Sunday dawned and off to breakfast we went. Mark thoroughly enjoyed his fry-up. I was more restrained with special k and toast - plus i was leaving room for my roast dinner. We checked out..i wonder what the hotel people thought of all the empty bottles in our room..wish I'd been a fly on the wall. I hated saying goodbye to Liz and Peter and Pat and Shaun. Must confess to the odd watery eye. Now we had to be at winchcombe station for the 10:40 train so off we went via Tewksbury to pick up Marlene and Linda. I must confess that when i saw their luggage my heart sank a little..i didn't think there'd be enough room in the boot of my little Mazda but some creative packing by Mark and Linda's willingness to wear my balloons from the night before solved the problem. off we went following the route Andy had told us and aided by a map given to Marlene by her landlady. Trouble is they aren't really keen on accurate signposts in this part of the world...We found the little brown steam train signs and got all excited as we pulled into the station car park at about 10.10.......only to discover we were at Toddington station and not winchcombe...Dagnabit the hunt was on for winchcombe station. Andy had said in passing that winchcombe station was really in the village of Greet so when we saw a sign for Greet we hurtled up the road to discover...no station. Back out on the winchcombe road and no signposts, no little brown steam train signs and worst of all..no mobile phone signal to ring the others and ask for directions. Every so often we'd get a signal, mark would ring Sue's number, pass the phone to me only for the signal to disappear. after 2 lots of this we concluded only Mark's side of the car could receive a signal but not for long enough to be any help. By now its nearly 10.20 and i am getting concerned to say the least. found a nice little man who didn't really know where the station was but directed us to Greet Road because he'd heard that there was some sort of train thing up that way. We were back on track, if you'll pardon the pun. The roads were very narrow and heavily parked so took a wrong turn, panicking now i backtracked and went up greet road like a bat out of hell...we made it to the station with only minutes to spare.. we quickly got out of the car, ran hell for leather for the ticket office to discover Wolfie had kindly got our tickets to save time. the relief was amazing, as was the realisation that on this day of all days the train was running late... just about par for the travels of the whole weekend really LOL. The Steam train was certainly that in more ways than one... steam plumed out of the funnel and we all steamed inside the carriages. The scenery was lovely as was the chance for more chit chat. Back to winchcombe, and lunch at the corner cupboard. Now directions to this were minimal, "it's on the main road through the town and it comes out to the edge of the pavement". I expected this to turn into another hunt of "holy Grail" type proportions but in 5 minutes there it was and we grabbed the last place in the car park. Inside for a nice refreshing Diet coke, except the air machine packed up and there was no coke or lemonade..ho hum here we go again. Lunch when it came was absolutely delicious. The roast beef was perfect, there were a couple of vegetable dishes done with leeks, peas and red cabbage that were really tasty. mind you Gwen's prawn salad looked really nice too.. I resisted the puddings.... It had been lovely to see Howie and Bron and Gwen and Nick again as well as our partners in crime from the precious night but 4 o'clock came and we had to leave to make it back in time to pick the kids up from greg. Hugs all round and more watery eyes and we were on the road again. Howie gave us a route that took us up to junction 9 on the M40 and we avoided the Oxford problem that way.. Howie's route was very pretty and added about 20 minutes to the journey which was worth it to avoid the delays at oxford. once on the M40 all went well. we dropped Marlene and Linda off, had a lightning chat with Dave and then we were off again as it was after 6pm and we had a fair way to go. then we saw signs that said the M25 was shut from 6 - 5.. No surprise there then given all the other travel fun and games. We thought about the A25 but decided to chance it. We were lucky it had reopened by the time we got there and we picked the children up about 8pm. A wonderful weekend and then back to reality with a bump on Monday morning with the school run. hope i haven't bored you too much Karen

Not bored in the least, Karen . . . but my fingernails need a bit of a manicure now LOL Apart from the driving stresses it sounded a wonderful weekend . . . and I loved everyone's photos on MyFamily. Wish I could have joined you all. Hugs, Jennifer KAREN HILLS wrote: > > then we saw signs that said the M25 was shut from 6 - 5.. No surprise there then given all the other travel fun and games. We thought about the A25 but decided to chance it. We were lucky it had reopened by the time we got there and we picked the children up about 8pm. > > A wonderful weekend and then back to reality with a bump on Monday morning with the school run. > > hope i haven't bored you too much > > Karen > > > > >

