Continuing the theme of 'best laid plans' for this week off, we planned to visit Rutland Water and to take the 45min boat trip on the 'Rutland Belle'. The ever so helpful website didn't let us book tickets so we weren't entirely sure if we'd be able to get on the boat, but we figured since it was only a 40min drive we'd take the chance.
The 40min drive turned into a 55min drive due to the longest, most ridiculously unnecessary diversion in the history of the universe and we arrived on site one minute past the allotted time of departure for the 2pm excursion.
It seemed there was nothing else to do but to hang around for an hour (in the 24degree heat) and wait for the 3pm trip and so that's exactly what we did. Actually, despite the heat, it was quite nice and it seems that Rutland Water is quite a bit nicer than we gleaned from our previous visit many years ago.
Eventually the boat came back to shore and we had to brave direct sunlight for ten minutes to queue for the trip. We opted to go inside the boat and it seemed like it was only us and one older couple, but then the boat hung about and hung about until finally a party of what seemed like 40 Indians came into view and evidently we were 'waiting' for them - why we had to 'wait' for them I have no idea, but there we are.
Hilariously as they walked down the landing pier someone commented 'here comes the Indian variant'.
They then proceeded to take over the front end of the inside of the boat and we ended up having to move back down the boat, and then proceeded to annoy us by face timing people on their phones and generally being annoying wankers. Thankfully after a while they mostly ended up outside at the front of the boat and piped down a bit.
It was a nice trip which lasted 45mins and gave a reasonable though not exhaustive view of the water, I presumed we would essentially sail around the entire perimeter of the lake but seemingly that would take even longer.
After we got back to shore we scooted down the road and visited Gates' Garden Centre, ostensibly in search of the Salted Caramel cake we had enjoyed at Lee and Su's house a few weeks ago. Unfortunately that was the only one that was sold out, but they did have a massive one instead, so we bought that - well, I say 'unfortunately'...
We also bought a treacle tart and some bedding plants but couldn't find any solar lights to buy, albeit it could be that we just couldn't find them due to the place being larger than Harrods. We also drew the line at paying £3.75 for a scotch egg, nice as they are!
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