Travelling Hopefully...

According to Robert Louis Stevenson, it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.  Well, I'm betting that he wasn't trying to get to the coast from Crapchester on a summer's day.  It's just as well that I find the sight and sound of the sea relaxing - I needed to unwind after the nightmare journey down today.  OK, OK, I know that I started out late, so got caught up with school traffic and the like, but there was really no excuse for the sort of insanity on display on the roads today.  Along with far too many roadworks.  I was hoping that the journey back this evening would be easier, it usually is, but no, I found myself constantly hindered by slow drivers in front of me, tailgaters behind, over hesitant learners and even some idiots racing horses and buggies on the last stretch of dual carriageway before home.  I kid you not on that last one - it really happened, not for the first time, either.  So, was it all worth the effort and trauma?  Well, with more crazy temperatures forecast next week, I decided that I'd take the opportunity for a day out when it was warm enough to enjoy the beach, but still cool enough for getting stuck in seemingly interminable traffic jams without suffering heatstroke.  So, from that point of view it was worthwhile.  Plus, the beach made for a more unusual venue for my daily walk than the local park.  

Anyway, this was my second trip to the New Forest this week - the first time I've visited since they started charging for parking there.  The effects of the charges can already be seen: near empty car parks everywhere.  I know it is still early in the season, but in my experience, there's usually far more visitors than I saw evidence of at this time of the year.  The charges are an absolute pain - like most people I'll habitually visit a number of venues in the New Forest in the course of a day trip.  Now, it'll not only cost me a small fortune every time I go down there, but I'll have to go through the rigmarole of trying to pay via phone (they offer no alternative).  It's one of those bloody systems where you have to speak your registration number - which their software inevitably tells you it can't hear, or turns out to have completely misheard it.  Meaning, of course, going round the houses again and again - racking up charges all the time, which, of course, is the point of the exercise.  It does no good to try the option of texting the reg number as, when you call back, it claims not to have received it - more costs racked up.  I ended up shouting my registration down the phone in order for it to be correctly taken.  I then had to waste more time getting it to understand the make of my car - apparently it's never heard of a Saab.  Yet more shouting.  Incredibly, you can key in your card details - begging the question of why you can't key in the other details?  I must have wasted nearly half an hour trying to pay for an hour's parking on what Forestry England claims is a car park but, in reality, is simply a strip of unmaintained gravel at the entrance of an enclosure.  Bearing in mind that the New Forest is a national park and therefore belongs to the nation, ie taxpayers like me, it really is a bloody liberty to be trying to rinse us for money like this.