Making lemonade out of lemons…. In a titanic way! COMPLETED 5/13 About This Page:

[chezp]

Making lemonade out of lemons…. In a titanic way!

Pre-trip report

Dates: Saturday 15 – Sunday 16 April
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (44) and DH Mark (51)
Destinations: Northern Ireland
Resorts: Crowfield House bed and breakfast
Meets: ah, well there starts our story…
Celebration: … and there continues our story…

I’ll start by saying that I never planned on writing a trip report at all about this vacation. Period. However, things changed. Actually quite a lot changed, and then I figured perhaps I should write one after all to explain how we dealt with those changes….

Christmas Day 2016, we were talking to Mark’s parents about various things. Mark had said to me that he thought his mum wanted to see the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland, so he brought the subject up. As he suspected, she jumped at the idea, and we chucked some dates around, with me checking airline and hotel websites on my mobile (cell) phone there and then to see if it was a goer or not. We quickly discovered that it was, and we settled on going over the Easter weekend.

As we were paying for them as a birthday and Christmas present, we decided we’d just stay the one night, rather than two, and have an early start the first day, and fly back the next evening. As our Easter weekend here is four days (Good Friday and Easter Monday are both Bank Holidays, as we call our national holidays over here), I figured we’d fly out on the Saturday, and come back on the Sunday. I knew Good Friday would be busy at the airport, and I liked the idea of having a day at home when we got home, so we’d have some time to chill before we went back to work.

Mark’s parents sort of said that day, but said that they’d let us know for definite the next day, as I think it was all a bit sudden, and they wanted the opportunity to just think it all through. Once they had, they gave us the go ahead, so we snagged our flights with EasyJet, one of our low cost airlines over here. We decided that, as we were only going for one night, we’d just go with carry on luggage, as like most airlines, they now charge you if you want to take checked luggage as well.

We went to Northern Ireland once before, in August 2013. Now I write that, it seems like so long ago, but honestly, it really doesn’t feel like almost four years ago. If you’d didn’t get a chance to read the trip or you want to go back and re-read it (hey, I might do that ) you can find it here: Following in the footsteps of giants. As you might guess from the title of it, we went to Northern Ireland for exactly the same reason – to see the Giant’s Causeway.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast place called Crowfield Country House near the Giant’s Causeway, and we loved it so much that we immediately knew where we wanted to take Mark’s parents. We made a booking, and as we knew there was a ground floor room, we requested it for them.

We also booked a rental car that would be big enough to take four adults comfortably, picking up from the airport, and dropping back again.

I also ensured that we had asked for special assistance at the airport for Mark’s mum, but I also asked for it for me. I’ve had chronic fatigue since 2009, and thankfully, I’ve still been able to manage Ok. However, over the last few months I have been going downhill, and I’ve been suffering more and more. I’m doing a lot less physical activity, and I’m taking a lot more tablets to control the muscle pain and to try and help me sleep. In recent weeks, it’s got really bad, so that’s why I thought I’d get the special assistance too, as right now, I can do with all the help I can get.

And that was it… seriously! I planned nothing whatsoever, because it wasn’t really our vacation. We were doing it for Mark’s parents, and particularly his mum. We went round to see them a couple of weeks before we were due to fly out, and I left my trusty Dorling Kindersley guidebook with her for her to decide what she’d like to do.

It was a bit weird, not having anything planned, and leaving it all to someone else, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

Everything was going great until around 9:30am on Good Friday. That’s when the phone rang. We were planning on calling Mark’s parents to check everything was Ok, so we weren’t surprised that they called us. However, they weren’t calling to talk about the holiday. Well, they were, but not in the way we expected sadly. They were both ill, and to the point where they felt there was no hope of them flying in the morning. I couldn’t believe it.

We sat there for a while after Mark finished on the phone to them, taking the news in. I will be honest, my instant reaction was just not to bother going. After all, we were going for his mum, and for her to see the Giant’s Causeway. What was the point in bothering now?

Mark said his dad’s words were “you’ll probably go anyway, won’t you?” and as Mark said, if we don’t, we’ll lose all the money. There was no way we’d get any money back at all on anything. Of course, we’d still need a rental car, but I did look into whether we could get our money back on the second room we’d booked and – you could cancel for free until yesterday. I didn’t even look at the flights, as with EasyJet being a low cost airline, there was every chance by the time we’d paid the cancellation fees, they’d probably be more than we’d paid originally. We couldn’t even get anything back on the holiday insurance, as we’re the only ones insured. In fairness, Mark’s dad had said he’d pay us back, so we weren’t out of pocket, so that was something…

After about 10 minutes of sitting there, feeling quite miserable, as things hadn’t worked out as we’d planned, I decided that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right? Hence the title of this trip report… we’ll still go, and there and then I started to formulate a new plan…. And the Titanic reference? Well, that will become apparent as we go along..

Next: “well that’s it, we’ve lost our slot now”