This might be hard to believe (or not given my recent track record) but I did it again! All I can say is thank goodness for last minute changes in plan. After the embarrassment of miscalculating the accommodation at the start of the holiday, I found out today that I had miscalculated the end as well. If it hadn’t come to light we would have had nowhere to stay on our last night in the UK as I’d booked the hotel at Heathrow for the 21st October as being our last night. Not a lot of good when by then we’d have been in the air and on our way to Dubai given that our last night in the UK is actually the 20th October! The only reason I found the mistake was because I tried to cancel the booking and it kept telling me there wasn’t one. Alex then kindly pointed out that the confirmation for the booking quite clearly stated: arriving 21st October, leaving 22nd October. So, there it was in black and white. Wrong day.

How it all came about was that Accor sent me a promo email advertising discount prices at their hotels, so I thought I’d double check that we were getting a good deal. It turned out that the price we were quoted for the Ibis was less than those shown in the promo but I thought I’d have a quick look at what was on offer around Heathrow with other providers. Just in case. What I did find was not a cheaper hotel but one that was a lot closer to where we have to drop off the rental car. The Ibis is on the other side of the airport which meant we would have had to walk a fair distance after we took the car back. So we had a look at the website, the amenities, the location and decided we would rather stay at Jury’s Inn. And so the decision to cancel the initial booking, and the discovery of my blunder. Still, all’s well that ends well. Isn’t it?

At the same time I decided to look at one of the other bookings that I wasn’t entirely happy with. We had a night booked at the Premier Inn in Howgate with the idea of visiting Whitehaven on our trek north but the reviews we’d read had been mixed and I wasn’t thrilled about staying in pub accommodation. We had also made changes to the itinerary to focus more on Hadrian’s Wall which meant we would be obliged to do some backtracking if we persisted with the overnight stay in Howgate. So once again we started combing the internet and our B & B Nationwide booklet and finally found a lovely B & B in Alston – a village in Cumbria but not actually in the Lake District. So Alston it now is and Howgate bites the dust. Besides, who could pass up the huge saving of one pound!

Needless to say I’m now paranoid that I’ve managed to get every booking wrong.