We were accompanied by several people this time (how privileged they were to join us!) - they were Bryony - our token guatemalan, Alex - our token ginge, Tracey - our token Australian, Jessie - our token Welsh and Hannah - our token shorty. And after a fine meal of Spag Bol at Jessie and Hannah's house we set off in a two car convoy to go and have a long awaited play!
The drive itself was fairly straight forwards in terms of pretty much driving in a straight line, but there were interesting traffic going ons, on the A34 due to a crash, and we had the option of whether to take a diversion or not. As we reached the devision to take the diversion, the road ahead of us was clear, we thought the traffic drama of earlier in the day had subsided and we asked for a sign - there wasn't one/or we didn't pay enough attention - so we went with Ellie's gut, and didn't take the diversion, what a mistake!! Although the traffic was not at a complete standstill, it was fairly solid, mainly because people were slowing down to look at the smooshed up car on the other side of the road, which admittedly we did too - it was very smooshed. After that snail-pace driving for a little while, we powered through with some slightly tuneless renditions of Glee songs, and were soon zooming off to Portsmouth - well zooming as fast as Jessie's little car could zoom!
Soon we had spied the blue seas and promising lands of Portsmouth - and the excitement kicked in as we saw the flag which indicated destination reached on the sat nav! And as we pulled in to the car park, we looked past the fact that we were in an industrial estate and were about to go in to a fairly dodgy looking warehouse! Getting into the building was a mission in itself, guarded by two doormen, who knew we needed ID to get in to a play area! Unfortunately, none of us realised, and by sheer fluke, all of us but Tracey had ID, so they point-blankely refused her entry - which was ironic as she was the oldest out of all of us! Although sad, she refused to let us drive two hours and not go in (Tracey is very lovely - you all should know). The doormen were just plain mean, as we were queuing up to get in, Sarah had a bag search, and in her bag was her bible, the doorman asked her what book it was, and when Sarah replied, 'the bible' he said, 'get to the back of the queue...[waited a little]...'i guess that would be discriminatory though wouldn't it' - if the rest of us had heard this conversation we would have said we were all christians - and that would've been crazy coz he'd keep sending us to the back of the queue, and we'd just keep going round in circles! We come away from that with the comfort that he has at least seen the bible.
And then we entered...wow! It was like we were 7 years old again! Labelled by purple wrist bands, we were met with a sight of incredible slides, tunnels, ball pools, ropes, those big round things that squish you and sooooo much more, it was like being in a sweet shop but with the sweets replaced by fun!!! And so off we went, running about like we didn't have a care in the world! After about 15minutes we regrouped by the punchbags, and thought we would tackle the SLIDES!!! There were several slides - the multicoloured wiggly slides (the easiest of them all), the tube slide (slightly claustrophobic, but rubbish), the blue slide (a slight vertical drop then wiggly the whole way down) and the RED slide (the scary vertical drop into a slight angle to stop you breaking any bones, set at different heights for the brave/idiots!). The worst part was sitting on the edge, bringing up the courage to plunge off the edge, and pray that we wouldn't die in the process! Bryony and Hannah were not quite man enough to tackle the blue slide, they liked the multi-coloured one :P Alex and Jessie stopped at the blue one (which is brave in itself) - after taking several times to hurl themselves off the edge! Sarah and Ellie were the idiots of the group, tackling the biggest red one - wasn't the most enjoyable experience in the world, as you sped down this "cliff" the speed whipped your head back, and you get a sort of slide induced whiplash - now you see why only idiots tackle this! After our slide adventures we decided to play a game of 40:40/123bazooka (depending on what you call it), which was a bit of a laugh, which then turned into freezetag (as Bryony called it), but we all secretly knows that it is stuck in the mud! Running about, screaming like little girls again, what more could you want! After this game we had a quick little play - Alex and Ellie attempted to go through a series of bungie ropes, clearly made for children half the size of themselves, and as they tried to get to the lower level, they were whipped as the bungie's sprung back - and they just couldn't escape this pain without experiencing more pain - why would children want to experience this!! As well as this, we all tried to go through this tiny tunnel, clearly not built for women like us, with fine child-bearing hips, it was a case of belly crawling our way through and not freaking out that there was a high possibility we would get wedged in the middle of this play area, luckily all who attempted made it out in one piece! With one last challenge of tackling the scariest slide we felt we could do without pooing ourselves, we left what can only be known as the best place in the world, but not before getting a slushy - we really had reverted back to childhood! Heading out to the cars absolutely knackered understanding why children need to eat lots of sweeties, going to see Tracey with a new found love of Australia! It was time to head back to Oxford, how heartbreaking to leave Playzone behind!
The drive back was fairly uneventful, other then Jessie trying to get on the dual carriage way the wrong way (how embarrassing for all involved :P), and Alex clearly exhausted by the fun times had a good old nap, as Sarah and Ellie did the normal road tripping thing of having a deep conversation on our way back into Ox.
A fun time was had by all! What a road trip!!!!
Thanks for reading,
Sarah and Ellie (and Alex, Jessie, Tracey, Hannah and Bryony)
xXxxxxxxxxxxXx
