(Day 5) Nae wind, nae golf; flat Lake District

 Ok.  Today was full of stuff, much of which I don’t know about because I was miles from the scene. 

But…

Let’s start with the end of the day.  Nearly end.  The non-golfers left at 8:15 this morning for a coach trip to the Lake District.  At 810, GB asks me if I’ll drive them down.  I said but there are 5 of you.   “I’ll sit on GBRM’s lap” and I say “But you’re only roommates” and she says, “No, we back to being engaged today.”  So, I drove them down.  Almost.  

As it will become clear, navigating Liverpool city centre is tricky in a car.  Trying to watch the Google maps while in jockeying bumper-to-bumper traffic isn’t all that easy and once more I missed a quick hard right, and made the next one and the app tried to reroute and GBRM said “it’s just over there let us out here”, so I did.

Then spent twenty minutes gettting back to the flat.  I didn’t have data (we haven’t discussed this, more later) so was winging it on the GPS with the blue dot and the flat’s pin.  Ah, well.

OJ and I drove to city centre for breakfast and so I could get my golf club shipping paperwork printed.  After breakfast he went to the car and I went to Ryman’s stationers and I said he could pick me up.  

I didn’t find Ryman’s right away.  I had to turn on data to figure out I had just passed it and not noticed.  ): Then I came out and tried to figure out where to meet OJ.  I was in the middle a shopping square and there wasn’t a street in sight.  I walked to a street and sent John a pin on Google maps and said come here.

We have shared locations on this trip, so I could look and see where the “J” was on the map.  He’s circling around, nowhere near me.  He gets to a point where I can get near him if he makes a left and I text “make the next left” and I head for the spot.  I get there and look and the J is all the way back to our flat!!!  

Final thing, he tells me to go back to the first pin and he’s there — and he doesn’t know that it was where the first pin was!! 

We’re half hour behind “schedule” for Lytham and St Anne’s which is an hour and twenty minutes away.

OH, yes, breakfast.  Food porn 1. 

That’s Nutella, if you wonder. 

This is my shot from the Lake District.  this is Castlerigg Stone Circle.

One of their highlights was a flat tire on the coach.  

We played golf.  The wind was a solid 20 mph all day.  We had two good caddies (in an irony after Tuesday, mine was named Steve 😂

We loved Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s.  Here’s the requisite OJ having fun shot. 

RLSAGC is famed for its bunkers.  It has 180+ — supposedly 17 on the 18th hole.  Steve asked why not one more and have 18 on 18?  But I was in fewer than either of the first two days — for the first time this trip, OJ won that competition (6-4).  He also won the day’s bet based on a big meltdown by me on the first four holes on the back 9.  He has video of me in the one deep green side bunker.  The video lasts as long as his phone’s memory and leaves me still in it. 😡

Also to be said about the village of Lytham & St. Anne’s — it looks like a very charming place.  Coming into town the houses are not only all of this red brick (Steve told me the maker was in West Lancashire and the brick was notably hard), but they had red brick walls all around.  The club is surrounded by one with a very narrow entrance and exit gap.  

As we got finished, I get a text saying they couldn’t get into the flat.  Had they changed the lockbox code? No.  I text the rental agent (remember we’re buddies after Sunday) and she said no.  There was a multitude of texts as they wondered what to do.  remember, we’re 80 minutes away. In the end, GBF (for  the day) opened it, I was told, with his trusty travel hammer, thus saving the day. I am told. 

We stopped for a quick fish and chips at a place that had a 4.8 rating.  I hadn’t been in a real chipper since the 70s.  Mine was good.  OJ tried to order something other than the basic and was disappointed.  He wanted the hake special.  “We’re out of hake.”  “What’s plaice?”  The wait staff and I said “fish.”  😂 He wanted more.  “I don’t know what to tell you, it is a white fish.”  When he asked the two other wait staff they both said “I don’t like fish.” 😂😂.  OJ ordered it and didn’t like it. 

And, after almost hitting cars I didn’t see, we were back in Liverpool and I was blogging…

Manana.  NO PS.