Saturday 25 October 2008

An Adventure

I gave up using my car earlier this year because the increasing price of petrol was making it impossible when living on a pension.  So travel anywhere these days is by bus and one of the things that I have discovered is that the buses that I remember from my childhood don't always run on the same routes as they used to.  That hasn't proved to be too much of a problem because I can go on to the Transport for London website on the Internet and enter my start point and where I want to go to and select the method of travel that is preferred (in this case bus) and a few seconds later I will be given a series of options.  So far I have been really lucky and for every journey that I have wanted to make I have only needed one bus to complete the journey.

Today I needed to go to the local DHL depot to collect a package.  I checked the Internet yesterday and the journey could be completed using one bus.  I had a longer walk to the bus stop today than I usually do because the bus I needed comes from somewhere different to the one that I have been using for most of my journeys recently.  That wasn't a problem, it was only a 10 minute walk to the bus stop and the wait wasn't too long when I got there.  Because I was unfamiliar with the route I had taken my mini London atlas with me; it meant that I could follow the route that we were taking, judge when I needed to get off the bus and then follow the map while walking to my final destination, the DHL depot.

It all went very smoothly, I found my destination without any trouble, handed in the card with the details of my package and a few minutes later I was signing for it and setting out on the return journey.  Again everything went smoothly and the whole adventure was completed in about two hours.

The package was worth the effort.  It was the books for my next OU course; Human Biology.  So this afternoon is going to be spent going through all the preparatory reading and possibly starting to read the course material. The course officially starts next Saturday, but I am sure that I can get quite a bit done in the next week although it will undoubtedly be more difficult to follow that the other course that I am doing.

So while I had a little adventure getting the books, the big adventure will be studying the material and learning a new subject.

3 comments:

Lily said...

You're so motivated! Lend me some motivation!!!

Anonymous said...

Human Biology does sound very interesting. Enjoy the reading! I have to say as a non-driver (but I'm actually a never-have-driven rather than a used-to driver) the Transport for London site sometimes needs to be taken with a little pitch of salt - especially their route planner. But it definitely has its uses!

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh I had eyed up the Human Biology course myself, it looks a really fascinating course to do! Good Luck! :)