report from Alton Towers

An overcast, dull sky greets me when I open my eyes. It’s 6.30am and Claire’s birthday, for which we’re all going to Alton Towers. This involves picking her sister Catherine and boyfriend Sam up from the train station, and then driving 180 miles. With eyes still heavy, I load the car up and find that the lever to open the bonnet has jammed, so hopefully the oil won’t run out on the motorway…

After filling up at the petrol station and picking the others up, we crawl out of London and onto the M25, which is pleasantly empty, and the M1, which is not. A short bathroom and Burger King break later (I’m such a fat pig) we rejoin the M1 and wind our way through the back streets of Derbyshire and Alton to find the car park.

This was a great idea to come to the park now – hopefully not many people around, meaning plenty of time to get on the rides. In practice, it didn’t quite pan out that way. We met the others and started off by hitting Air and Nemesis, although we moved on after since they’d been in that area for almost two hours already.

It was then time for Katanga Canyon – meaning the Mine Train and Log Flume. Interestingly the safety bar didn’t close properly on my seat on the Mine Train, so … yeah.

After experiencing Hex, (wooo, change of pants time, not) we then very democratically elected to go on Oblivion twice, in good old X sector. Unfortunately for me the guy operating my favourite ride, Enterprise, refused to let me go on alone unless 20 people were on it. He mocked me when my back was turned, as I saw it spinning with 4 people or less on. Bastard. And then the sky opened up, so we huddled under a parasol drinking coffee, eating sandwiches, and laughing at the people still on Oblivion.

The sun then came out again shortly, so that was a good opportunity to dry off a bit. Then we made our way to Ug-land, (interesting name) for Corkscrew, a bizarre photo-shoot, and Rita – by the time we joined the queue for this last one, it had started chucking it down again. The basic idea of Rita is to catapult you from standstill to moving bloody fast by the time the first corner approaches. There’s something quite unnerving about being on this in a downpour! The ride photos probably backed this up, since everyone seemed to have their eyes closed due to the stinging rain.

Since the chairlifts weren’t working, we then trudged back to the monorail station and the car parks, and, after presenting Claire with her present, I made my (very soggy) way home.