On The Road Again - and Missing Car Rental Agencies

June 14 - And now, we leave the canals behind, and catch a train to Manchester where we are to pick up a rental car.  From Manchester, we will drive to Yorkshire to a small town called Barmby to our first AirBnB.  

Getting to the train station was a 10 minute walk from the canalboat yard.  We made it in time to catch the train at noon, and arrived in Manchester about an hour and a half later.  We had booked our car online, and the garage was about a 10 minute walk from the train station on Euston Road.  I had written down the instructions, two turns and 3 blocks later, Euston!   We looked for number 49, or anything that resembled a parking garage.  Finally found #49 -  a large, very empty, abandoned shop.   UH OH!  We looked at each other with a bit of dread - is this another disaster?  I said we could call Mastercard and report a fraud.  (we had prepaid the rental online).  

The big problem was we would have to find another rental car place.  We started back towards the train station, and then decided we should see if any shopkeepers in the area might know what had happened to the car place.  Luckily, we met a most helpful young man who assured us there had never been a car rental place in that spot . . . but he would check online.  I gave him the address, and he said “oh, you want Euston Road.  This is Euston Street”.  Turns out that Euston Road turns into Euston Street about 3 blocks from where we were. And lo and behold, there was the car rental place.  Disaster averted - whew!

We purchased a GPS and downloaded European maps before we left home.  Thank goodness for that.  Street signs are placed in all kinds of weird places - there doesn’t seem to be much of a standard for that.  We were both a bit nervous about the right-hand drive, the narrow roads and the roundabouts.  But with the help of the GPS, we found our little AirBnB in Barmby on the Marsh easily - it took about an hour and a half to get there.  We were well ahead of the “after dinner” time we had told our hosts we would arrive - we were at the door around 4 pm.  Thank goodness for text messaging - they were in York for the

"Home" for the week in Barmby. A nice little
self-contained cabin in the back yard.

Otherwise, please go away.

day, and texted back that the door was open and to head on in.  So we unloaded our suitcases, went for groceries, and were seated at the picnic table with beer and wine in hand looking at area tourism brochures when they arrived home.

Simon, Julie and their daughter Ella are lovely people - within about an hour, Julie, Ella and I were over at the neighbours

New friends in Barmby - tonight is a big football night!

Tea . . . errr, wine party in the backyard of neighbour
Lisa's house with my new pals.

The fabulous Lisa in her kitchen preparing dinner for
all the kids.

house - 3 neighbourhood women and me drinking wine, while their 5 young children played in the yard.  I was greeted with a big hug and a kiss by both her friends - clearly we were all going to get along famously.  And we did! 

Julie and I left the party for about a half hour to go get her horses from the field and put them in the barn for the night.  It was a 5-minute walk down the middle street of the village.  There are three streets!

Julie walking the horses home to the barn from the
field where they spend the day.

Gilly

We got home around 11 pm in time to watch the England / Italy World Cup match, but by midnight neither one of us could keep our eyes open and we had to leave the game when it was still 1-1.  I understand Italy eventually won that one.  Glen slept through my whole adventure.

So the next week will be spent in Yorkshire doing some exploring.  More later.