Yet more travel and excitement …..

So, last weekend was time for more travelling but this time it included hubby (yay!) - we went off for a short break to Bruges with PTV and his lovely wife and had a really fab time.

Bruges is a really nice place – if you’ve never been, you must – it’s full of fabulous old buildings and canals, has amazing churches and architecture and lots of chocolate shops ^*1 and bars with 1001 varieties of Belgian beer - Mmmmmm... Kriek and oh yes – lots of cobbles…

Now, before I went, I read something that said that Bruges was great for wheelchair users so I took mine. Well, yes it’s great in that it’s flat but it’s really important that you don’t have any fillings in your teeth if you’re going to use one because guaranteed that 2 days of judderrrinnggg around on cobbles and you’ll lose any that aren’t really firmly cemented in. Still, I got a lot further than I could have on foot so it was worth every bump and shimmy. I’m still wondering how much of my bone graft has now shaken down to my bottom tho’…

After too short a time we had to come back to dear old Blighty to pick up our car and come home. We loaded up the boot with all our chocolate purchases, started up and reversed out of our parking space whilst waving goodbye to PTV (and his lovely wife). Suddenly their waves turned frantic – our car (the big and boring one I gave to hubby) was leaking its life blood all over the road (that’s oil to all you mechanically minded people out there…). That was it, no oil, no go so we had to call a recovery lorry out to get us the 200 miles home. “No problem”, the guy said “I should have you home by 11pm”. Well, he might have but for a few small details. He was very sleepy for one and was doing his best to stay awake by alternately shrugging and wriggling his shoulders and scratching his crotch and from behind it appeared that he had some strange version of St Vitus dance . Each time he almost dropped off to sleep he then strayed over the rumble strips ^*2 on the side of the motorway, alternately slowing down and speeding up when he woke again. Hubby slept (fitfully) through most of this whilst I struggled to keep the recovery lorry on the road by sheer force of will alone. At one point I decided to make conversation to keep the driver awake (no all you doubters I didn’t do this just because I like to talk too much…). I asked him if he was married and he told me that he had a fiancé who did the same job as him – in fact he had even trained her to be a recovery driver and she worked for the same company as him. I wondered if he’d trained her to stay awake by shrugging and wriggling her shoulders etc, but didn’t like to ask that….

Anyway, the car is now at the garage and we are waiting for big Bill (he’s not the guy who fixes the car, he’s the credit card destroyer) – I’ll keep you informed…

^*1 I make no apology at all for including this link and accept no responsibility for any weight you might gain….
^*2 And I thought I was through with cobbles for the weekend when we left Brugges