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

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.

After foodage we wondered down to the Valladolid football Stadium where Nicko and Vicko are season ticket holders. Poor them I say.

The other reason to head down in the direction of the stadium was to check out the traveling zoo… well that’s atleast what it called itself. Turns out this is code for caravan with a couple of donkeys, which charges you an arm and a leg (I think maybe this is how they feed the animals?). So we skipped that and headed back into town to hit one of the locals for the end of the rugby, which of course Jefffo loved…

After the rugby we headed to pick up some more beer and a couple of bits and bobs from the garage whilst Vicko went on home to start preparing the roast dinner for the evening. And what a roast it was! I wish I’d taken pics of it, but was too busy scoffing it, definitely a 9/10!

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.

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.

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)

You like?

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.

Pub was good, rugby was bad, we played like tools but still won. Joining us in the pub were a couple of Nicko’s mates, an Irish guy (and his visiting parents) and a Welsh guy. Good laugh. But it was very quickly siesta time. Siesta time confuses the body clock a bit, meaning that dinner isn’t really dinner, much more of supper. In Spain it is customary to not go out for food until 9 or 10 oclock.

I’ve no idea on the details of the Mexican place we went to, maybe Nicko or Vicko will fill some of those into the comments section below, but the one thing to say is that it is important to like cheese. Nachos as a starter consisted of a massive bowl of melted cheese with some tortillas sticking in it. It was nice, the Jalapenos were a hell of a lot tastier than the ones we get over here. Main course was enchiladas, guess what, lots of cheese. Not as much as Vicko got though, described as a blanket because you could fold it back. Slightly strange and it got very sickly quite quickly. Picture time, look at the boys looking all happy…

With some heavy cheese sweats / cramps going on we heading to another bar for a quick couple then retired home. Day done… How did everyone get on with Day 1’s quiz?

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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?

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.

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