My baby has finally left ! Off to start a new life at uni. The trip was fine despite us leaving an hour later than planned. This was because Romas went into total meltdown over his PC because despite hours of downloading on our snail paced broadband he still had not got the drivers for his motherboard. Still I'm sure he will get some help from the the techies at uni and quite probably the missing disc with the drivers on will turn up when I blitz his room.
We hadn't visited Keele before and I was quite impressed with the set up. It is a large self contained campus in the countryside several miles from Stoke-on-Trent. It is not brand new but the student blocks where Romas has his room have been totally refurbished this summer.
His room is the one at the end with the open window. The room is small but once we turned the bed against the wall to make it into a divan and put a throw over the duvet it looked more like a bed-sit rather than a bedroom. The en suite bathroom is all high tech with automatic lights and as Romas found out when he stuck his head inside to investigate the control panel, an automatic shower. About 8 rooms share a communal kitchen which also is nice and new. We saw and spoke to a few of the other students and their parents who were helping them carry their belongings in. I expect all the students were just waiting for us oldies to go and let them get on with having fun. Romas should be fine, there are 3 pretty young girls in the rooms next to him and he is good at making friends. He's already been in touch with several students on his course and he's got 2 weeks of Freshers' Events to get to know people. Well good luck to him, these 3 years should be a wonderful experience for him and hopefully will also improve his job prospects as well.
Romas' window is just behind me here. The block on the right is their communal building (and bar I presume - I was amazed by the number of bars all over the place when we visited Leicester Uni with Vytas).
The whole place was heaving with parents trying to find parking spaces to unload their children's worldly goods. The campus is big and spread out with plenty of trees and green areas. There is even a local bus service running through it to the city.
We hadn't visited Keele before and I was quite impressed with the set up. It is a large self contained campus in the countryside several miles from Stoke-on-Trent. It is not brand new but the student blocks where Romas has his room have been totally refurbished this summer.
His room is the one at the end with the open window. The room is small but once we turned the bed against the wall to make it into a divan and put a throw over the duvet it looked more like a bed-sit rather than a bedroom. The en suite bathroom is all high tech with automatic lights and as Romas found out when he stuck his head inside to investigate the control panel, an automatic shower. About 8 rooms share a communal kitchen which also is nice and new. We saw and spoke to a few of the other students and their parents who were helping them carry their belongings in. I expect all the students were just waiting for us oldies to go and let them get on with having fun. Romas should be fine, there are 3 pretty young girls in the rooms next to him and he is good at making friends. He's already been in touch with several students on his course and he's got 2 weeks of Freshers' Events to get to know people. Well good luck to him, these 3 years should be a wonderful experience for him and hopefully will also improve his job prospects as well.
Romas' window is just behind me here. The block on the right is their communal building (and bar I presume - I was amazed by the number of bars all over the place when we visited Leicester Uni with Vytas).
The whole place was heaving with parents trying to find parking spaces to unload their children's worldly goods. The campus is big and spread out with plenty of trees and green areas. There is even a local bus service running through it to the city.Once I'd settled Romas in, ie helped carry his stuff and even made his bed, aah, I left him to begin his new life and headed back down the M6/5 to drop in at our friends' in Tewkesbury for a coffee and a chat. The weather was sunny all day and as I drove past Birmmingham I could see the shoulder of the Malverns rising up in the distance. Most of the countryside along my journey was fairly flat with occasional ridges of hills breaking the skyline. It got hillier as I headed into Devon and from Bristol as I came down from the high ground I was treated to the most serene pink and orange skies as the sun slowly set on my right hand side dropping down below the hills. It was a long day but I find long journeys much easier when I'm the driver and of course Peter's car is comfortable and fast.
