Serves Me Right or, What goes around comes around………..

Coach travel is boring and should be avoided at all costs.

(There is only one exception to this rule and that is when travelling between Hanoi and Halong Bay. By coach is the only way to travel. It’s about a 3 hr drive on more or less a single lane road and all you can see coming in the opposite direction is a constant stream of trucks, cars and mopeds carrying men, women, children, pigs or the kitchen sink (and sometimes all five at once). It’s the best game of chicken I’ve ever played. They all hold their course and at the last moment the most cowardly driver swerves out of the way – it’s brilliant!!!. I don’t think my group were as impressed – at one point I turned around to look and they had all moved on to the ‘kerb’ side of the coach ‘just in case’. With 30 people on a 45 seater coach this meant that nearly half the passengers ended up sitting on someone else’s lap but at least it meant that the group had bonded well and I put the high spirits at dinner that night down to the sheer joy of having survived the trip!! Of course I wasn’t at all nervous. I was sitting at the front of the coach and kept my eyes on the driver’s hands. I figured that as long as his knuckles didn’t turn white we were all going to be fine.)

Anyway, back to my point. Coach travel is boring. Even when there is no other way to get from point A to point B there’s always a way to break up the journey, sometimes by visiting point C on the way or sometimes by arranging a little ‘technical hitch’ en route and having an alternative method of transport available just to cover the last stretch.

And this is what we’d done in Prague. We boarded the coaches in the morning to head out to Nelahozevez Castle. The journey was about an hour and a half or so and the last bit was through some beautiful countryside, perfect for a bike ride along the river. All we had to do was stage a fake breakdown at a designated spot.

The coach driver took his new acting career very seriously and starting pumping the brakes about 10 minutes too early. Finally the coach came to a juddering halt at which point I explained to the group that obviously there was something wrong with the engine thingy and that Second In Command and I would just take a quick sprint up the road to see if we could fetch help. (Can’t believe they swallowed that one, it had been pretty obvious up to that point that neither of us could speak Czech so God knows what sort of help we’d have come back with if it had been a real emergency).

We disappeared around the corner to check that our fleet of beautifully branded bicycles were waiting in the arranged spot and 5 minutes later the guide led the group after us. I’m assuming that they’d decided that Second in Command and I were bound to get in trouble and need rescuing.

They were all delighted at the sight of the bicycles, and after donning the appropriate safety gear we happily set off along the river with the fairytale castle in the distance as our final destination and the sun shining brightly overhead – idyllic!

They loved it. They also loved the elegant morning tea that we’d arranged with the real live Prince who owns the castle and were fascinated at his stories of how his family reclaimed their many properties and treasures from the State following the fall of the communist government. They loved his personal tour of the castle and they loved the fine lunch set up in the courtyard and the very impressive synchronized cloche removal from the plates by the waiters.

All in all a success. Finally it was time to reboard the coach and head back to Prague. The clouds were closing in and it was about to rain but everything was set and it was time to leave. The driver took his seat and………nothing. He turned the key a couple of times more but the engine was dead so he let off the handbrake and cruised down the long drive of the castle. The group was so busy chatting about the morning’s activities that they didn’t notice at first but when the coach failed to jump start itself and came to rest just as it reached the road they couldn’t help but figure out something was wrong..

Normally in this situation a group would get cranky and impatient. Their afternoon was free for shopping and if there’s one thing you absolutely never do with a group it’s get between the girls and their shops.

However, this time their reaction was one of triumph. A lot of these people are regular attendees of the annual incentive trips and are used to (and expect) our little surprises and tricks. We catch them every time and our subterfuges have to get more and more complicated every year. Each time they find out what we’ve done they scold us affectionately and say something along the lines of ‘Oh, you girls. What will you come up with next…..”

The group was jubilant. Our little stunt with the coach breakdown in the morning had come back to bite us in the bum and they couldn’t have been happier.

The hysterical giggling didn’t start until I got off the coach to head up the drive to ask Prince Lobkowicz for help. I’d got about 20 metres before the torrential rain started. Hence I had to beg a bona fide royal for assistance looking like a drowned rat. He jumped into action (didn’t seem to hold it against me that I wasn’t in the mood for curtsying) and immediately organized for a spare battery to be brought from his storage dungeon or some such.

Thirty minutes later we were all fixed and on our way back to Prague with plenty of time for shopping.

This group have never let me forget it though. Every time something ‘unexpected’ happens to them now on a trip I can just see them waiting for me to get my just desserts………