England #2 - we make it to Bath at last! in The England Chronicles - September 2024

(Sunday Sept 8, 2024)

My previous entry ended with us finally in the sky and on our way to England, hooray! We landed at Heathrow very early in the morning, got through customs and collected our luggage with reasonable speed, then headed onwards to pick up the rental car. I was not expecting this to be an …issue…but an issue it was. Well, an annoyance more than an issue, but we were quite tired after our loooong day and overnight flight so everything was seeming a little overwhelming, as thrilling as it was to finally be in England. 

Let me just note right here that I will never ever again use a car rental place I've not heard of. And I'll also note that it wasn't a disaster, but it cost way more than I expected it to cost and was problematic in more ways than one, starting with actually getting there from the airport. Our original rental the week before, when the flight got cancelled, was with Budget. We used Budget in 2017 and Hertz the two previous trips. And I could not tell you how I ended up with Surprice, other than I was going through my credit card company to rent the car, and I wanted a Mini or a Fiat - something really tiny - and all the teeny cars through Budget and Hertz were a lot more expensive than when I’d made the original booking. The first time I'd booked a Fiat (“or similar”) for something like $350 for two weeks, with insurance provided by the card company, which was just ridiculously cheap! But Budget and Hertz were pricier this time and Surprice was way less! And I was still dazed from the whole cancelled flight disaster day so probably did not think it through sufficiently, and did not really check out reviews - the ones I saw were not terrible, although now I'm seeing some truly awful ones that make me think we were lucky we didn't have a worse experience. Also I really did think the credit card company would only be using reputable rental companies. 

SO we got our bags and started hunting for the shuttle to Surprice. The shuttle we just assumed they would have because all the other car rentals have shuttles! I won't even go into how long we looked and asked and hunted and grew increasingly annoyed. Finally I called them and they said they would send a car to pick us up. Which would have been nice to know initially - that we had to call them when we arrived - but there was absolutely nothing in the instructions. And of course the first place we were waiting was not the right place and we had to call back - or did they call us? Who knows!! And then we had to find our way to an upper deck to wait some more. But we DID finally get picked up and taken to the office. When we got there there were bunches of people waiting, some of them very annoyed due to various problems with their rentals. Luckily we DID have a car ready although they wouldn't take my credit card’s insurance despite me having a letter from the card company saying it covered everything (I'd read you better get one of those). So, we had to buy insurance. And to make an important decision on the spot about the various plans as they tried to talk me into the THOUSAND DOLLAR level. I got the lowest level, which I can't remember the cost of now, but it was nowhere near that. Also I discovered miles were NOT included in the rental price, so we paid extra for unlimited mileage too! And then paid 15 pounds to ensure that when we turned the car back in we could get a quick ride back to Heathrow vs possibly having to wait an HOUR. Since our flight was at noon and we were already having to leave really early to get there, we forked over the money. 

I definitely felt like we were getting fleeced all over the place, and will admit I was a little concerned the entire trip that they would try to get even more money out of me when I turned it back in. I took pictures of it for documentation, but driving on teeny tiny England roads for two weeks and having to routinely sling myself as far off to the side of the road and into the hedges as I could get when we met oncoming cars did make me worry they'd charge a fortune for "damages" despite paying for all that insurance. But, spoiler alert! They didn't, and it was fine. But it cost way more than Budget or Hertz would have in the end and was way less convenient, so, not doing that again. 

It was a very cute little car - a Corsa Vauxhall - and fun to drive, although it did seem oddly wide for a teeny car. 

I don’t even know what time we finally got on the road after all this- probably 10 or 11. It was a little harrowing getting to the M4 since I hadn‘t driven in England in seven years so there was a bit of a learning curve, but it all came back fairly quickly, and I didn’t kill us! We stopped at the Reading services area for some Costa coffee and headed onwards. We were staying at an Airbnb on the edge of Bath, and drove right through the city to get there, which was a little unnerving since I was still getting used to driving. After we’d gotten on the M4 at Heathrow it was M4 all the way, which was easy, but the city was…challenging. Still, all was fine until I missed a couple of turns and…well, I don’t know what happened but we ended up taking some insane crazy-ass back way to the Airbnb that involved a tiny TINY one-lane road that was so narrow the shrubbary on the sides was scraping the car even when I was in the middle of the lane. Thank god we did not meet anyone, or someone would have been backing up! This would not have been so alarming a few days on when I was used to the teeny narrow roads again, but the first day it was…unsettling. And I couldn’t believe it was that hard to get to the Airbnb which was only a few minutes from the city center!! 

