My mad dash around the country started at 5am on Friday 4th. We needed to be away by six, to hopefully get to Swansea before everything kicked off. I was worried about Jason getting up in time, so was on edgy and didn’t sleep very well.

Still, needn’t have worried… I got a text at 5.30 saying he was on his way.

Once he arrived, we proceeded to back the car and set off about 6.05. I’d printed a map and direction from Google Maps, but Jason had a sat nav, which said it could get us there quicker. So we went with that.

It then proceeded to take us completely the opposite direction we were expecting, round the back streets of the villages, through Gainsborough, across the River Trent, and down through Rotherham to the M18. Odd, because it would have much quicker to go to Scunthorpe and just follow the M180 and M181 and catch the M18 a bit further up. I’m CERTAIN we could have saved time by doing that.

The journey down was quite smooth, so we decided about half 8 to stop for some breakfast. A lovely Costa Coffee at the motorway services provided us with some delicious coffee and danish pasty. This was unfortunately followed by me being charged a RIDICULOUS £1.99 to access my own money at the cash point!!, and me ranting about “thieving bastards!” for the next 10minutes.

The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, with just the odd threat by me to throw the radio out the window if Jason didn’t turn Chris-bloody-Moyles off. Seriously.

We reached the toll bridge on the way into Wales, and the government (via the Highways Agency) flinched us nearly 6quid to cross in a car (another “thieving bastards!” moment…) before we carried on through Wales past the MASSIVE Amazon.co.uk warehouse.

Somehow we managed to go from a predicted arrival in Swansea an hour early to, at the earliest, 15 minutes after the start of the first panel. Annoying – we didn’t think we’d spent that long eating breakfast – but no great problem. What we didn’t bank on was the traffic. It took us 30minutes and at least 3 tours round Swansea’s one-way system to find a parking space!

We finally made it in just before 12, and made it into the conference room fairly soon afterwards – just in time to see the last 20minutes of the first panel.

Annoying really – cos that’s one of the ones I was desperate to catch!