Holidays are great aren’t they! They are time for relaxation, rejuvenation, recharging, recouping, and other re-‘s. A time to sit back and have a great time.

Our holiday in Dublin was such an experience. It was wonderful. We had great times with friends and family and on the plane I was thinking to myself that I felt like i had had a great time off and felt recharged and ready to get back into the thick of things.

When we got off the plane we made our way towards the long-term parking coach pick up point. I had in my memory that we’d parked in “K2” and on mentioning this to Ruth she agreed and so we were fine. We knew we were in Blue and so we waited for the journey to complete.

The bus entered the car park complex and immediately announced zones K and J as the first stop which just didn’t feel right. My gut sense of  direction was telling me we had to be in another area. We had driven quite a way through the complex when we arrived first and this bus was saying we were in the first stop.

Sure enough our car was not in the lot we had thought. Back in October we were here and had parked in zone K and i think it was that memory which was at the forefront of our minds. So we started to walk.

And walk..

…and walk…

and we walked around a lot. I think we walked around this car parking complex for aver an hour using a combination of my gut instincts and a systematic approach with the intention of searching every lot if we had to. This started to get stressful when my phone started to give its battery warning. The GPS was sapping the battery hich was not a good sign. I think the pinnacle was when we climbed through a hedgerow to avoid having to go the long way around yet another lot we had already searched.

Eventually as we were walking along the road to another lot an empty bus passed and the driver asked if we needed help. We sheepishly explained that we had absolutely no memory of where we had parked. He invited us on board, out of the cold which, at this stage, was a life saver. I was frozen and Ruth was going blue! He then radioed the depot to help us out:

So when you arrive there’s loads of lots that are closed. This is to make sure that on any particular day, you can only end up parking in one particular lot.

Within seconds the radio chirped back informing us of which lot it would have been, I distinctly heard the word “Lima” and secretly cringed inside. I was thinking “How silly could we have been to not have made a note of where we parked.” I mean, its just silly! I guess we had been tired due to the early start we’d had that morning. The Driver informed us that ach bus stop had a phone which you can use to call the HQ if you cant find your car. This made me cringe a little more as i wished we’d thought of looking for something like that.

The kind driver waited to make sure we could find our car. Much to my relief I found the car quickly and we thanked hem greatly. We got to the car and loaded the bags in the boot. I had to find my charger so a little rifling through the bags had that sorted. While the cars engine warmed the interior up. Once i had the phone mounted, the windscreen was clear, i’d checked round the car for any car-park-clangs (of which there were none) I finally removed my coat and we were ready to set off from this awful place….

..then it happened…

Ruth turned to me and had a guilty look on her face…

she passed me the parking ticket, but she wasn’t showing me the front of the card which we had both scrutinized carefully to see if there was any indication of where we may have parked….

no she was showing me te back of the ticket…

And there written in Ruth’s glorious handwriting were two digits

”   L    6  “

She had in fact written where we had parked on the back of the ticket in the spaces provided but NIETHER of us had even thought of looking!!! I think we both just stared ahead for a few moments before both of us fell apart laughing. It was too late, too ridiculous and too silly for us to be angry with one another and laughing was the best tonic.

And so we set off after having had a very stressful and dull adventure around the Stansted Airport Long Stay Car Park but we had learnt a very valuable lesson that day.

Sometimes the best place to look is the most obvious place