Well getting back to the trip - we started off at 5:30 from croydon...and after an hour we were still just about 5 - 10 miles away from Croydon, going around in circles - not knowing the way around to reach edgware road. Mind you, we were loaded with print outs of the route, Road atlas, UK road maps and what not. We apparently needed to take a left turn into Parry street from South Lambeth road but then we just kept going up and down the latter not able to find where in the world parry street had disappeared. Either some nitwit had plucked off the board or we were too dumb to notice. I strongly go for the former and still believe the same. After almost an hour , Sandy got frusturated of eating and drinking and waiting for us at edgware road - that he , using his GPS (sweet lady as he calls), came to pick us / lead us out of this goddamn road!! and Guess what - the roads were so confusing that sweet lady got confused as well - lol and sandy too circled a few times before finally finding us and voila..we were off to the motorway M1 following the ford focus in our ford fiesta at around 7 am finally!!!! For us Rups was driving and the other one was driven by Sandy!! The first part of the journey was pretty uneventful ( i was asleep in the back seat) and so were all others including Rups for few seconds!! Lady luck was there with us through out;):)) and then we took our first "welcome break" at one of the services center. Little did i know that the "welcome break" was going to be too often for this trip;):))) All of us unloaded ourselves off the excess water/ coffee/ juice we had drunk and then quickly followed that by sharing/ having a coffee each. We then continued on our way and entered into M6. After a while, Rupesh being tired, I took over the wheels of the fiesta and vrooommmmm......i was Michael schumacher or alonso or whoever...changing tracks from the right extreme to the middle lane...over taking cars..touching the maximum of 120 mph at times :D:) The soul aim of our car was to keep the "Focus" in focus since that had the all important GPS and we (read as the fiesta guys) didnt trust our direction sense much - lol!! The guys in my car were asleep for sometime, chitchatted and generally having fun - the biggest fun being overtaking the focus and then trying to slow down to let the focus overtake us (courtesy the directional problems).
Around 3:00 pm...we finally reached the camping site - all were in a upbeat mood..we drive into the site and the owners come upto us saying "Sorry gentlemen, we are full - there is no space" - ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, what the $%^* did they mean they were full!! we drove the last 350 miles or so not to hear this crap!! The sight of our faces was indeed a sight to be seen!! It was blank/ expressionless!!!!! we had joked about this happening but it never crossed our mind that this could actually happen. We told the lady we had come alllllllll the way from london and that we possible couldnt go back now:(. Then the man of the place came over and said, he will check the camp for a place for us to pitch the tent. We - me, nikhil, jayesh and sandy - went along with him and finally found a place. Ok, now the funda at that place was that each tent would have a campfire to themselves and they didnt have 4 campfires for us..so they asked us to manage with 1 and if thats ok we could (We had 4 tents - 2/tent) - we were kind enough to take up the offer:P;) and once again the (32*8 - not that i counted but just an estimate) teeth were gleaming on everyone's face!!
Now came event 2 - pitching the tent and to add to our existing plight, it was raining hard! None of us had camped ever before except for me (that too long back in school) and we didnt know how to pitch our tent up!! The girls - all enthu- took out first tent and started putting them together (supposedly). The smarter ones (Me and sandy;)) just walked up to few goray's and asked them for help. They obliged - yippeeeee!! We, the smart ones, got our first (and last) lesson in setting up the tent..Anyway by then the hardworkers - read as everyone else except me and sandy- had set up their tent too (full credit to them:P)..Thus going ahead, we set up all the 4 tents around our one campfire place!! Then came the next obvious question - lets eattttttttttttt!!! We went to nearby boot inn for our lunner
Next we started on setting up the fire - Sweta got the logs and kindle for £3.5 and Vidu was the fire-manager - to set up the fire. While the girls were busy with that - Nikhil took care of the seating arrangement while me was handing a bottle of Smirnoff, sprite, packets of crisps, plastic glasses, napkins and playing cards to the remaining - sahi mahol ban gaya tha!! While everyone sipped on their drinks, we played bluff/ 420.....and ppl who played the most honest game actually ended up winning - just cementing the fact - "Truth always triumphs" - by the time it was 10:30 that the game got over..we retired to our respective tents - and into our sleeping bags (again a first time experience for all except me)!!! I had to actually plug my ears coz of the giggles by the girls in the next tent (swe/ kanchan) - they just refused to stop..!!!!all were lying in their own sleeping bags and talking out to each other thru the tents!! and soon we (rather some) were deep in sleep snoring away to glory - the last sound i heard is the rain hitting against the cloth of the tent...plop..plop.....plop....
