The Great Run Up

Before the holidays it is traditional to gather together whatever money you can find around the house to fund the trip.
What with me having been a full time student for seven years and unemployed for the past six months, The Boy and I quickly realised that money might be a bit of a hurdle. But, since our last holiday together was five years ago and I'm about to marry my job I thought we should probably get away somewhere.
Initially we quite fancied Barcelona. The Boy speaks a spot of Spanish and I wanted to see some Gaudi. Easy Jet was looking promising, but once we factored in the accomodation costs it looked unlikely we would be able to afford food whilst out there. So, we turned our attentions to Blighty.

Now, The Boy is a longtime reader and fan of the Fortean Times, which means I am a longtime flicker-through-it-whilst-on-the-toilet. They always seem to have articles on interesting places, many of which are in the UK. Doll museums, haunted towns and alien landing sites. So, I thought, there must be a website devoted to this. No? Really? Well that surprises me. I probably wasn't looking hard enough but there doesn't seem to be a big depository of 'weird places in the UK you can visit' online. Nor in book form.
Undeterred we watched a bit of The Discovery Channel and compiled a mental list- the town in Yorkshire where the green childen from space landed, the abandonded ghost town in Liecester, Whitby just in general... etc. I would have added the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Essex, but we've already been there. It's not very secret.

However, the only thing on The Boy's mind is Bovington Tank Museum. And it's his holiday too so I guess I'll just have to go to the tank museum. But hey. Tanks. So, our journey has taken a southerly direction. And, since we are travelling from Nottingham we pass the National Space Centre on the M1, which has been added to the Places To Visit list.

So, armed with a few ideas and a night in a hotel booked in Brighton, the money scraping began. I must hand it to The Boy, has has spent the past few weeks selling all his toys on ebay. My chest has been puffing a little with pride. There's something undeniably sweet about a man selling his toys to take his lady on holiday. So, my valiant gentleman has added £190 to the kitty via paypal. Thank you sweety.
We agreed at the start that the major cost was going to be petrol and that this will go on the credit card for ease. I don't naturally like credit cards. I have had one with my student account as far back as I can remember and this will be the first time I have ever used it. I had to get a pin reminder sent. But I will be gainfully employed in less than 2 months so I'm not worrying too much. It'll also be a good fallback for if the unspeakable happens. The unspeakable on a tour of your home country is not pick pockets, losing travellers cheques or arriving at your hotel to find it hasn't been built yet- it's your 1998 Megane with 110,000 miles on the clock picking an unhappy moment to go and meet its maker. The credit card will happily purchase two train tickets back to Nottingham. Or CPR for the car. We have become rather attached to the old thing. And in the spirit of holidays he will be being treated to a wash and hoover.

So, today was my turn to contribute to the fund. The pre-holiday carboot sale is a tradition in my family that goes back, phew, at least twenty years. So I gathered together all of my junk and we hefted it to the world's smallest carboot sale. I don't know what I was expecting for a Thusday morning in a field. But we arrived around 9am, were rained out by 11 and came home with a net profit of £25 (yay!), via the charity shop to dump the rest of the stuff (yay!). We then celebrated our new found riches with a doner burger from the local, in which I found a huge deep-fried insect (thank God I eat a burger with a knife and fork), so returned the food and informed the council. What a fun day. Oh, and I bought a ladder at the carboot for a pound. It is awesome. I like ladders.

All in all I'm hopeful for the holiday. Recent developments are that the National Space Centre is closed on Monday (heartbroken... space should not close!), so may have to be missed out.. Also we decided that we probably won't drive as far west as Bodmin as it really is quite far and I heard on the grapevine that the beast doesn't live there anymore anyway.

If anyone has any ideas for our holiday then please do post! If not, just watch and learn how to do holidays awesome style...