Touring the Historic Sites with James

As i normally do when i am feeling masochistic, i voluntarily surrendered my sunday sleep-in to accompany 53 students to the historic locales of Bath and Stonehenge.

i pretty much thought this was to involve me a) counting students onto a bus, b) telling them to meet me back at this point and at this time or else they would be left behind, and c) listening to my ipod for the 3 hour return bus trip.

plus i was going to get to see some cool historic places (not just for free, but for free + £62 + lunch)

i knew that i was sadly deluded, however, when the bus driver handed me a road map and asked if i was any good with directions...

at this point i would like to say that Geraldine the bus driver was very nice, and - in her defence - was employed like many people currently working in Oxford because resources are very stretched in peak tourist times and the bus company needed more drivers.

The main issue was just that Geraldine wasn't from Oxford, and she had never been to Bath or Stonehenge before.

Ohh yeah!

But somehow, everyone involved had a great time!

highlights included:
• Going towards stonehenge first, because no one had notified the bus company that we were booked to tour the Roman Baths at 11am.
• Not having a proper street map of Bath, and guessing our way to the Coach Parking bay with the help of a tourist guide.
• waiting half an hour for four taiwanese girls who had gotten lost in Bath and didn't have mobile phones.
• randomly driving past said girls in another area of town, shortly after we had abandoned them to train back to oxford.
• making a wrong turn and driving down a narrowing, hilly road - and then reversing back up it.
• making another wrong turn, and reversing back past a man who Geraldine had leant on the horn at a minute before.
• taking the most roundabout, village-by-village route to stonehenge.
• the sheep in the paddock next to stonehenge.
• all the taiwanese girls wanting to have photos taken with me.

and the russian girls. and the one taiwanese guy.