Driver 308’s Commonwealth Games Adventure-Day 9

July 12th to 17th  2022

I was up fairly early as I had the keys to GZN that John would be driving today with Ally. I knew they had an early start for a busy day today as Ally and I had already done the planning and it required a 7:30 start. Ally came to collect the keys at 7:15am.

Stu (Transport Operations Manager) contacted me to say he’d be picking me up around mid-day, drive me to Leeds to pick up a rental car that I could then drive myself home. At 11am I had to check out of the Hotel and because I had Covid I had to remain outside. Luckily there was somewhere to sit out of the way and protected from the light rain that was falling.

Stu arrived just after noon, with Bob (who had also tested positive) he was driving back to Glasgow, a much longer and tougher journey than mine to MK.

I had a Peugeot 308 estate, quite appropriate as it matched my crew number.

Covid was a new experience for me, both Julia and I had avoided catching it so far, we weren’t sure how the next few days would pan out. Luckily I wasn’t really ill. We decided that we’d eat separately as we had to share the kitchen. After tea I watered all the hanging baskets, pots and tubs.

After a good nights sleep in my own bed I awoke the next morning fine, after breakfast I pottered about in the garden until it got too hot. When it got too hot I came indoors and worked on editing the hours of dashcam video I’d recorded so far, in the evenings when it was cooler I’d go outside to water the plants. This became the pattern of my Covid quarantine and I came to realise that the  main affect of Covid, for me, seemed to be intolerance of the hot weather. This was confirmed the week after I recovered when the UK had record temperatures of over 39C and it had no effect on me at all.

To be able to return to the QBR I had to quarantine for 5 days, with negative test results  on Day 5 and Day 6. A Covid test on Friday 15^th was still faintly positive, so I was confident I’d be OK by Day  6 which was Sunday 17^th July. Late on Saturday I got a negative result and this was confirmed on Sunday morning. I therefore booked a ticket on the 12:04 Avanta West Coast train from MK to Liverpool Lime Street. This was a direct train which made for a quick and simple journey. Julia dropped me at MK Station, the train was running 20 minutes late as a result of the high temperatures there were speed restrictions in force across the rain network.

On arrival at Liverpool Lime Street the Holiday Inn was just across the road, as this photo taken from the Hotel shows.

The first place I had to go on my return was TSO (Tour Services Office).

The TSO was a permanent feature of the QBR and was set up in each hotel that we stayed in. It was occupied by 3 or 4 staff; Stu the Transport Operations Manager, Kiri-Jade (KJ) the Accommodation Manager, Craig the IT person and Emma KJ’s assistant. I reported to KJ to get the key for my hotel room. The TSO was the administrative hub of the QBR, anything we needed we came to the TSO, as a consequence it was always very busy…….

Gradually the QBR crew started to return, it was great to see my fellow crew members again, especially Bob who’d also managed to return to the QBR. I was really pleased to see Deanna who I’d met in Scotland with the Glasgow 2014 QBR when she was one of the Shuttle Hosts. This bought the total of ex QBR 2014 team to 8 (Bob, Trevor, John, Dave, myself, Deanna, Paige and Donna).

I had one small driving task to do before the evening meal. Relocate the shuttlebus from the unmade car park 200 yards from the Holiday Inn to a more secure location – which was a Police vehicle compound about 1 mile away.

The crew meal that evening was very good and it was just like I’d never been away.

I was still in Team C Ally, but tomorrow Monday 18^th was her R&R day so once again I was with Sarah.