Suffice it to say, the prospect of going on a relatively long journey trip genuinely seemed, speaking from the perspective of a university student that is drowning in tests, debts, and misery, a chance to enter a parallel universe that provides us with the luxury of having time. For this trip, we decided to invade the city of Cambridge. Armed with nothing but a car, some supermarket brand snacks, and a sat-nav plugged in with the literal word ‘Cambridge’ as the decided location, we set off for a relaxing day ahead.
We imagined a day that mirrored the scenic views of Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, filled with beautiful greenery and lots of punting. But this is February in Britain. Nonetheless, we pressed on with our plans despite the weather warnings, meeting at a mutually central point in North Greenwich (as considerate humans do). While 10:30am is a relatively late start to the day, as individuals who are accustomed to attending 2pm lectures and 12pm classes, the struggle to get up cannot be hyperbolised. Definitely not so, as ¼ of us were 30 minutes late to the meeting point. Nonetheless, armed with unfamiliar bubble tea flavours (matcha and red bean is not a combo I expected, or really appreciate) and with the roll call complete, we set off. To ASDA. Because our friend, who is driving us all the way there and back, needs a phone stand. But after 10 minutes of deliberation, resulting in the use of a phone stand we already had in the car, we finally set off, with our only directional intelligence being one word.
Four girls, all diametrically opposed in personalities, walk into a car and stay put for the next 2 hours. And without any denial, the on-route journey was filled with overlapping chatter, a heap full of laughter, and evident monopolisation of the playlist. As the party who had two of their songs forwarded (bearing in mind that I only contributed a grand total of three to the Roadtrip playlist) in the first 5 minutes, I felt injured on a moral level. However, the pain au chocolats and my mutual backseat bestie also equally feeling confused on why our musical taste was being so blatantly denied, eased the deprivation. Luckily, our egos were not too badly bruised to notice several trucks with Shrek and Woody dolls attached to them. Nothing like a throwback to your childhood than damaged dolls and a drive to a university we would have never gotten into.
Initially travelling out of grey streets into the eyesight of wondering sheep, we temporarily left behind visual pollution for rolling hills. Though none of us dared to open our windows, we definitely knew that it looked like fresh air. Nonetheless, it was no use enjoying the scenery for long, for we were soon fretting about spilt milk. As the driver’s right-hand man had poorly pierced the bubble tea cup, resulting in a spillage of chocolate milk over the driver’s white trousers, along with a splurge of heavy rain to exacerbate the car that was already overflowing with liquids.
Finally reaching the general area of Cambridge in the pouring rain, we parked in a random street that was actually available for parking that wasn’t just residential. After deciding on a cosy pub for lunch while the driver tactfully changed her sodden trousers, we braced the weather for a 6 minute walk that grew more tedious with every gust. Fortunately, our morale remained strong enough to reach the pub, but not before we argued for roughly 2 minutes on who should walk in first, before reaching the conclusion that we could all simply walk in at the same time. Despite the delay, the warmth of the pub was worth it. Finding a corner table, devouring plates filled with fish and chips and chicken wings, we enjoyed the listless rain pattering on the window above us while we happily talked about nothing in particular for the next few hours.
We then decided to take full advantage of the endless greenery around us, taking a trip to nowhere in particular. This was a bad choice. For the next 20 minutes, the car was violently pelleted with hail. With all of us nervous at the prospect of the car windows shattering, or the car crashing, or losing Wifi signal for our playlist, we really did nothing and put our faith in the driver. Luckily, we had a talented one who could race down country lanes in the blinding rain, and drove us, quite literally, out of the storm and into a perfectly golden landscape. But not before being forced to do a U-turn on delicately even grass in a deeply suburban area, and trekking us back into familiar traffic jams.
To quote our journey’s playlist monopoliser, it was a ‘successful field trip’. Indeed, it was in every sense because, like every other trip in my life, I learnt absolutely nothing and laughed endlessly with the people worth driving through the storm with. I look forward to racing in the rain for the next one, and for several more to come, hoping to finally have my musical taste talents respectfully recognised.