Taper madness and travelling

Ok so I feel like I am coming down with a cold. Not going to bang on about it, but just let me get it off my chest:

I NEVER EVER get colds and then come the most important "thing" ever.... atchoooo! Gah! I knew I should of bloody booted Mark out of the car last week when he started sneezing and slobbering like something out of Ghostbusters. Mark if you are reading this I blame YOU! :) I've got First Defence going up my nose at regular intervals. Still, it is over 48h until I actually have to run so I suppose we'll see. There is nothing to stop me spending two whole days in bed now if I wanted to. Perhaps I just need a decent nights sleep of over 6 hours. Perhaps it is taper madness. I bloody hope so. Arrrgh! Rant over.

I had a rubbish nights sleep last night, so opted not to do my final run around Penn early AM but wait until I got over the water. It appears that Wolverhampton is shit (who knew). Usually when I need to get the train somewhere, it is very easy to hop on a bus that runs every 10 mins and stops at the stop 100 yards from my flat. 10 mins later I am at the train station, and all the London bound trains start at Wolves going via Birmingham Airport. However on a Bank Holiday there appears to be one single bus that goes around the whole of the city, so they run few and far between, with the 10 minute journey taking... 40 mins!!! Thankfully Zoe said she could give me a lift if I was in need so I took her up on her kind offer.

The trip to the airport was fairly uneventful, and so was the whole check in process etc despite it being a Ryanair flight. If it all goes wrong at Serco I may go contracting and offer to sort out Ryanair's IT:

Just switch it off and switch it back on again

This always makes me smile. So I'm a geek but I don't care. It also appears their check in screens run on XP. :-0

Walking around the departures bit and having had a good look in the electrical shops, I may have to have a visit to the Apple shop in either Birmingham or Cribbs causeway when I get home. I might just have promised myself an Ipad if I get through this OK.

Due to the miserable weather, we had some crazy fun with turbulence taking off and landing, but mostly the flight was OK. There was the usual rush and stampede of little old ladies to get on the plane first due free seating and thankfully I managed to sit next to someone fairly inoffensive - I'm sure he also thought very highly of me. Be warned if you fly in to Derry, it is a weird landing. The plane comes in over green fields, and you think "Oh I will probably see the airport in a sec" and then a load of water appears, to the point where you are getting lower and lower (I saw the whites of the eyes of some ducks) and look like you are going to land in it. Then at the last possible second you see the tarmac. I guess these plane drivers must know what they are doing before they get given the keys right?

The taxi rank in Derry is also slightly chaotic. It is a bank holiday in NI, but 20 miles down the road where I am in Co Donnegal it isn't, either way it lead to taxi shortages at the airport. To cut a long story short I ended up sharing a taxi with some random bloke who was going in to Derry city, and then we carried on to where I am staying. The result being: 1) we both got cheaper fares 2) I got a guided tour of Derry having the city walls etc pointed out to me 3) the bloke I shared the taxi with works at the hotel I'm staying in so I have made a sort of friend.

Pretty much as soon as I got in, I got changed and went out for a run. My hotel is on the banks of Lough Foyle, so I did a loop of the golf course, and then headed uphill to run along a quite high up road that runs parallel with the shore line. I felt ok, I think the word of the day is "jittery". I did get the most amazing view. One side of the Lough was sunny, but you could see exactly where there was a massive raincloud - so you kind of had a half and half picture of rain on one side and sunshine on the other. This was where I turned around, so I had the raincloud catching me up on the way back and a view of a really lovely rainbow. Typically I had no camera on me, but it will be in my head for a while. I should really get a running phone with a camera as I see a lot of things that would look great as a blown up photo on the wall. Amazing I hope it is some sort of good luck sign.

Lough Foyle Rainbow pic from Google. Similar to what I  saw today. 

I'm knackered and going to bed early. Night.