Day 30 (19th July 2022)

Today is my halfway point of my Germinal CCXXIV road trip. It has been quite a busy day, with its fair share of ups and downs, much life (my) life itself!

Left the campsite in Southport under a cloud of shame as I broke the rules and drove out the in way (I couldn't be bothered to drive all the way to the end and back so just raised the one way barrier and drove the wrong way through it - would have got away with it too but for one man who started yelling "I didn't know you could do that!" loud enough for the person in charge to come out of the office to investigate. 

wev.

First stop of the day ... well, you just have to forgive my Ian Brown impersonation... stop #54

SPIKE ISLAND

That was almost it for England as far as Germinal CCXXIV went, but between me and the Welsh border was another English cathedral city, Chester. It had misericords!!

The temperature kept rising but I carried on regardless, making my way to the first Welsh stop on my tour. Stop #55

POINT OF AYR 

Although it was kind of easy to find, I got lost on the way back to the carpark. Being the hottest day in the UK since lions roamed our shores in the days of Pangaea, wandering around sand dunes wasn't something I really wanted to be doing. It took me 40 minutes to find the Alphard. 

I hoped the next stop wouldn't be quite so stressful. It wasn't.  Stop #56

RHYL SUN CENTRE 

Well, Rhyl Sun Centre as most of us probably know it doesn't exist anymore. Despite squillions being pumped into it, it died a death in 2014 and was resurrected as SC2 in 2019. Clad in brown. Rhyl is grot central. Why anyone would come on holiday here when Llandudno is just a few miles further along the coast is anyone's guess.

Llandudno happens to be the place to head to in order to get to stop #57

GREAT ORME

So I have to come clean here. I did take the 2 trams right up to the top of Great Orme, only to discover that I had left my most treasured Germinal CCXXIV T shirt behind. I tried to bluff it ...

but neither pics felt quite right.

Things started to go downhill from this moment on. I put in the campsite postcode to Waze and almost immediately got a call from my campsite asking me how long I'd be - I told them about an hour. About an hour later, I turned up only to be met by two women telling me they were full. When I said "but you called me an hour ago ..."

They hadn't called me and when I got my phone out to prove that I wasn't hallucinating, it dawned on me that I had put the wrong campsite postcode into waze and this was the place I would be staying at tomorrow night.

ARRRGH!

Finally made it to the right campsite you will be pleased to hear.

I'm such an idiot sometimes!

Allons-y 

Douglsd Germinal CCXXIV Brain over and out