I decided this morning to walk the three miles or so from Luton Travelodge into the beating heart of Bedfordshire, namely Luton town centre. The Balkans would have to wait a little longer while I completed some important preliminary research into roundabouts, pavement parking and budget fruit salad.
As an aside, I hate this road crossing which is where Dunstable Road meets Chaul End Lane. A driver kindly waved me across, but it’s a roundabout with an unmarked pedestrian crossing just off it. A quick Google search shows that there have been accidents here before, including when a car ploughed into a mother with her pushchair. Is it really too much to ask that pedestrians should be able to cross safely?
The pavements through the Bury Park area presented a different challenge. Cars and vans obstructed numerous sections of the route, making progress difficult for anyone using a wheelchair, mobility scooter or pushchair. I have blurred the number plate of this particular car, although its parking position was making no comparable effort to preserve anyone else’s privacy, dignity or indeed access to the pavement. Anyone without restricted mobility could squeeze past most of the obstructions by stepping into the road or turning sideways. This is apparently considered an adequate local accessibility strategy and it’s perhaps all a bit sub-optimal.
Anyway, today is not a day for complaining, despite what appearances might suggest and I think that’s the limit of today’s drama.
And there’s the White House, which is Luton’s JD Wetherspoon outlet that I don’t need to write about again, it’s been recorded on numerous locations on this blog including at https://www.julianwhite.uk/luton-the-white-house/. There are limits to how many times one building can be presented to readers as a fresh discovery, even on this blog.
I think it’s fair to say that ordering fruit salad for breakfast isn’t usual for me, but sometimes the body craves this sort of cuisine. I mean, mine never has before, but variety is the spice of life and all that. After a brief stay of five hours drinking the unlimited coffee costing just £1.49, I felt sufficiently rested.
Properly nourished, extensively caffeinated and still some distance from the Balkans, I was finally ready to walk towards the airport hotel. I accept that this series is approaching its stated geographical subject with no great sense of urgency, but travel is all about the journey and all that. Unfortunately, quite a lot of this particular journey still involved Luton, but there we go.