Booking a sleep

One more sleep to go until the Big Run.

We're off down to Ely for a wedding in November. Ely is a small village in Cambridgeshire which has aspirations to be more than it is due to it having a big old gothic cathedral there. I went there once, ten years or so ago and remember there being not much there other than a few second hand bookshops. And the cathedral.

It also has a train station that can be a very cold and empty place when you're stuck there in winter.

Because Ely is small, it doesn't really have proper hotels (ie the sort where you have to queue for four hours to check out in the morning) and so most accommodation is in the form of B&Bs and little family run hotels. I got round to trying to book somewhere this afternoon and quickly found that all the half-decent looking places seemed to be full on the night of the wedding, even the Travelodge - the only chain hotel anywhere near by.

Luckily, I found somewhere in the end - a smallish B&B but it looks nice enough and is well situated for the wedding. I had to actually use the phone to book - no nice interweb booking was possible - which was irritating but seemed to work. Except that I have to post (snail!) a cheque down to them as a deposit.

I'm always faintly amazed when I see people still using cheques. Primitives. It's worst when people use them in supermarkets but I'll get annoyed if I think too much about that, so I won't.

Anyway, I wrote the cheque and put it in an envelope with a handwritten (!) covering letter. And I'll post it soon.

I'm hoping that this archaic chain of events will result in me actually finding a room there for us when we arrive. If not, I'll be knocking on the door of the blasted cathedral begging for sanctuary.

Now I need to go and eat pasta.