Things that go bump in the night

One of the drawbacks of walking a long distance path is it's a new hotel each night. 

You don't get to know the place before you move on again. In particular, you don't get a feel for where the little glass shelf in the en suite is.

So when at 4am I went to the bathroom for some water and thought I was putting my glass down safely, I wasn't.  It crashed to the tiles. 

'Crap.'

I began the painstaking process of picking up fragments. Awake now, Nigel decided to join in the fun and when we had collected all visible shards, he used the bathmat to wipe the area.

Since there were then tiny crumbs of glass in the mat, he opened the window and shook it. A gust took it. 

He dressed to go downstairs and pick the mat off the pavement. But when he got there, no mat. He looked up to see it draped inelegantly over one corner of the hotel's imposing portico, out of reach. 

Yet another corner of Britain where we have left our mark.

South Downs Way, Day 8 continued, Room for Improvement

Our choice of accommodation was limited by the places that our baggage hauliers were prepared to call at. We paid roughly similar prices for all of them but met with a huge variety of facilities, space and even cleanliness.

One in an ancient half-timbered pub had very little sound-proofing. We could hear every word of the TV program our neighbours had chosen. 

They considerately switched off at ten at night, but the folks in the bar below continued until late. We both screwed in ear plugs and attempted sleep.

Once or twice in the night I was woken by a loud creak or bang that seemed to come from within the room itself. 

In the morning I said to Nigel, 

'It's possible this room is haunted, but the pub is so noisy in general that it's impossible to know. That banging could have been a cry for help from a very frustrated poltergeist.'

Very true,' 

'And did I hear our neighbours boiling their kettle just now?'

' Yes,' said Nigel. 'He's having coffee and she said she'd like tea.'