A few days away

What a fantastic few days. Fiona has gone line dancing this weekend in Bournemouth and as I had some holiday I said we would go down a few days early. What a good decision. The weather was fantastic and the Travelodge we stayed in was only 5 minutes from the beech. We took Harvey and he had a ball. He has never been to the sea side so had great fun running in and out of the water and then rolling in the sand, this results in one nice clean dog. Not. Thankfully we don't call him 'Teflon dog' for nothing and in no time he was clean and dry.
One thing I did find driving around is that many towns seem to have road systems and signing designed only for locals. I found it very difficult at times to find my way to 'A' as the road sign often pointed to 'B' but you had to know 'B' was on the way to 'A'!
Still a great time spent away and will go down on Sunday to pick Fiona up.

Better get the coach!

From the BBC

Rail services halted by repairs

No trains will run through the Bath area for the next six weekends due to essential maintenance works.

There will be no services between Bristol and Bath, Bath and Westbury in Wiltshire or Westbury and Swindon while tracks and embankments are repaired.

Replacement bus services will be provided during October and November.

First Great Western services will also be affected as services to Paddington from Bristol Temple Meads will not stop at Bath or Chippenham.

A spokesman for First Great Western said: "We apologise to any customers affected by this change to our services while Network Rail carries out essential maintenance.

"We would have liked to provide alternative bus services much closer to Bath Spa, but with the huge regeneration project currently underway in front of the station, this is unfortunately not possible."

The work, over the next six weekends, starts on Sunday, 12 October and should be completed by Sunday, 16 November 2008.

The bus replacement service in Bath will run from Riverside Coach Park and not from Bath Spa railway station.

Road Signs

One of my observations when driving is the large amount of signs, mainly at roadworks that are at best wrong and at worst dangerous.
This week has seen -
A road narrows on the left followed by a keep left sign.
On an approach to a bend the sign indicated road narrows on the left. Around the bend the roadworks were on the right. In fact the whole right hand side of the road was dug up. Had I been on my bike it could have been very nasty.
The most annoying one was today on the M4. As I joined at J4 the signs said 'M5 J16-18 Long Delays' Not a problem as I don't go that way. Just passed J12 Radio 2 announecd M4 J13 accident! The signs said - 'M5 J16-18 Long Delays' Halfway between J12 and J13 the traffic stoipped. We were stopped for about 10mins when the sign in front came on would it say what the hold up was? No. 'M5 J16-18 Long Delays' The traffic at last started to move still no indaction to the problem. Then '50 Queue Ahead' came up would we know. The next sign came up and you guessed it 'M5 J16-18 Long Delays' I know the Highways Agency guys do a good job but things like this don't do them any favours.