Subject: The car park
From yesterdays Bristol Evening Post:
"Outside Bristol Zoo is the car park, with spaces for 150 cars and 8 coaches. It has been manned 6 days a week for 23 years by the same charming and very polite car park attendant with the ticket machine. The charges are £1. per car and £5. per coach.
On Monday 1 June, he did not turn up for work. Bristol Zoo management phoned Bristol City Council to ask them to send a replacement parking attendant.
The Council said "That car park is your responsibility." The Zoo said "The attendant was employed by the City Council... wasn't he?" The Council said "What attendant?"
Gone missing from his home is a man who has been taking daily the car park fees amounting to about £400. per day for the last 23 years...!
total sum 2.9 million"
So I googled around and it seems Bristol has a lot of urban myths and this is one of them. It did make me think of whether the two small toll bridges we encountered in our trip to Wales in 1997 were actually legit. We came across some fellow collecting 5p (about 12 cents) and another one collecting 25 p.
Later in this trip we went to the Isle of Skye in Scotland and we had been reading of the scandal surrounding the high tolls for the new Thatcher era privately built bridge there. Farmers went to jail over not paying them and they were the highest tolls in Europe. Now, after our Wales experience we figured the toll might be all of a pound but it was 7 pounds each way if I remember correctly...we couldn't believe it! Eventually Scotland bought the bridge and eliminated the tolls around 2004.
Looking up my photos and info for this post I realized that I have almost no photos for this extended trip we took to Europe from July - October. I remember I took a quarter off and I believe Jim was on a post doctoral grant so was free from teaching.
Of course this was long before I got my digital camera. I think over the next few posts I'm going to scan what photos I have and write these experiences up while I still remember them. I can't believe I was working full time and managed to organize three house and car exchanges (Yorkshire, London, Edinburgh), Jim did a week's seminar in Oxford, a week's trip to Bandol when we stayed in the Hotel Splendid for the last time I guess, a week's driving trip around Wales, a week's driving trip around Scotland, and two weeks in Paris renting an apartment.
These are a few photos I grabbed from the Internet:
This was the hotel we stayed in in Skye. I remember the bed was on a slope and we had to hang on all night. Fabulous fish and chips just outside the door.
Skye was amazing scenery and we were very lucky with the weather...apparently you don't always see the mountains since they are shrouded in mist.