I'm so glad you all had a lovely time despite the traffic delays and lack of sign-posts. Hugs to all ... Lizzie -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer [mailto:slyfoxx@shaw.ca] Sent: 14 June 2006 17:09 To: GEN-TRIVIA-ENG-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [TRIVVIES] Reunion part 2 Not bored in the least, Karen . . . but my fingernails need a bit of a manicure now LOL Apart from the driving stresses it sounded a wonderful weekend . . . and I loved everyone's photos on MyFamily. Wish I could have joined you all. Hugs, Jennifer KAREN HILLS wrote: > > then we saw signs that said the M25 was shut from 6 - 5.. No surprise there then given all the other travel fun and games. We thought about the A25 but decided to chance it. We were lucky it had reopened by the time we got there and we picked the children up about 8pm. > > A wonderful weekend and then back to reality with a bump on Monday morning with the school run. > > hope i haven't bored you too much > > Karen > > > > > ==== GEN-TRIVIA-ENG Mailing List ==== RANDOM TAGLINE - GEN-TRIVIA-ENG - MAILING LIST Remember - Our "todays" ups & downs of life, are "tomorrows" Ancestral Trivia.

Not boring at all Karen.......but I was in panic mode all through lol DiDi http://photobucket.com/albums/d100/didi_45 Sunday dawned and off to breakfast we went. Mark thoroughly enjoyed his fry-up. I was more restrained with special k and toast - plus i was leaving room for my roast dinner. We checked out..i wonder what the hotel people thought of all the empty bottles in our room..wish I'd been a fly on the wall. I hated saying goodbye to Liz and Peter and Pat and Shaun. Must confess to the odd watery eye. Now we had to be at winchcombe station for the 10:40 train so off we went via Tewksbury to pick up Marlene and Linda. I must confess that when i saw their luggage my heart sank a little..i didn't think there'd be enough room in the boot of my little Mazda but some creative packing by Mark and Linda's willingness to wear my balloons from the night before solved the problem. off we went following the route Andy had told us and aided by a map given to Marlene by her landlady. Trouble is they aren't really keen on accurate signposts in this part of the world...We found the little brown steam train signs and got all excited as we pulled into the station car park at about 10.10.......only to discover we were at Toddington station and not winchcombe...Dagnabit the hunt was on for winchcombe station. Andy had said in passing that winchcombe station was really in the village of Greet so when we saw a sign for Greet we hurtled up the road to discover...no station. Back out on the winchcombe road and no signposts, no little brown steam train signs and worst of all..no mobile phone signal to ring the others and ask for directions. Every so often we'd get a signal, mark would ring Sue's number, pass the phone to me only for the signal to disappear. after 2 lots of this we concluded only Mark's side of the car could receive a signal but not for long enough to be any help. By now its nearly 10.20 and i am getting concerned to say the least. found a nice little man who didn't really know where the station was but directed us to Greet Road because he'd heard that there was some sort of train thing up that way. We were back on track, if you'll pardon the pun. The roads were very narrow and heavily parked so took a wrong turn, panicking now i backtracked and went up greet road like a bat out of hell...we made it to the station with only minutes to spare.. we quickly got out of the car, ran hell for leather for the ticket office to discover Wolfie had kindly got our tickets to save time. the relief was amazing, as was the realisation that on this day of all days the train was running late... just about par for the travels of the whole weekend really LOL. The Steam train was certainly that in more ways than one... steam plumed out of the funnel and we all steamed inside the carriages. The scenery was lovely as was the chance for more chit chat. Back to winchcombe, and lunch at the corner cupboard. Now directions to this were minimal, "it's on the main road through the town and it comes out to the edge of the pavement". I expected this to turn into another hunt of "holy Grail" type proportions but in 5 minutes there it was and we grabbed the last place in the car park. Inside for a nice refreshing Diet coke, except the air machine packed up and there was no coke or lemonade..ho hum here we go again. Lunch when it came was absolutely delicious. The roast beef was perfect, there were a couple of vegetable dishes done with leeks, peas and red cabbage that were really tasty. mind you Gwen's prawn salad looked really nice too.. I resisted the puddings.... It had been lovely to see Howie and Bron and Gwen and Nick again as well as our partners in crime from the precious night but 4 o'clock came and we had to leave to make it back in time to pick the kids up from greg. Hugs all round and more watery eyes and we were on the road again. Howie gave us a route that took us up to junction 9 on the M40 and we avoided the Oxford problem that way.. Howie's route was very pretty and added about 20 minutes to the journey which was worth it to avoid the delays at oxford. once on the M40 all went well. we dropped Marlene and Linda off, had a lightning chat with Dave and then we were off again as it was after 6pm and we had a fair way to go. then we saw signs that said the M25 was shut from 6 - 5.. No surprise there then given all the other travel fun and games. We thought about the A25 but decided to chance it. We were lucky it had reopened by the time we got there and we picked the children up about 8pm. A wonderful weekend and then back to reality with a bump on Monday morning with the school run. hope i haven't bored you too much Karen ==== GEN-TRIVIA-ENG Mailing List ==== RANDOM TAGLINE - GEN-TRIVIA-ENG - MAILING LIST Comparison stories between Countries are always most welcome. These help to make the list interesting as well as educational.