A Rare Weekend Away
It is quite rare for my wife Anne and I to have a day together, never mind anything approaching what most people would call a holiday.
The fact is that I am very busy most of the time and so is Anne in different ways. When one of us is free the other usually isn`t.
However, once in a while we manage to find a day or two when we can go somewhere together, and one such occasion was a recent Mystery Weekend by coach.
National Holidays stopped running holidays from Leicester a few years ago, but have now reinstated the city as a starting point. When their new brochure dropped on our doorstep, a quick perusal led to the discovery that one of their Mystery Weekends coincided with a weekend when we could take it up, so take it up we did.
The fact that I run my own quite extensive programme of Coach Trips does not deter me from going on other people`s trips as a passenger. It`s rather nice to be able to sit back sometimes and let the organisation be done for me, without personally having to worry about any problems.
On this occasion we set out from St. Margarets Bus Station with obviously no idea of where we were heading. We took the M69 towards Coventry and stopped in a yard at Bedworth, where we were told we had a twenty minute wait. Actually it wasn`t that long as the couple we were to collect arrived early.
Then we went back on the M69 to Leicester and took the M1 Northwards, passing the village of Markfield a few miles from Leicester an hour and a half after we had started.
After a while we arrived at Tibshelf Services. That was fine, as we were able to stoke up with a good breakfast.
From there we continued up the motorway and stopped at Leeds (Yorkshire), where we spent the afternoon.
Leeds is a fine city in many ways and we were quite happy to be there. We visited the very impressive St. Peter`s Church, rebuilt on a mediaeval site in the 19th century and had coffee there, then had a look at the fabulous Kirkgate indoor market, some of the Victorian shopping arcades, the excellent museum, the Catholic Cathedral and the beautifully refurbished Corn Exchange, before having another coffee at the Bus Station and catching the coach.
Then we were taken to the Holiday Inn near Ossett, where we spent the night. The hotel was fine, as was the food, but we were too far away from the town to have a proper look at it.
In the morning, the coach took us through Sheffield to the lovely little town of Bakewell. A walk by the river, a look at the shops and a coffee in one of my favourite teashops went down very nicely, although I am very glad I was able to tell the driver where to take the coach, as otherwise we would have had a long walk back into town from where she was going to drop us.
We went on a bit further and were told we were going to make a stop at Matlock Bath. Actually it turned out to be Matlock, but we had a little stroll round there and had a coffee at Costa.
Then we came home, travelling back down the motorway and arriving back in Leicester in the late afternoon.
It was nice to be able to have a weekend away together
Posted by colin on Monday 12th April, 2010 at 8:18am