Well of course it wasn’t, we just got misrouted by the GPS which was a standard feature of the trip. Of ANY trip we take, honestly. Kim and I always seem to spend most of our time lost, especially on England trips. I won’t go into how I bought a cheap GPS for this trip because the one I took on our previous ones is so old the maps won’t update, and I knew from experience how awful Google/Apple maps navigation can be, especially when you lose cellular and don’t realize it and instead of mentioning that it has no idea where it’s going, Siri just pretends it does and takes you a gazillion miles away from where you meant to go. The cheap GPS was awful, although oddly it did seem to work better in and around Bath than it did in the Cotswolds or Wiltshire — Siri actually did very well there. We were using Siri that first day though, because the cheap GPS had to be switched between US and UK maps and I’d forgotten to switch it when we left and couldn’t remember how, and due to being quite tired at that point also didn’t remember than I had the instructions in the GPS case. ANYHOW after a grueling tiny back road adventure, we finally made it to the neighborhood where the Airbnb is… and then of course we couldn’t find the Airbnb!!! 

We drove around and around and around and the street numbers made NO sense and all the flats look exactly the same and we were both so exhausted we were about to collapse at that point. Finally it occured to us to just call the host, who clearly lived right there as her husband magically appeared almost imediately and directed us to our spot. Which to give us a little credit has Windell Street as its address, and Windell Street makes a big loop through this neigborhood, yet the apartment is on a side street with Windell Street on each end… it is SO CONFUSING and hilariously this is NOT the only time we had problems finding it. 

But when we finally finally finally got there, and drug ourselves inside…OMG we were SO pleased! It was much nicer than either of us expected - and seemed much larger than we expected, although I think that was the airiness of it more than the actual size. It was a two bedroom with a nice living area and small kitchen between them, and it was a very happy conclusion to a grueling search. It was so reasonably priced and had such a liberal cancellation policy - until the day before for a full refund, which is unheard of - that I was a little afraid it wouldn’t be that great, but I think the host had just started renting it when we booked it in February. She only had a few reviews then but I kept an eye on it and she’s been booked ever since and has great reviews so I think we got really lucky. 

By then it was about 3:00 - a lot later than we’d expected to arrive - and we were both SO TIRED after the overnight flight and the drive that we could barely function. Kim especially was just about to keel over - she’d been up since 4 AM our time the previous day and didn’t sleep on the plane. She was so tired she’d dozed off on the drive from Heathrow a few times despite it being crucial that she helped me navigate. When I realized she’d not slept in something like 30 hours it made sense! We’d planned to take showers and quick naps and then go back into Bath for dinner, so I was up again at 6. I still had pretty frayed nerves from the drive - and the hunt for the Airbnb - and was not really looking forward to driving back into the city and finding parking and then repeating that harrowing drive and Airbnb search after dark, so I figured we’d just get an Uber, expense be damned. 

As it turned out, Kim didn’t wake up till 8:30, so we ordered Uber Eats from a Thai restaurant and just chilled out and enjoyed being there at last! And were thoroughly rested up for our Bath Experience the next day. 

Wow that was a very long entry! I’ll leave you with pictures of our lodging, since I don’t think I took any pictures except the apartment and the car the whole day.

This was out my window. Yes, all the houses DO look EXACTLY alike!!!

And everything looks awfully dark in the rest of these, but I’d switched on the lovely ambient lighting and I think they were all at night.

Living area and my room below, which I can’t get to separate and I have had enough problems with these pictures tonight and refuse to mess around further.

The living area and a bit of the kitchen which was along the wall. 

Kim’s room which in reality was a very normal room, not a triangle.