4x4 Chalk Quarry Driving Experience

I had a great day out with Emma Wooldridge today as a belated birthday gift at True Grip Off Road for a Birthday 4x4 chalk quarry driving experience. We have done a lot of quad biking at True Grip in the past and it has always been a great experience no matter the time of year or weather conditions. The 4x4 Experience was awesome, driving a 4x4 in a quarry when one minute you are looking up in the sky through the windscreen and then next you are over the ridge and looking down into the quarry and the gears are controlling you decent is mind blowing to begin with.

We had breakfast on the way to Ashford in Kent, and as we arrived early, we visited Dobbies which I have to say I was not impressed with and then Longacres Bybrook Barn which was a much nicer garden centre, and had a better feel about it.

I have been looking for westland Gro Sure Seed and Cutting Compost which is my normal go too compost for starting off my seedlings, Usually TESCO has westland composts from the start of march, but no where locally appears to have it not even the local Blue Diamond who will be selling 3 sacks for £12 when it finally arrives. I have book marked it and asked for an email when it comes into stock.

I have emailed the public relations and marketing contacts for westlands to try and find out why Gro Sure is in such short supply, but as with most marketing people one discovers they are poor communicators, which is a little counter intuitive but found to be true, so I'm not holding my breath for an answer anytime soon, if at all to be honest.

What I did find at Longacres Bybrook Barn was the westland Multi-Purpose Compost with added John Innes at 2 sacks for £6.

Now I did not have great results using the new Westland New Horizon Tomato Compost with BIO3 last year in fact an experiment growing between westland New Horizon Tomato Compost with BIO3 V Dalefoots showed just how poor the results were with the New BIO3 were, but I'm willing to give this a try as it has added John Innes for my seedlings as I can't get Gro Sure. and I can pot them on into something healthier as I can still get peat based compost this year.

I paid for my compost purchase using an HTA eVoucher, which the cashier wanted to take and I explained that I needed it back because it was a £30 gift I had been given by my sister-in-law for my birthday and there should be £18 still on it.

We checked on line whilst waiting for the 4x4 experience and found the eVoucher had zero balance. So after the experience we went back to Longacres Bybrook Barn to explain and it appears that the particular member of staff was not normally on the till, but was on because it was Mothers Day weekend and they were short staffed, and had somehow cleared the remaining £18 balance. Customer services at Longacres Bybrook Barn were excellent and just gave me another HTA Gift card to the value of £18 after looking into the matter.

So just be careful when using HTA paper, card of eVouchers in garden centres that you do get your change. the FAQ at HTA state that not all outlets give change of balance to paper vouchers, but eVoucher's should retain a balance the same as cards.

Quite by accident Emma had booked us into the Harvester opposite Longacres Bybrook Barn for an early evening meal to round off the day.