Blighty 2025 - Swindon OMG

 

A last minute change of plan, thanks to teeming rain, had us heading to Swindon's STEAM museum, and not Didcot's Railway Centre. Didcot requires a fair bit of outdoor walking, and I wasn't prepared to get soaked, and besides, I'd never been STEAM before. DW had decided to sit this one out and stay home to get the cases packed before our trek north.

It took me longer to get into downtown Swindon than I thought it would. The road meanders through Lechlade and Highworth, then through the outer suburbs of Swindon, and that all takes time. I followed the signs to the museum, and arrived there, but the car park looked to me like it wasn't for the general public, so I turned around (naturally there was someone right behind me on the otherwise deserted road), and made for the main car park that serves the Designer Outlet.

The background here is that the Designer Outlet occupies a part of the former Swindon Railway Works, as does the museum. I thought that perhaps lunch and wee bit of shopping might be required so parking in the big car park was the better option I thought.

It was pouring with rain as we walked to the Outlet to use the facilities, and still raining as I realised that we couldn't get through the Outlet to the museum but had to walk outside to get there. The admission price for STEAM was eye-watering, although the chap on the desk did some button pressing on his computer and came up with a slightly better price, and in we went, still a bit damp from the deluge outside.

STEAM was actually pretty good. It was quiet, being a weekday, and the exhibits told the story of the Works, a place that once employed 14,000 people. There were loads of interesting bits and pieces, from tools, to books, to machines, to photographs. The mannequins that had been used were scarily life-like, too, which was a tiny bit disconcerting. Charlie whizzed us through the preliminary exhibits, and onto the main show, the locomotives (all made in Swindon). In reality, he was completely absorbed by a child-sized semaphore signal setup, where when a lever was pulled, a pint-sized semaphore signal about ten feet away was raised or lowered. So taken with it was he that we had to physically drag him away.

Apart from the entry fee, it was a museum well worth visiting and it helped me to put the presence of the Designer Outlet next door into some context. I had always felt uneasy about this once great industrial centre being used to house fancy shops, but seeing the exhibits in the museum made me feel a little better that at least the buildings were being retained, if not the work and the jobs.

It turned out that shopping wasn't required, at least beyond the museum gift shop, and that the food court in the Outlet was rubbish, and I'm being polite. So, with Charlie shouting about getting a "Bambichino" from a branch of Costa Coffee, I made a huge error looking at Google Maps. I punched in Costa Coffee and was shown lots of branches in the area. I filtered out the ones in petrol stations and ended up finding one that was in a shopping centre. Or so I thought. 

I had a minor triumph leaving the car park, which given was followed, was rare highlight. I'd read the signs entering the place that your license plate was recorded on video, and that when leaving, you had to enter your registration number in the pay machine, pay and then when you roll up to the exit barrier, the cameras read your plate again, check you've paid, then let you out. The pay machines were being very slow, and people were hopping from machine to machine. I did get one to work, by being patient, paid and then went back to the car. At the exit barrier, though, people were having a real issued getting the barriers to raise. One man backed out to try another gate, and I rolled up to the now vacated barrier, and without a pause, it lifted and let us depart. I counted that as a big win.

Back to Costa Coffee. We put the address into the Nav system, and I drove through the horrible Swindon traffic, its roundabouts and its traffic lights, missing turns and getting in the wrong lane all the time, only to find that the "shopping centre" was in fact the Princess Margaret Hospital! What a plank I am.

Emma found another outlet, in the Brunel Centre back in the centre of town, and we drove through the horrible Swindon traffic again, back the way we had come. We did at least traverse the famous "Magic Roundabout", twice, so there was that.

The Brunel Centre was a shopping centre, but it was one of those 1970s concrete jungles, and it had seen far better days. The dreadful multi-story car park's entry machine failed to give me a ticket, which was required to get out of the place. I parked and went back to the entry and tried to get a ticket again, but the touch screen didn't want to respond. Emma went to the pay machine and pressed the help button, and after a few rings, a disembodied voice informed her that there was an "IT Problem" and charges were waived for the rest of the day. Phew!

We had a spin around Boots (the Chemist), then found the Costa outlet. Goodness knows how long we spent trying to get the baby a cup of frothy milk, but even for him, it didn't seen entirely worth the effort. Still, despite what Brits may say about the Costa chain, the coffee knocks spots off the coffee that most Canadian chains offer. I'd say to the Costa detractors, try Tim Horton's coffee, in Canada, and then see if you feel the same about Costa.

Costa Swindon, photo lifted from the Internet, but taken from the seat I was sitting in. Spooky.

The run home was slow through Swindon's horrible traffic, but much better once into the countryside. We weren't done with the numpties though. I had to swing into a petrol station, and while I saw there were a couple of cars waiting, I thought it would be worth the wait as it was the cheapest petrol I'd seen all day. I hadn't counted on the huge horse box blocking up the petrol pumps, though. It blocked the six central pumps entirely, but we sat waiting for its driver's return. We waited some more. Then we waited quite a bit more. Eventually a young woman in horse-riding attire appeared, clutching a load of fizzy pop and some biscuits, and even then didn't hurry herself to move the obstruction, even with the now lengthy line of cars behind her. I could comment about entitled people, but I think it's par for the course in The Cotswolds. The rest of the run home was uneventful. Thankfully.

Tomorrow is the run to Manchester, so it's packing up this evening, and like every other day so far, waking up at a ridiculously early hour in the morning.