Storm on the Motorway

Tuesday saw me coming back from Newcastle after attending a workshop given by one of the other JISC Advisory Services to the staff from my own advisory service, JISC infoNet.

The journey was fairly uneventful and easy - down the A1 to Scotch Corner, along the A66 to Brough then onto the cross country small roads through Kirkby Stephen and then onto the B roads to Sedbergh and from there to join the M6 heading south from Kendal.

The sky had changed from blue to grey and now almost to black as I pulled into the services at Killington Lake for a spot of tea. I sat at a table with an older couple at the other side of a low and very narrow partition. We could almost have been sitting at the same table really.

"My word, look at that rainbow!" he said suddenly. I had my back to the window and felt it impolite to just turn round in case they thought I was listening to them (no choice actually!)

Anyway when I did turn round it was a rewarding sight. I have never seen such vivid colours in a rainbow and this against a very dark sky. There was just the one patch of sunlight on the far side of the lake that gives the services their name.

And wouldn't you know it - I had no camera with me. Sorry. To be honest, I had a half unfinished plate of food in front of me anyway so you may have lost out in the priority stakes even if I had have had a camera!

I know... I'm tough on my readers. Sometimes I have to be!

Letchworth

It's been a busy old week - I've now got back from Letchworth, just about.

Horrible journey, it's a Friday night, it's half-term and the M6 was crawling. I shelled out my hard-earned to nip up the M6 Toll but as soon as it ended I was back down into first and second gears and that's how I stayed until Stoke on Trent.

There had been some sort of incident on the slip road of Junction 15 and it had caused a rare old tail back. It took me over 6 hours to get home.

Anyway this is where I've been - the Goldsmith Centre of North Herts College. Photo from Flickr, courtesy of John Sanderson. I didn't take any photos down there. Some nice scenery down that way though.

Tom Tom was navigating which meant going over lots of those stupid bumps in the road that are supposed to calm traffic and instead only do your suspension in and make a row, annoying anyone unlucky enough to have one outside their house...

So I'm not quite sure where I was, but at one point there was a gorgeous stone-built red-tiled country church with a rather strange looking tower, seen against a green field and wonderful blue sky. I almost stopped but the thought of traffic building on the M6 kept me going. In the event it wouldn't have made much difference!

I delivered a session on Risk Management at a IT Technical Forum organised by the local JISC Regional Support Centre. They call themselves RSCs, but to anyone outside the Further Education Sector that normally prompts some conversation about Shakespeare...

Busy weekend looming as well so no rest for the wicked! Will try to keep up with the entries!