, though with late return this was about 22:00. On Wednesday I should have gone to bed early, but I have something of a glut of low level reality tv right now, with Big Brother and Married at First Sight UK - oh and Bake off as well - all on at the same time. I don't usually watch much telly, just don't have time - but suddenly I'm trying to cram in as much as possible to wade through the series. 

Thursday morning (today as I write this bit) I woke up with my alarm at what felt like the middle of the night. I so rarely wake up with the alarm as I tend to wake up naturally before it goes off (lucky me), but this morning it wrenched me out of a dream - I can't remember if it was a good one or not. 

I got out of bed and was literally stumbling around the house feeding the dog etc. unable to get momentum on the day. Tonight I need to finish packing as tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and be ready to leave at 05:30 to go and catch a flight. At least I know at the end of the flight is a lovely time with great friends, it's not a business trip - it's a trip for lots of fun and laughter.

Hopefully I can have a cat nap on the flight. I'm wearing a mask this time because every time I go on a flight I get ill afterwards. 

On the subject of getting up early - recently I got an alert about my mobile saying that I was using it a lot late at night. I was totally confused - I never do that!!!! Then I realised that actually the message had been set up by young people with a life. What they didn't realise was that actually I wasn't using it late at night - my 'early in the morning' - after sleep - was basically the same time as their 'late at night' when they got in from being out for the evening. That actually made me laugh.

This next chunk follows my trip away. I managed to get up in time to get the early flight, though once we got to the airport it was delayed by over an hour (grrr). Two things I didn't do on the flight, one was sleep and the other was remember to wear my mask. To get the early flight I drove about 40 minutes to Horsham where I parked at the friends I was travelling with and her husband drove us to the airport. Because friend is in a wheelchair there was stuff to sort out once we arrived. Though why we bothered I'll not know. Normally at Gatwick it's super organised, but this time we may as well not have bothered. Nobody helped us and they didn't even get the lift to the aircraft sorted for friend. Frustrating.

It was a good flight, not too much turbulence and a good landing, what more could you ask for. Once we arrived in Glasgow we were met by my friend. Somebody I absolutely adore. She took us back to her house and we had a yummy lunch and then got ready to go out to a Casino. I've never been to a Casino before - I didn't know what to expect. I actually loved it. We had some drinks together and then went to the tables. The first table we went to was roulette. I managed to lose £20 in the space of 7 minutes. I decided that perhaps casinos were not my 'thing'. So I stood back and watched my friends. One of them did pretty well by keeping her chips on black. She ended up making the grand total of £30!!! After roulette we moved onto blackjack. Again I just watched. Which is a good thing because you could see the professionals getting a bit irritated with us amateurs that were betting £1!!!!!

It did blow my mind seeing that where we were putting down £1 bets, others were putting down £100, but then if friend that won on roulette had been putting down £50 instead of £5 bets she'd have walked away with a tidy sum. I'm not going to do that basic maths because I'll probably get it wrong - I'll let you do that. 

We then went back and tucked up early. The next day in the afternoon we went to a tapas restaurant and had loads of yummy food. Best thing about restaurant was there was a clothes shop on either side! So whilst waiting for food you could pop out and buy stuff. This may not sound exciting to you, but I literally never go into a shop - it's all done online. I managed to find a jacket for my neices wedding - yay and also got myself yet another handbag.

On the first night I zebra striped my drinks and so on day 2 I felt fine, I wasn't so clever on the second day. By day 3 I was a shell of my former self! We got in the car feeling a bit delicate and drove for what seemed like hours, along very windy country roads. Friend I'd travelled with got car sick and was not in a good place. I was ok in the back of the car and luckily the moment I suddenly felt car sick too we arrived at our destination. 

The destination was lovely - though the journey had been long so we didn't get much time there. We had travelled to Largs. The view was lovely - it's the photo this week. Opposite and very close was the Isle of Cumbrae. We popped into a cafe/restaurant to get lunch. With our dodgy heads it turned out none of us were particularly hungry. We sort of poked at our food, but left more than we ate. 

After this, because it had a been a long way and we didn't want to miss our flight, we headed back. Bizarrely, whilst the journey there had taken ages, the journey back took about 10 minutes. As a result we got back far too early. So we went back to friends house and each caught about 20 mins of zzz's before heading for the airport. 

The journey back from such a weekend is always hard, you just want to be home. Luckily the flight was on time. So we got on the flight and then reversed our journey, got to Gatwick, friends husband picked us up, I drove home from their house. In the end I got home at about 21:00 - absolutely shattered and very grateful I had the Monday off.

So that was my exhausting week last week. Good thing Christmas is coming up - there's never much to do for that (ho ho ho).