I travelled far, far away from Bath at the weekend. We went all the way to a little village called London – you may have heard of it. Sorry I haven’t blogged about it until now, I ended up going to jail and I had to miss three turns, as I didn’t have a Get Out Of Jail Free Card.

Our visit to London was just what you see on the movies. Chimney sweeps, people singing in the streets and eating jellied eels… ok, that was a lie. We did drive through a market though and spent the evening at the dog tracks.

We did ‘the dogs’ in style. None of this standing around out in the rain. We watched all the action from inside, while a waiter brought us a 3 course meal. A lady also came to our table to take bets. I really pushed the boat out and spent £2 on each bet. I think I may have a gambling problem. Like gambling on horses, I know nothing about dogs, so instead of looking at odds, form and all that rubbish, I simply picked the names of the dogs I liked. Out of 13 races, I won 2. Luckily, one of my wins was a no-hoper (probably blind, with three legs). This mongrel ran home to victory and I won over £20. At the end of the night, I was a few quid down. I am not going to find a career in gambling, but I did have a good evening.

We spent the night in a Holiday Inn. When we normally stay away from home, we use Premier Inn (endorsed by Sir Lenny Henry). I can see where the “Premier” in Premier Inn comes from – in the past, we have been spoilt. The Holiday Inn we stayed at, was a dive compared to what we are used to. It was more like a youth hostel. It was dirty, the lift spelt of vomit, there were marks on the carpet outside our room and a worrying white stain on our bedsheets. Breakfast left a lot to be desired too – my bowl and cutlery were dirty. Needless to say, we’ll never be staying in one of those “hotels” again.

While I enjoyed getting away from the busy, bustling city life of Bath, and escaping to the peaceful, slow life of London, it was very nice to come home – especially to a clean and comfortable bed (something we didn’t experience at the hotel).