Off to Blackrod

It's 8.05pm and we're sitting in the Ramada Jarvis hotel in Blackrod Bolton - we left Katie's at about 5.15pm!!!!!!

We were going ok at first but Maureen rang Katie so it was put on speakerphone and there was a multi-way conversation. It was only when someone asked about the next instruction on the list we realised we'd just gone past the next motorway exit where we should've got off 8| We went to the next junction and still managed to go wrong so we eventually ended up 2 junctions further away than we should've been.

We got off the motorway and into BLackrod and drove round, and round, and round, and round ........... We drove past the same road about 6 times - the hotal apparently is on Chorley Rd but we saw Chorley Rd and Chorley Rd and Chorley Rd 8| In the end we stopped and asked a man in a flourescent jacket with a van for directions. He ummed and ahhed a bit and eventually gave us directions - we got there but we went past it then realised there was a little slip road to get in so we had to go far past it again to a roundabout so we could turn round and get in.

We went in and because Katie's got the disabled badge we got a parking space right in front of the hotel - in fact i noticed we got the very first public space, the one next to us was for staff. when we went in we found there was a wedding party milling around in reception. Katie booked us into our rooms and booked us in for dinner at 9pm.

When we got to our rooms we got in - rooms next door to each other and with connecting doors :-D :-D

We all sat round in Jen and Catherine's room for a while drinking and listening to music on Jennifer's laptop. Jen and i both brought our laptops cos we thought we had wi-fi in the rooms but it was a wired connection and when Jen connected her computer we discovered you had to pay extortionate amounts - £5.99 for one hour!!!!