I arrived at Luton airport about 12:50, grabbed luggage and got the bus to Victoria station (it costs 8 quids). From there train to Bromley South and short walk to the hotel.
According to the guy at reception I was first one (not counting people which came a day before). So I dropped bags, took a shower and came directly to OH office.
Office… Guys building Falcon Millennium from LEGO bricks, lot of strange devices on shelves (old E-ink readers, old PDA such as Apple Newton MessagePad and different developer boards). I toyed a bit with Nokia devices, played Metal Slug with Tomas using very nice dualpad controller. It was funtastic evening.
Next day started with breakfast (at least hotel used this name). Then grouping in the office and car trip to the Hop Farm when whole fun planned for this day had to take place. I have to admit that sitting on ‘driver seat’ (from European point of view) and not having driving wheel was not a problem for me. No minds like ‘they going to kill us’ etc related to driving on the wrong side of road.
The Hop Farm… Shooting (rifle and pistol — I prefer pistol), arching… QUADS and 4x4 driving!
Combine quad bike with mud — what will you get? Lot of pure fun (maybe not exactly pure due to being muddied from head to down) — especially second run was great. Quad was sliding, drifting, rotate when I tried to make a turn at full speed. It was really best part of day.
Other nice part was 4x4 driving — blind folded. One drives and someone behind him gives directions which way to turn. During after lunch run place was so muddied that we were able to take very sharp turns which were not possible before. But the real fun started after we did blind fold driving… We got offer to just drive — no limited seeing etc. Gods… This Jeep reacted to driver moves very nicely, especially during sharp turns which were quite easy to do — just turn driving wheel to the max and accelerate ;)
Big thanks for Sid (Matthew’s wife) for organizing whole event — it was really nice experience :)
After whole day of fun we came back to the office. Some interesting discussions took place and we made a trip to the Tiger’s Head for a dinner. The taxi driver surprised me with Christmas wishing in Polish — we are everywhere ;)
Food was nice, so did beer (the even had Laffe). Matthew gave gift for each of us. I got ‘panic button’ ;) And I am curious which keycode it sends.
Next day was return trip. This time not alone as part of it I did with Dodji. We came to Bromley North station then switch on Groove Park and ended on London Bridge. From there we did a walk to Liverpool station where we split as he was going for EuroStar train and I to Stansted airport.