The talk turned to holidays earlier in the year and with Covid (C19) still around decided that holidays abroad was not for us this year. Go somewhere different she who must be obeyed (SHMBO) said although no suggestion as to where that was was forthcoming and that is how it stayed for a few weeks. Then it was found that my holiday period that had been approved clashed with another person in my department at work and it would leave our department unmanned for 80% of the week (another person from the department had left since holidays were booked). So I opted to move my week forward by a week as to avoid the clash. Trying to get two companies to agree to us having the same week off was fun but we got there in the end.
But still no decision on where, we had done the west country quite a bit already and wanted something different, did not want to do Norfolk way as we have a trip earmarked for later in the year up that way and the Isle of Wight was deemed to close to home. After much discussion and hotel hunting we decided on Lincoln, the main reason being we could visit the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at RAF Coningsby and Bomber command, the rest of our holiday would be spent visiting local attractions. This was met with approval by SHMBO, hotel duly located and booked thing were rolling for Holiday 21. Well that was until about 2 weeks later it came to light that Lincoln had the highest C19 rate in the UK, checked quite a few sources and everything came back saying the same so we left it like that for another few weeks and then as thing were not looking any better in Lincoln took the decision to cancel and go somewhere else. Started off by looking to see if we could base ourselves elsewhere and still go to Coningsby, but some how Skegness just did not do it for me so we cancelled our trip to RAF Coningsby as well, now we were back to square one, holiday from worked booked and no where to go.
The next few nights were spent looking at a map of the UK (good old google maps) with suggestion made and dropped, I was looking east towards Kent area, Essex, without much luck until I moved the map northwards a bit to much and noticed that The Imperial War Museum Duxford was within an acceptable travelling distance (for me at least) to SouthEnd, so the search for a hotel started. It soon became apparent that the dates we wanted would not be available due to the Bank holiday weekend at the end of August, wife had a doctors appointment on the Thursday afternoon so we were looking at leaving Saturday or Sunday. This led the wife to cancel the her doctors appointment and we ended up leaving on a Monday and coming home on the Friday giving us four nights away. WE stayed in Rochford which is not far Southend Airport (as we found out at 6am every morning and the planes flew out of Southend). Holiday 21 was slowly coming together and with a couple of weeks to go things were looking up.
Day 1
Bank Holiday Monday, now travelling on a Bank holiday would of normally set alarm bells ringing but for some reason they had been muted. We planned a steady drive to Rochford leaving mid morning for the 160 mile drive which should of taken just under 3hrs. Those muted alarm bells suddenly start ringing loud and clear a few miles from home when we joined the queues on the A31 heading for Southampton and London, we arrived at our hotel in Rochford just under 6 hrs later, the biggest queue being for the Dartford Tunnel crossing but the whole journey had been one long queue. I asked the wife to kick me the next time I suggest travelling on a Bank holiday especially if it includes the M25.
We finished the day with a meal at an Indian restaurant (more on that later), which was very nice, I had not been considering an early night but my body took over and said goodnight to the world at 9pm, the joys of getting old I guess.
