A Grand Day Out

In July 2010 we sat watching the British Open Golf Championship on TV and decided that one of the benefits of moving back to the UK was that we would now be able to go and watch it live.

A quick Google and we found out that this year's Open was in Sandwich - a good 4+ hours drive away. We would need an overnight stay. And so plans began to form.

If we went down on the Thursday afternoon for an overnight stay we would be close by for Friday's play, and could spend the whole day there before driving home.

1st task - find somewhere to stay.

Not as simple as I thought. A few hours searching the internet and I found everywhere was already fully booked. The plans looked as if they had stalled before they had even got off the first base.

Then I realised that Travelodge were not showing dates for July 2011. A little more digging around and I discovered that they only release their rooms 12 months in advance and so, July 2011 rooms would be released in August 2010.
I had only to wait a couple of weeks and we were in with a shot of getting our overnight stay which would put the ability to see the Open live back on track.

I put a reminder in my diary and on August 1st 2010 logged on to the Travelodge website and saw available rooms. Now, we all know that big events influence prices. Our Travelodge advert claims rooms available from £19.00, but of course we were going to pay a bit more.

Well actually quite a lot more. Infact, 500% more. Yes, we got our little basic travelodge room for one night in the week of the British Open Golf Championship for the princely sum of £95.00

It didn't matter, without the room the whole trip wouldn't happen. Credit card in hand the room was booked.

And so, some 11 months and 2 weeks later we found ourselves on the long drive down to the Kent coast. We would have made good time except for an hour and a half's delay trying to get over the Dartford Crossing. What a complete nightmare that was, and try as we might we could not see any reason for the hold up other than sheer volume of traffic trying to get south of the river.

We finally arrived at the Travelodge at 8pm and checked in. We were asked if we wanted a Continental Breakfast in our room, but we thought with a long day ahead of us a full breakfast in the nearby Little Chef would set us up for the day, so we declined the offer.

As we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, we decided we would just go to the Little Chef for dinner. They're not the greatest place to eat but they are consistent and you know what to expect. 

While in there we saw a number of groups of people who had obviously spent the day at the golf - a great telltale sign was those wearing their golf shoes. Daft as it sounds, they really are the best footwear for watching golf as well as playing and we had ours packed ready for the following day.

We got into conversation with one couple who gave us great information about the facilities and the Park & Ride we would be using the following day but the best piece of information was to get there early. Earlier than even we had been planning. Play started at 6.30am so it would be well under way by the time we got there. We asked what time the Little Chef opened and when they said 7am we began to think breakfast in our room may be something to consider.

And so we found ourselves up at 5.30am, with breakfast at 6 so we could be on the road by 6.30am.

The route into the Open was very well signposted and despite the previous night's conversation, we were pleasantly surprised by the lack of traffic. Within 20 minutes we were pulling into the Park & Ride field and 20 minutes later, after passing through security we were on a double-decker bus heading through the narrow country lanes around Sandwich.

By 7.30am we were entering the grounds to the Royal St George Golf Course along with a few hundred more people. The sun was out, the sky was blue and we knew that we had chosen the best of 4 days, as far as the weather was concerned.

Program and map in hand we set about working out our strategy for the day.