Northern adventures

It's been a bit longer than intended for me to get round to writing this. I always find something else to do instead.

On Friday, I managed to get myself out of bed at 6am. I am not generally a morning person but managed it and was ready to go and pick my Dad up at 7am. Fortunately, at that time the roads leading to the M1 were not too busy so I didn't have any real scary incidents.

I ended up driving for the majority of the journey with my Dad was navigating. He couldn't map read and drive at the same time. The first real problem we encountered was in Sheffield. There was a massive road accident right in the middle of town. The part we needed to get through. The original plan to stop in Sheffield for some geeky tram trips had to be hastily scrapped and instead I got to practice my clutch control on Sheffield's many hills and drive behind a lot of trams that were also stuck in traffic. Eventually we got through and carried on to just outside Wakefield for the National Coal Mining Museum.

As with any self respecting coal mining museum, there was a trip underground. This involved getting a hard hat and safety gear then cramming into a lift with 15 other people to descend 140 metres into the mine. The chap providing the tour was from Barnsley and enjoyed using various distinctive Barnsley phrases to confuse the more southern members of the group. Despite banging my head a couple of times on the low ceilings, it was a detailed tour and fairly interesting. Perhaps went on a bit too long though.

The next day we drove back via Sheffield so we could get our fix of tram riding. Luckily there were no accidents or traffic jams on this occasion. We took a tram from Meadowhall shopping centre and tried to find an Industrial Museum. We found the museum but unfortunately it was shut on a Saturday and we were there on a Saturday. Instead we had a wander about before catching the tram back to Meadowhall and starting the journey home.

This part was slightly more stressful. There were a lot more crazy people out on the road. There were people doing 80/90 miles per hour undertaking and the odd annoying truck. I managed to keep my cool and we made it back to south west London by about 6pm.

Now it's back to normal life - pottering about in the suburbs of London. I got a trip to Essex for work on Monday but that mostly involved giving a presentation and enduring noisy school children on the train back to Liverpool Street.