Miracle Complete!

Three days to go before the run and yesterday I finally managed to book a hotel ... in Carlisle!

There was hotel in Gateshead, Newcastle, the Bowes Incline Hotel, that was advertised at £80 per night on laterooms.com, but when they tried to book it for me, the hotel wouldn't accept the booking unless I paid an extra £25 per night! Thieving bastards!

The girl at laterooms.com tried her best to negotiate for me, but the hotel wouldn't budge. They were apparently about to put the prices up because of the Great North Run ... blatant profiteering from a charity event. Its disgusting.

As I needed a room, I asked about taking just one night. Nope, I had to book both nights, and as the girl at laterooms pointed out, the hotel has nothing in their details about minimum stay restrictions so they should not be doing that.

Needless to say I sent the hotel a rather stroppy email - which I am sure will go straight into the trash - and ended up finding an available hotel in Carlisle.

Now I just have to get some training in!!

Update:
The girl at laterooms said that a black mark would go against the hotel for their activities and once they have three chalked up, they will be kicked off laterooms' list. Looking for hotels in Gateshead today (17/10/2006), it looks like this has happened as there is no trace of the Bowes Incline.

And I never did get a response to my email...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gadgets and Widgets

Well, training for the Great North Run hasn't gone quite according to plan, but last night I did succeed in setting up the gadgets and widgets for tracking my training :-) I had refrained from getting sucked into the Nike and iPod combo, but the lure of glossy tech and the trendy adverts sucked me in and spat me out the other side, complete with green iPod Nano , Nike Shox Arraw trainers, a slick black'n'red Nike armband , Nike+ shoe widget thingy and a cool black-and-white shirt designed by a closet sci-fi costume designer*. Admittedly, the shirt is going to remain in the drawer for the time being as it currently emphasises my spare tyre and man boobs which, lets face it, isn't the prettiest site to be running round these parts. Then again, certainly not the ugliest, either! The calibration of the Nike kit was a bit annoying. After having calibrated for a 1.05 mile run I then tried to calibrate a walk for the same distance, only be told halfway around that the di
Read more

5...

Image
The final week in the run up to the South West Coast-to-Coast is here and, in less than a week, I will be starting my first UltraChallenge in order to raise money for Crohn's and Colitis UK . Since doing the massive 32 mile training walk a month ago, I have been able to get out for shorter walks once or twice a week, which have been steadily getting longer.   On Saturday, I managed 12.37 miles in a decent 3 hours 39 minutes, though with the wrong choice of shoes, which left me with blisters and sore feet.  It really made me appreciate how good my boot and sock combo is! Oh, and underwear.  Having walked in normal boxers and suffered the chafed consequences for a day or so, I ended up buying a couple of pair of SAXX Boxer Briefs .  I'm generally not one for buying expensive undies and feel that even £22 for 3 pair of boxers is somewhat extortionate.  However, if you want to feel like the family jewels are in good hands and you want to be able to shower after without feeling lik
Read more

Summer Holiday Shenanigans

Image
With the bank holiday weekend about to start, think about The Centralian Players working hard to build their next set for Peter Gordon's play, Third Week in August , while you sun yourself on the beach, enjoy your BBQ and refuse to let the Great British Rain Off stop you enjoying the break.
Read more