Hurrah for holidays (pt 1)
Added on 27 March 2023
Well, I'm part-way through my holiday in (mostly) Essex. And what a palaver! On the way down to Clacton from Kib (somewhere near Cambridge) the car suddenly made an alarming sound, a red light came on and a message came up on the display saying "stop now your engine is broken". Auntie Fiona managed to find a layby to park in (we were on a very fast road) and she called the rescue people. About an hour later a very, very nice man came along and looked at the problem, but his computer wouldn't talk to the main car computer. It would talk to some of the other computers (apparently there are about 20, which seems silly to me 'cos it's a car not a spaceship) and the brakes and airbags said they were OK, but the main engine control computer was silent.
Anyway, long story short, we left the car with some lovely garage people in Newmarket and borrowed one of their cars to continue our journey BUT IT DIDN'T HAVE A SAT-NAV LADY and we got rather lost just as it was getting dark and wet outside! We eventually got to our cottage about five hours late (after Auntie Fiona and Uncle Les had a horrid lunch at 4pm) and we were all very cross.
So, visiting St Mary's churches with the borrowed car was also a bit tricky. Uncle Les had to do it the "old-fashioned way" using pieces of paper with lots of different coloured wiggly lines on [Les was using Ordnance Survey Landranger maps. These provide a lot of information about roads and, particularly useful for your hobby, show you where churches are. But we do admit, the sat-nav is quite handy, Big Ted]. And that's before we allowed for Essex roadworks. In fact, there was one St Mary's (in a place called Layer Marney) that I just couldn't get to at all no matter how we tried - all the roads to it were closed!
Despite all this, I've been to eight new St Mary's churches. I'll add their details when (if?) I get back home safely. And I've learned a bit about Ordnance Survey maps!
(P.S. We think they've found out what's wrong with the car, so more to follow…)