London – Day 3 – Race Day and The Wrong Dinner

Race day was upon us. Although my race didn’t start until 9:50am, transition closed at 7:30am so we made an early start, I had my usual race day breakfast in the hotel room and we headed to Hyde Park for 6:30am so that I could get set up.

The Race

I won’t recall the race here again as I’ve already written a full race report from the ITU Age-Group Triathlon World Championships in London elsewhere, but here’s a quick recap for those who don’t want to read it all.

The competition was tough with a stacked field in my age-group. There was lots of waiting around for my wave to start and then we were off for a 750m swim in the Serpentine, a 22.5km bike ride around Hyde Park and a 5km run around the banks of the Serpentine. In between each discipline was a long, wet, muddy and very slippery transition.

My age-group was split into two waves so it was impossible to tell what position I was in during the race but my swim went well, I lost time in transition thanks to the slippery ground surface. It rained all the way around and I lost concentration on the bike, but I had a good run bringing me home in a total time of 1:09:23. That was good enough to rank me as 9th ‘almost old guy’ in the world. Not too shabby.

After the race I had a nice shower in the event village and we hung around chatting to people before heading out onto the bike course where we were able to cheer on Alison and Roger who were still out racing in later age-groups. I hope they heard us shouting for them.

Roger

Roger

Memorial Fountains, Science Museum and Mayhem

We then wandered around the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain before heading off to the Science Museum. As we crossed the bike course to get to Exhibition Road we saw some guy have a horrible crash. He overcooked it on the corner and was heading for the barriers so slammed on his brakes sending him somersaulting over the bars and landing flat on his face in a huge faceplant. He didn’t get up too quickly and the St John’s Ambulance guy nearby was useless, taking ages to get to him. If the St John’s ambulance guy and marshalls hadn’t been there then I would have been straight over the barriers to help him and would have got to him much quicker then they did. He did manage to get up and hobble off to the ambulance, but he may well have broken a collar bone and looked pretty shaken.

Once in the Science Museum, the efforts of the day were beginning to take their toll, my legs were beginning to ache and I was feeling a little sick, but we headed to the top floor and the ‘Launchpad’ exhibition where they have lots of hands on experiments for kids. The place was heaving, it was full of kids shouting and screaming and the acoustics of the rooms were terrible. We were hit by a wall of noise and mayhem as we tried getting to grips with the various displays.

The madness of launchpad didn’t really help with the nauseous feeling I was experiencing but Morgan seemed to be quite excited by all of the experiments and hands on displays so we stuck it out and tried our best to work with them despite having to battle though hoards of others children. It really wasn’t a pleasant environment and after an hour or so Anna had had enough as well and all we wanted was a nice cup of tea! We tore Morgan away from launchpad and had a quick look at some of the quieter exhibits on our way to the cafe.

Although it is called the Science Museum, almost all of the displays are really about human engineering and achievements in science rather than just science itself. We didn’t get to see everything of course and some of the exhibits were quite good. Morgan enjoyed the launchpad, but that area was just too hectic for us. Maybe it would have been better if the hands on interactive stuff for kids was dotted around the whole museum rather than concentrated into one hectic area. That way the noise and mayhem would be diluted over the whole building and it would also encourage the children to  look elsewhere in the museum as well.

After the museum, Anna and Morgan headed back to the hotel. They entered the tube station next to the museum but ended up having to walk almost the whole distance back to the hotel underground. They would have been better off just walking really. I headed back to Hyde Park to collect my bike and kit from the transition area now that the age-group races were over.

The paratriathletes were now out racing so I watched a few of them go by as I made my way to a now desserted transition area. Most bikes had already been collected so I was able to walk in and out without queuing and collect my kit before risking my life by riding back through rush-hour London on my bike. I was wearing trainers so was perched on my clipless pedals, with an aero helmet on my head and a bag containing my shoes and wet wetsuit over my back weaving in and out of the buses and lorries on gridlocked roads. It was a little scary at times to say the least but I made it and met Anna and Morgan in the hotel.

The Wrong Dinner

As my race was now over, we had decided to have a 3 course meal in Thyme, the hotel restaurant. They had a deal on that gave you 3 courses for £22.99 which then entitled you to an ‘eat as much as you can’ buffet breakfast the next day as well. I’d been looking forward to eating far too much for a while so this seemed like just the ticket.

Pint

Pint

The restaurant looked nice, and the menu looked good so we ordered our meals. The deal also included a drink so I had a pint of Boddingtons, the first pint I’d had for a while. Along came our starters… well, along came mine and Anna’s and the waitress told us that Morgan’s Chicken Goujons weren’t available so he would have to have chicken wings instead. We said that was OK and started eating ours. This was a shame as Morgan was looking forward to his chicken goujons and was quite hungry but now had to sit there waiting for his starter whilst ours were already there. We could have waited for his but ours would have gone cold so we tucked in. My chicken wings were a bit bland but it was only halfway through them that I realised this was because they hadn’t come with the spicy tabasco sauces that they were supposed to.

Morgan’s starter still hadn’t arrived but we couldn’t find a waitress to ask where it was and by this time Anna and I had finished ours. Then the waitress came out with our main courses and cleared away the starters. Along with the main course came the tabasco sauce that I should have had with my starter. We told them that Morgan had yet to have his starter and they told us it was coming with the main courses. We never did manage to get to the bottom of this thinking, but sure enough they brought Morgan’s starter out just after the main courses. Not very sensible really as Morgan, the 8 year old who needed feeding had to sit there watching us eat our starters whilst waiting for his to arrive. He was then presented with his pizza and a bowl of chicken wings which he has to eat all at the same time! There wasn’t much we could do about it though.

We then noticed that Morgans chicken wings didn’t have any dips with them as they were supposed to have so we asked for those. The dips never materialised, instead we were simply given a basket of condiments such as tomato ketchup and brown sauce. Also, Morgan’s pizza had been served with green beans not the baked beans he had asked for. We also noticed that Anna’s main course had come with salad not the chips that she had ordered. Basically they had got everything wrong and we spent the entire meal asking the waiting staff to correct their mistakes.

They did bring out chips and beans in order to fix things but that isn’t really the point. We don’t like having to complain and it spoilt the meal for us, a meal that we had been looking forward to for days. They did at least get our desserts correct! There was no offer of any sort of compensation or even a voucher for a free meal on another day. Nothing at all. We should really have complained properly rather than just tell them what they had got wrong and ask them to correct it, but we aren’t too good at that and really it shouldn’t be up to us to do so. We would have at least expected them to offer some sort of compensation in the form of a discount or a free meal on a subsequent day but there was nothing. We settled the bill and left feeling disappointed.

We were staying in the hotel for another few days and had the service been better and the meals we ordered been correct then we would probably have returned on another evening but as it was we were already wondering what would go wrong with the free breakfasts we were entitled to and we definitely weren’t coming back for another evening meal.

We did mention the terrible experience in the restaurant when we checked out of the Premier Inn a couple of days later and we were sure that the trainee receptionist was trying to sort some for of compensation out for us, but her superiors seemed to be ignoring her and nothing was ever done about it. I think we’ll be writing to Premier Inn as it did ruin what should have been a lovely evening.

1 Response

  1. Avatar forComment Author Anna says:

    When we got home I contacted Premier Inn about the bad experience we’d had with the dinner there and yesterday they
    phoned to confirm that they would be refunding the total cost of the meal. They were really good about it and obviously very keen to find out what had gone wrong.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Avatar forComment Author

Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

You may also like...