I admit to having my confidence shaken yesterday by the (lack of…..) performance of my hire car. At one stage, while filtering onto the A(1) at 60mph, the gear change was accompanied by a lack of power and trucks that were comfortably behind me, needing to suddenly overtake me! After arriving at my digs safely last night, I decided that I wasn’t going to drive the car into the centre of Newcastle to return it today but to return it to the hire car depot at the airport which was closer to where I was staying. Also, I was having to change hotels today so I was juggling the logistics of getting to a new hotel, storing bags, returning the hire car and getting back to the new hotel. The only way this was going to work was with a lot of walking, potentially in the rain. I found the hire car return at the airport, met a really lovely young man who was the depot manager and he cleared the car of any potential damage, listened politely to my concerns, accepted the car at the ‘wrong ‘ depot, didn’t charge a relocation fee AND confirmed a considerable refund! He was also going to take the car to a garage to have it checked because I couldn’t, in all conscience, allow someone else to go through the same grief as I had. He also advised me where I might be able to photograph the continuous stream of feeder aircraft that pass through Newcastle Airport. I headed off past the terminal in the increasing rain and met up with a succession of lovely people ALL of whom had a different idea from where I might be able to get photos but this resulted in me wandering across hill and dale around the airport and slowly getting very wet. I ended up scurrying back to the airport terminal and shouting myself a coffee and a chocolate donut which is, as you know, an antidote to getting wet. After the rain eased a little, I retraced my cross-country steps, took a few murky aircraft photos, was reunited with my baggage in the new pub and followed up on the drying powers of a chocolate donut with the restorative power of a couple of double G&Ts!
flettrek 