So today I was lucky enough to take delivery of a Mio Moov Spirit V505 from Brands2Life. The in car Sat Nav system which as a little quirk works as a built in TV as well, this isn’t something which I’ll be fiddling too much with today though.

Tonight we are driving to London, to a part of London we haven’t driven to before so an accurate Sat Nav will be a lifesaver. First thoughts on the Mio are good, the big buttons make everything easy to do, and I’m sure even easier when driving along! I have already been able to program in the destination for later which saves time, I don’t have a GPS signal in my room to plan the route however, which is no surprise as I struggle for Vodafone signal as well.

As a comparison I will also have my N97 out, to test out the new(ish) free Ovi Maps navigation support. It’s about time this service became free, could this be the thing which clinches the mobile Sat Nav marked? And probably more importantly pushes Nokia users to use Ovi services instead of Google ones… Until now I have always been a Google Maps man so we will have to wait and see how it goes. My main concern is battery life, I some what doubt the N97 can handle 2 hours worth of ‘doing’ without a charge.

So what points will I be comparing:

• Time taken to plan out the route
• The planned route
• Accuracy of route
• Appropriate warning times
• Display + Instructions
• Anything else which comes up

Oh yay its Sunday, the day of rest, the day built for relaxing and doing very little. I don’t know why they have Sundays in Spain, every day seems like a Sunday…

The day started off in a similar way to which the last had finished, with a nice beer. After getting up and stuff we headed to a local Tapas place for food. More details which I can’t remember about, the name of the place we went to and the name for the drink we had. It was basically lager with a load of lemon cordial in it. Very refreshing, perfect for that early drink. The Tapas here was also better than the stuff from the day before (did I mention we had Tapas the day before?), highlight was definitely the croquet style yummyness.

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This morning had to walk down to St Clements to get the bus instead of driving out to Thornhill. Quinto decided to take us the ‘cut through route’. Decide for yuorself:

My route:

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Quinto’s shortcut route:

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It only added just short of half a mile… good result.

You’ll know from my constant whinging on Twitter that I’ve been commuting to London recently for work. Today is a new low, terrible weather conditions and heading in. I just tweeted that there were 5 reasons not to go in, and only 1 advocating the idea of going in. So here goes:

Bad Reasons
1) Ice and abandoned cars on M40.
2) Severe delays and a reduced service on buses according to Ox Tube.
3) Radio advising to only make journeys which are vital.
4) It took 5 hours to get home yesterday.
5) I can do almost all my work remotely.

Good Reasons
1) There is one thing I need to do work wise today which requires me being in London, however if this place remains closed (as it was yesterday) this will negate the whole concept.

Ok so I don’t think I’m very original here, but if I hadn’t seen it yet there is a semi decent chance some of you haven’t either. So I thought I’d share…

I don’t know the origins of this, and I can’t be bothered to look them up right now. But isn’t it funny? If I saw that drive past me I would want a picture of it. In the same way I wanted a picture of the Hummer I walked past earlier that had learner plates on it. Seriously, who learns in a f**king Hummer?

(disclaimer: not a real image)

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I’ve been meaning to finish off these posts and get them up ever since I got back from Spain, it really is time to do so. Over the next few days you will see, hopefully, lots of them going up.

After waking up bright and early, OK stop there, what a lie. Our flight in was delayed which meant we didn’t get into Madrid until very late, and then had a number of hour drive to Valladolid. Luckily Nicko didn’t fall asleep… unluckily Vicko did meaning Nicko had no clue where to go. Funny scenes as you veer across lanes and slip roads. We survived, and got back in time for a beer, but there is always time for a beer, even when its 3.30am.

The plan for the day was to check out a bit of the city, grab some Tapas and head to the pub for some rugby. Sounds like a good plan to me, especially when we added in the siesta and Mexican we were going to have for dinner.

I will talk more about Valladolid tomorrow, as by then we will have had a much more in depth look around the place and actually taken some pictures. For today, I only captured one thing and that’s the Bullring. Unsurprisingly, that’s where they do the Spanish tradition of Bull Fighting. A totally pointless, ridiculous activity (not even going to classify it as a sport), saying that though if there had been any on whilst I was there I would have liked to go. Cultural experience and all that.

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I get off the bus at Marble Arch and have to walk to Piccadilly Circus, Google original told me this route:

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Which basically entails walking a long way down Oxford Street, which is never a nice road to walk along due to the sheer volume of people.

Now Google has decided to offer up this route:

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Which is actually quite a tempting route, in my infinite wisdom, on the first day I found a route for myself:

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Comments?

I got a little annoyed on the bus home last night, so wrote some letters… I wonder if I should send them?

Dear Oxford Tube,

Please stop claiming all of your buses have WiFi when quite clearly they don’t. If it doesn’t work it doesn’t count!

Regards

Dear Oxford Tube,

Please stop claiming all of your buses have power sockets when quite clearly they don’t. If they don’t work it doesn’t count!

Regards

Dear ASA,

Please see the attached 2 letters to Oxford Tube, detailing inadequacies in their service advertisement.

Regards

Disclaimer, this was posted from an Oxford Tube bus who’s WiFi worked for about 30 seconds at a time.

Once upon a time I was on a plane, and I thought it would be a good idea to have a G&T…

Yep, that’s a sachet of Gin… yummy… not!

Before this little ‘story’ begins, I want you to go and check out my other travel related posts, come on, I’ve even hyperlinked it, it’s really easy for you…

Why I hear you scream, why would he put us through reading more of his posts!? Because I’m evil, and so that if I refer back to anything on previous experiences over the next few days it will make sense. What is the point of me being pure comedy gold on paper screen if the audience doesn’t ‘get it’? Have you done it yet? I’ll wait…

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