I'm just going to slip this on here and hope nobody notices

You know when the day starts with a rude awakening at some ungodly hour to the sound of a 'The Littlest Hobo' ringtone? And then an ever so slightly rabid voice at the other end says such things as 'cracking', 'dirty twitching' and 'ladders'? Yeah,... that.

Hartlepool, it's all about monkeys and HMS Trincomalee innit?

Addendum (as promised)...

"Where's the north from here?"
"Up, just drive up."

And so we did,... and were soon parking at Hartlepool headland.

Skipping down Olive Street, full of the joys, we couldn't help but do a quick lap of the green, waving to the bowling types as we went, before barreling through the garage, wheeling around the garden squealing "Weeeeeeee!", and coming to a halt to rapturous applause from the massed ranks of camouflage fetishists. Unfortunately, it soon dawned that we wouldn't be getting to play on any ladders but we did see 'The Doctor', and his rhubarb, so it wasn't all birds, birds, birds.

Talking of birds, the bird appeared within minutes, and a grottier example of a White-throated Robin you couldn't have hoped to have seen, but it was a White-throated Robin, and this was Hartlepool, so the choice of which White-throated Robin to look at was rather limited. Just think though, with just one trip to Turkey you could have had one like this (well, one trip to Turkey and a sprinkling of magic MP3 and Photoshop dust).

After two hours of soaking up the robin, interspersed with brief bouts of hide and seek (Is he in the rose garden? No. Garage? No. Shrubbery? Yes!) and a quick game of French cricket on the lovingly manicured lawn, it was off home. At every junction we headed downwards and were soon saying our goodbyes and going our separate ways on the banks of the River Severn*. And that, apart from a closed M4, high volumes of Psychadelic Horseshit and a sweet potato and mushroom lasagne, was that.

And that is exactly what happened and any other version of events should be taken with a pinch of salt because you can't trust anyone nowadays, not even people that write stuff down.

*So named because Julius Caesar was incapable of passing up the opportunity of a good joke [it was actually the sixth river he discovered during his invasions of Britain]. To quote Vercingetorix at the Battle of Alesia "That Caesar, what a wag").