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Ladies of leisure

There's a saying that 'It's not the finishing point, but the act of travelling which is important', and this is certainly true when applied to door2tour.com's Ladies' Leisure weekend

Not that there's anything wrong with the Copthorne Hotel at Brierley Hill, Dudley - it's just that the journey took so long, it became the most memorable part of the weekend.

I'm not quite sure what I expected when I was invited to go on a coach holiday. I had visions of blue-rinsed ladies singing 'Didn't we have a luverly time', but I decided it was an economical way to travel and an ideal way to get somewhere without the stresses of driving there myself.

Early start

I live on the South Coast and was delighted to learn that door2door.com provides pick-ups from around the UK. Stupidly on my part, I assumed that we would drive to Dudley, picking up fellow travellers en route. But when our friendly bus driver met us at 6.30am, he informed us that he was just a 'feeder bus' taking us to their hub at Thurrock where we would join the bus to our destination. We then spent the next three hours driving around East Sussex and Kent before being deposited at Thurrock at 9.40 with strict instructions to return to pick up our luggage at 10.

Service stations are never glamorous and I admit my patience was sorely tested by the early start and lack of caffeine, but my friend Luce and I dashed, first to the loos, then to a try to find a coffee in what has to be the slowest place on earth. We eventually emerged with seconds to spare, armed with coffee and a bag of sugary snacks for round two of our incredibly long journey.

Long delays

Delays among other 'feeder buses' meant our departure time of 10am was absurdly optimistic. Information was scarce, although our driver did eventually suggest we'd be away by 10.45, but our additional passengers were finally dropped off at 11, and we hit the road shortly after that.

The delay, of course, had a knock-on effect and we were subject to the usual traffic hold-ups along the way, but we arrived in Stratford-up-Avon in time for a late lunch. I was assured that usually people had time to explore but after just over an hour, we were back on the bus and heading to Birmingham to drop off a group of shoppers.

We eventually pulled up outside the Copthorne hotel, our destination for the weekend, at 5.15pm, travel weary but optimistic that we could relax and enjoy the spa facilities. We were met by Roberta and taken into a separate room for a group check-in (although you do still have to go to the general check-in afterwards to register) and a chance to book beauty treatments.

As we were part of a large group, our hotel decided to pre-book our dining times, giving us dinner that night at 7pm. Our late arrival meant that this left little time for the first of two themed beauty demonstrations - on reflexology - and we were faced with the choice of listening to the demo, or freshening up in our rooms. Luce and I opted for the reflexology, and being the only participants, we each enjoyed a sample session before dashing in to dinner.

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