What a day! It started with some great news for Sam – she has accepted a position with one of the A1 race teams, based at Silverstone, starting on Monday! Her job will be Team Secretary/Co-ordinator and she will be travelling with the team to all the rounds (Mexico, South Africa, Holland, Italy, UK, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and New Zealand) and, the best part as far as we’re concerned, after the China round in November, Sam will be flown to Australia to spend Christmas with us and to stay in Oz until the New Zealand round at the end of January! How good is that?
After all that excitement, Ron and I packed up the car to travel to Allan and Dot’s in order for Allan to take us to John Lennon Airport (Liverpool) on Saturday, for our trip to Paris. Before we headed north, we walked around the corner from Rob and Laura’s, to see the SAS Cemetery and Memorials - it’s a very moving place, especially as most of those interred are in their 20s. What a sad waste of young lives.
We decided to programme Tom to take us by the more scenic route (i.e. missing out the motorways) and off we went, first stop Ludlow. This is an historic town, with the obligatory castle and some incredibly narrow streets and beautiful Tudor style buildings. However, when we wanted to leave the town to go to Shrewsbury, we found that the main road out, over a bridge, had been closed with no diversion in place! Tom took us all over the place and, in some parts it was almost impossible to drive the car – Ron had to manoeuvre back and forth to get around the corners and, at one point, we thought we’d have to reverse quite a way because we couldn’t see how we could go forward. A knight in shining armour (well, a little old Welsh lady actually!) came to our rescue and explained how to get through the narrow tunnel and back onto the main street, after which Ron found an alternate route.
We drove on, eventually arriving at Shrewsbury where we parked and went into a shopping centre. There, on a TV in a shop, we watched a bit of the Olympic Opening Ceremony but sadly didn’t get to see Australia marching.
We carried on north, stopping to have a look at the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury, where, on 21 July 1403, a ferocious battle was fought between Sir Henry “Hotspur” Percy and King Henry IV (both Parts). Harry Hotspur was killed and the Plantagenet succession was secured.
Ever onward and upward we went, through what has now become very familiar, beautiful countryside, until we came to a complete stop near Oulton Park raceway – huge queues of traffic because of one set of traffic lights! We reckoned we were held up for over 45 minutes – not happy, Jan!
We arrived at Allan and Dot’s in time for tea and then packed what we were taking to Paris. Dot’s friend Joan came to visit and so we didn’t actually get to bed as early as we would have liked!
