Journey south along the Great North Road, before becoming stuck in the Big Smoke

Apart from the two posts I wrote whilst we were in Northumberland last week, I haven’t written much on the blog recently, This isn’t down to laziness or indifference, but more so because we left our return to Tonbridge until the last possible minute. We arrived home at around 4 pm on Sunday afternoon, and with work the following morning, there’s been very little time for writing. It's a similar situation to when we returned from our Mediterranean cruise, back in June when following a Sunday return to England, I drove home from Southampton, and went straight back into work the following morning.

We began our long journey home on Saturday, departing Alnwick shortly after 10 am, and what followed was a long and rather boring drive, interrupted by patches fog and occasional hold ups due road works. We stopped for a comfort break at Wetherby Services, a facility that was absolutely rammed with travelers like us, no doubt after the same thing. The services are just off the A1M, so perhaps there was some local traffic, or maybe it was just the time of day, but there seemed to be an awful lot of people making a similar journey to us.

Suitably refreshed, we continued our journey passing turnings to places such as Ferrybridge, Doncaster, Sheffield, Newark and Stamford. It wasn't a bad journey, although it was exceedingly boring, so I was relieved when we reached our next pit-stop, the American-themed OK Diner, close to Grantham. This is an establishment we’ve stopped at a couple of times before, and for the record, on our outward journey, we called in at another OK Diner, at Tickencote, on the opposite carriageway. Mrs PBT’s prefers this one, but the diner on the southbound carriageway, is more spacious.

We parked the car and traipsed inside. After a week of Premier Inn catering, the OK Diner made a pleasant change, although both Eileen and I were quite restrained in our choice of food - a doorstep bacon sandwich each, although I did supplement mine with a fried egg. Matthew, being younger and possessing a bigger appetite, went the whole hog, and ordered a large breakfast, even though it was the middle of the afternoon.  His mother was becoming slightly concerned about his eating, because he had a full-English most mornings at the Premier Inn we were staying at, and even his father wouldn’t do that!

Leaving the diner, we set off on relatively short drive to the junction of the A1 and A14 close to the town of Huntingdon. Looking at the map we were now just under 100 miles from home and could comfortably have driven the whole distance. We’d already decided to break our journey and had pre-booked into yet another Premier Inn. That decision was partially based on distance involved, but more so on the race track that is the M25, as it approaches the Dartford Crossing. As it happened, it was the right decision, even though the following day’s drive ended up having issues of its own.

The Huntingdon Premier Inn was bland, like all the rest, and with no twin rooms available, the bed was too narrow for the pair of us, but with a McDonald’s bacon roll each to keep us going, we set off mid-morning for what ought to have a been a short, and fairly leisurely drive back to Kent. Unfortunately, as we turned south onto the M11 towards the M25, there were various illuminated signs warning that the latter motorway was closed between junctions 29 and 30. I turned to the person who was navigating (Mrs PBT’s), to check where those two junctions were. She confirmed my worst suspicion that the closure was just before the Dartford Crossing.

As we got nearer to the London Orbital Motorway, there were signs warnings of long delays due to the necessary diversions, so thinking on my feet – or backside, as I was sitting down, I announced to the family that we would remain on the M11, all the way into east London and then cross the Thames via the Blackwall Tunnel. What could possibly go wrong? We made our way towards the tunnel, all the time ignoring Eileen’s sat nav, which was trying to route us back to the M25.  As we neared the tunnel approach, I noticed to my horror a sign saying that the southbound Blackwall Tunnel was closed. Surely some mistake, as they say, or even some kind of prank, but there was no joke, and the tunnel was well and truly closed! Now, I appreciate that the UK’s road network has to go undergo regular maintenance from time to time, but why not coordinate closures rather than allow them to happen at the same time? Talk about a ridiculous coincidence, and complete lack of forward planning.

We were then left with the dilemma of how to get cross the River Thames. I initially thought of heading toward Tower Bridge, when Eileen suggested the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Despite many years of visiting the capital and traveling in a north – south direction, this was a crossing I'd never used, and with good reason. Although the Rotherhithe opened a decade after the Blackwall, it remains a single-bore tunnel that was designed for the traffic at the time – horse-drawn carriages, and rudimentary automobiles, rather than modern vehicles. Its narrow bore, plus a number of bends, mean the tunnel is restricted to private cars, and given that the latter have increased in size over the past few decades, the crossing leaves little room for drive error.

It took the best part of an hour to reach the tunnel entrance, thanks to road works affecting the A13, East India Dock Road. The traffic was scarcely moving in fact it took us an hour to travel to a distance of just a few miles hello somewhat delightedly we came up on the entrance to the Rotherhithe almost by accident. The tunnel lived up to its reputation of being narrow with just the one lane in either direction and several twists and turns, so it was a relief when we surfaced on the Surrey side of the Thames. and continued to navigate our way down to pick up the road that would take us back to Kent. We ended up driving along the A200, through Deptford and Greenwich, although looking at the map afterwards, we’d have been better picking up the A2 to the south of it.

Not only would that road have been more familiar, it would probably have been carrying less traffic. I can't remember the last time I'd driven in London although it must be about 40 years ago. The standard of driving certainly hadn't improved but far worse than the four-wheel vehicles were the scooters employed by fast food companies such as Deliveroo, Uber or Just Eat. With scant regard for their own safety, they were weaving in and out of the traffic until it reached the stage of, "if you're stupid enough to cut in front of me, you can suffer the consequences if I accidentally knock you off."

Fortunately, nothing of that nature occurred, but as with the other side of the Thames, we crawled our way towards our destination and before long a comfort stop was needed for the driver. We were also getting low on fuel, even though there would have been ample for the clear run home I’d originally envisaged. Fortunately, just the other side of Greenwich I found a BP filling station, with a well-stocked shop and, most importantly, some nice clean toilets! The petrol was considerably cheaper than back home so after filling one tank and draining another, we continued on our way and eventually found our way out of the metropolis and onto the A2.

From there it was onto the M25 and back into Kent. We made a quick diversion into Tesco's at Riverhead, to pick up essentials such as bread and milk, eventually arriving home just after 4 pm. After that battle through the London traffic, I knew we’d definitely made the right decision by breaking the journey at the Premier Inn in Huntington.  It was straight back to work the following morning, just as it was after our cruise, back in June, and I haven’t really stopped since.

I appreciate this post doesn’t have much to do with pubs and beer, although it does involve a fair amount of descriptive writing about state of our overcrowded road system, the number of cars on the road and the occasional lunatic driver. Normal service though, will be resumed soon.