The weather has changed. It's distinctly cooler and there isn't so much as a scrap of blue in the sky.
Leaving Maidstone today and heading off to Reading.
Had my last CB Beef brisket sandwich and a pint of dry cider in Craft Brewed yesterday evening. I must get back in the habit of creating entries in the Lipstick Trail
I'm in Reading. Turns out my room is in the building next to the main hotel building. Looks like it's been relatively recently converted from flats and it has its own entrance from the road and its own car park.
It's not the Ritz. But the room seems clean and though smaller than the room in the Travelodge in Maidstone it is better appointed with a wardrobe, fridge, and microwave. The bed is a small double rather than the Travelodge king size; but for one sleeper it's plenty big enough. The grounds are a bit tatty and muddy though, I presume that it's work in progress.
However, the Wi-Fi is worse than at the Travelodge! It keeps dropping out and almost every time it reconnects you have to open the login page again, just like the Travelodge but much more often.
I don't understand it. Back home every supermarket and every cafe has Wi-Fi that just works and even in Maidstone Wi-Fi worked pretty well in most of the cafes, why is it that hotels can't get it right? I wonder if Norwegian hotels are as bad, I haven't stayed in one recently but the last time I did the Wi-FI functioned properly.
Why do they even need passwords on Wi-Fi, what's the point?
@ninalanyon Programers have to make them selves important to the operation of their Wi-Fi system so you have to change your password to give them something to do Ha
I'm at Denbies Wine Estate i their cafe having a cheese scone and a pot of tea.
Had a moment's panic on the way when the Tesla charger I was heading for was suddenly temporarily closed. Luckily I had enough charge to get to the next one without any fuss.
But on the way the car reported that the left headlight has failed. It did this before but the message disappeared so I wondered if it was just some kind of glitch. Now I'd better get it looked at. I was going to schedule the service while I'm here in the cafe but the app demands that I provide photographs so I'll have to go out and do that after my tea.
@ninalanyon Hmm, the first possible service date is nearly three weeks away at Heathrow. Not much use. I think I'll have to actually visit a service centre somewhere and ask if there is any other way. But regardless I'm not going anywhere near Heathrow in case they aren't able to fix it on the day and that would leave me with an expensive journey to Reading and back.
@turbineman40 I've just been out to the car to take pictures and the left headlight has definitely failed. :-( But I've no intention of hanging about here for three weeks!
@ninalanyon I think I'm one of the youngest people in this cafe. There's hardly a person under sixty and most look like they are over seventy. Mind you it's hard to tell, Brits often look older at the same age than people do where I live.
@ninalanyon If it is going to rain somehow the weather knows how to start when you want to load the car . Yes, I am very familiar with that problem. Haha
@turbineman40 There are plenty of other things on the menu. It's just that I liked that sandwich so much that just wanted more. I'll probably never be back there again so I have to enjoy things wile I can. Even when I do revisit places that I like a lot of them have changed when I get back there a year later. I had two favourite cafes in Newquay, Cornwall but last time I went there they had both changed, one had gone pointlessly upmarket and the proprietor of the other, Coffee On The Corner, had sold up and gone travelling abroad. The cafe is still there, now called The Celtic Lounge, but without her it's not quite the same.
