Lyd's Adventures: Farewells & Tour

On Friday night I farewelled my mum & dad & my nana. It was lovely having them around while they were here, & very hard to say goodbye... They flew out from Heathrow just after 9pm, then at 10:15pm I flew to Ireland for my rugby tour, giving me very little time to feel sad! There were 5 of us on the late flight, with the other 18 tourists managing to wrangle the day off work (or suddenly 'coming down' with something!) & flying out earlier in the day.

It was nearly 1am by the time we rocked up to our accommodation. We were playing the Kinsale 7's, & were staying in some lovely holiday cottages on the sea, about 20 minutes from the town centre.

Despite it being late & us new arrivals being pretty much dead on our feet, we were given our tour kit each & bombarded with instructions. The theme for the Reading Ladies tour 08 was 'Prison Break', & our kit included a polo shirt, a black & white rugby jersey, & a swag bag with several items in it that we had to keep on our person all times (unless actually playing) or else we would be fined.

I won't say too much about the trip, because obviously the old adage "what goes on tour, stays on tour" holds, but it was a great weekend, very well organised by our 4 prison wardens. For those that weren't always willing to co-operate there was 'solitary confinement' & the 'stroppy knickers' both of which I managed to avoid!

My tour name was MacKenzie, who was apparently the only convict from NZ that the committee could find. They put our wanted posters up at the rugby club, & also the pub in town which we adopted as our base for the weekend. The rugby took place on Saturday & Sunday, but was almost incidental to the tour. To say our team didn't exactly take it seriously was bit of an understatement! I didn't even survive more than a few minutes. I managed to pull something in my back during the warm-up before the first game (& yes I did get fined for injuring myself in the warm-up!). The physio on my team did a bit of work & managed to get me moving a bit, & I tried a few minutes on the field, but it wasn't right. I wasn't too bothered, 7's isn't exactly a game for front-row forwards!!!

Here are a few more pics from the weekend... In case you're wondering, the letters on our tour shirts spell "The great escape Kinsale" & whenever the wardens played the great escape music we had to line up in order.

After the days playing was over, we would have a few (more) drinks at the club, then head into town. On Sunday afternoon our wardens had organised a treasure hunt around Kinsale. We were split into teams, chained to each other, given a set of clues, & set off to hunt down some keys. My team rocked, we finished way before the other team, with all our keys found, unlike the others who couldn't find half theirs! We celebrated with some lovely fish & chips down on the waterfront.So there you go, I survived my first tour with Reading ladies. It was a great was to spend a long weekend, with plenty of antics. One of the funniest sights was a guys team from Manchester who were staying at the same place as us. They decided to go into town in togas on the last night, & were snapped having an impromptu game of touch. We had a lot to do with them over the weekend, they were a good laugh, & would come & support us during our games.We arrived back in Reading mid afternoon today, & I met Will in town for a spot of shopping. We purchased a lovely cutlery set from John Lewis using some of our wedding vouchers, so thank you to everyone reading this who contributed! We have a few ideas for the rest of the vouchers. We want to get some really nice things that will last us a long time.