Sunday 12th September. Thorpe Park, stood in a queue of idiots.

Eventually we actually get to the front of the leviathan of a queue and take our place in the little cars that make up the rollercoaster. The usual hush descends as we await the commencement.......... and we’re off.
Again, I have cause to question people's actions. Rollercoasters – why do people raise their hands up high in the air? The only logical(?) explanation is that it’s people showing how brave they are at not holding on. But excuse me. What is this bloody great u-shaped bar that is pressing down on my shoulders and chest? Take all of that away, then see how many people raise their hands in the air. Actually, thinking about who was on the ride, I suspect that at least 50% still would.
The rides these days seem to have a to have a “claim”, a “best of” so to speak. Colossus being no exception. Apparently it’s the rollercoaster with the most inversions - ten. There you go.
I’m quite a fan of rollercoasters, but this one really didn’t do it for me. There was no great drop, there was no extreme speed. There were inversions though, although I’m not sure if there was ten, I wasn’t counting. No-one threw up on our turn.

It was somewhat of an anti-climax and not the best way to start the day.

What next? Rapids. Woop woop, only a fifteen minute queue. The ride itself? I will give it 7 out of 10. It’s didn’t disappoint, but only in the way that expectations to be thrilled weren’t especially high.

Right. Really need to lift our spirits. Let’s go for an old favourite – Nemesis. Good news too, only a 45 min wait! That will do for me....
Except it wasn’t.
It was over two hours.
At one point, we were debating jumping over the fence and just leaving, but we stuck with it.
As a ride, it was quite good. It was typically Nemesis-like. But we were so hacked off with the whole place that we couldn’t really enjoy it.

Should we have stayed and got our money’s worth? Well no. Firstly we hadn’t strictly paid, and secondly why put ourselves through yet more queuing and disappointment?

So that was it. Between four and five hours spent at Thorpe Park, and 95% of that was in queues, full of retards. Chavvy retards.

I’m soooooo looking forward to Alton Towers next year.

TP Part 1

As mentioned, Sunday 12th was to be Thorpe Park day. Been?

Satnav said 2.5 hours and who am I to argue?
So off we go.
Breakfast to be had ‘on the hoof’. Promised ourselves a McDonalds breakfast. I don’t mind Maccy Ds. I wouldn’t say that I crave them, but by the same token, I’m certainly not in the anti-fastfood brigade.
So the Tomtom came into its own (again). Plenty of Burger Kings en route, but no signs for McDonalds. The last time that I had a Burger King breakfast burger it was, let’s be honest, awful. A quick search and a preferred purveyor of lard-in-a-bun was found within yards of the M25. Time was approaching 9.30 and I was amazed at quite how busy it was. Anyway, enough rambling for now. Double sausage & egg McMuffin complete with hash brown and fresh orange. Onwards.

I’ll spare you the rest of the journey as it was not of any interest whatsoever.

And so we begin my worst visit to a theme park... ever.

Entry is fairly straight forward. A little bit of a queue, nothing major. Hand over our vouchers courtesy of Tesco Clubcards (other loyalty deals are available) and in we go.
On entry we choose to dive into the first available ride – Colossus. As we walk in, the sign says 80mins. That was an under-estimate. Fortunately it’s a nice day, so we act ever-so-British and queue politely.
After a good hour and a half, we get close to the front and across the tannoy comes an announcement that they are stopping the ride as someone has been sick. What? Are they not prepared for this sort of eventuality? No-one else seem particularly bothered by this, so I immediately start to wonder why. Is it...

a) Me that is being grossly impatient.
b) Others that are very mild mannered with regards to queuing
c) The average person in the queue has a very low IQ and therefore the concept of queuing amongst similar ‘beings’ for over an hour and a half, and then being told to wait for another indefinite amount of time just passes them by without worry.

I’m not sure. What do you think?

Ramblng Rose

Right, a little bit of neglect, blogwise. Must try harder! Now that I've (re)started it, I ought to make the effort.
So this one's just going to become a bit of a natter really.

First day back after two weeks off, was last week.
What did I do with my two weeks off? Not a great deal to be honest, but that's what I wanted to, so it's not all bad.
The first week was pretty damn wet for a start, so lots of messing about. I rediscovered the up to date version of Elite and messed about on that quite a bit. Squeezed in a bike ride.
The middle weekend was spent a bit of a mess, and come the second week, I actually decided to do something. A few good walks, a few more bike rides and lots more relaxing.
Yep, come last Monday I was pretty refreshed.

It's been a while since I've had a whole fortnight off work and it WAS a shock to the system. Soon got into it though and was firing on all cylinders within a couple of hours.
The week has shot by. Duty on Monday night. A visit to Norwich Air Ambulance on Thursday to present them with a check for £10K from our Snowdon walk.

So here we are, Saturday! A bit of a sod. Ordered a new 40" TV. That arrived this morning. I unpacked it, and starting setting up. As usual, I got rid of all the polystyrene as I went. It was only when I set it up and went to turn it on that I realised that all the screen was cracked. Next steps - retrieve all of the packaging from the bin and try and package it up again.

Today was supposed to be Thorpe Park, but it was light rain today versus sunny tomorrow, so that's when I'm going now instead.

My God, what a boring post. Only marginally better than none at all...