It happened to be the same day I had had my injections before I go to Peru. At about 4pm there was a suggestion that we go to the beach at Weston-Super-Mare. I hadn't been to Weston-Super-Mare before. Me, Jennie, Jamie and Izzy went there in Jennies car (it took 45 minutes). I was nearly falling asleep on the way as I had been up the whole night before. Anyway after a brief stop at ASDAs (Wal-Mart for overseas readers) in Weston-Super-Mare we made our way to the beach which is about 5 miles away. It was actually a beach called Sand Bay. When you get to the beach if the tide is out you can be a 15 minute walk to the sea. The beach actually has the 2nd longest tidal range in the world. It was a very nice day and the beach, although huge (a mile long maybe) was almost deserted maybe a couple of people walking dogs and so forth. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows and had a picnic and played games on the sand and so forth. Jennie hadn't seen a sunset before (she is from Devon so they are always a bit behind) so we stayed for the sunset (photos on Facebook now!). Although the fire was providing heat and light at 10:30pm we headed back to the car. We got in the car. We were all tired, dirty and chatty. We drove through the car park and got to the gate. It was closed. Locked? I jumped out to inspect. It was indeed locked. There was a padlock the size of my hand and a thick, heavy metal chain locking the gate. We walked over to the car park sign. It said it was closed at 9:30pm. We hadn't noticed that everybody else had left already. We rang the number for the council on the sign. They said that we would have to stay in there all night and were basically quite rude. Jamie and Jennie climbed over the gate (Jennie has a metal hip) and they went to the local pub to ask for advice. "the people last night who got locked in got a lift home and came back in the morning to collect their car" was the reply. Was there another way out? Huge stones were blocking a car getting onto the beach. The 2 girls sat in the car and said that we would have to sleep all night in the car. Jamie got on his mobile and called his friend for tips. Meanwhile I started picking the padlock with my leather punch on my penknife. I tried to pick it for half and hour to no avail. Jamie's friend on the phone suggested that we hit the padlock with rocks to try and break it. We tried that. It was very neolithic. There were a few bruised nails as a result! The whole time the girls were saying "just get back in the car and give up". I asked if they had any tools in the car. They said no. Then I asked if she had a spare wheel as they normally come with tools. She didn't know. I took everything out of the boot and took the cover off. The spare tyre was there and also a few tools including a jack and so forth. There was 1 tool that looked like a giant hook and eye thing. I think it was supposed to be some sort of tow-bar thing. Anyway I took it back to the padlock. My theory was that the leverage would break the padlock. I slid the long metal end through the padlock and started jumping up and down on the eye bit. The padlock was a big, heavy duty, chunky affair and I couldn't even tell which side the padlock opened. Anyway I kept trying. Nothing seemed to happen for ages. Jamie was still walking around the car park in the dark on his mobile. Suddenly there was a yell. I ran and Jamie was lying on the floor with his sock off. He had stepped on a 4-inch long rusty nail. It stopped bleeding fairly quickly but after looking at the nail in the headlights it was defiantly rusty and old and had gone deep. "If I kissed you perhaps my tetanus injection from earlier would help you" was my quip. But he needed to get to hospital really. I went back to the gate and tried for another 10 minutes. My entire body weight was on the eye bit. I was jumping up and down manically and worried about my testicles in case they banged onto the top of the gate. Then suddenly there was an almighty CRRUUNNCCH. I jumped off and inspected it. The metal loop was half broken! I waved and they hobbled/limped over. I got up again and gave it another few minutes of hardcore jumping. 82kg (I had been weighed at the doctors that day) of chocolate eclair power and the padlock snapped and the gate swung open. There were cheers. We all jumped into the car. I bandaged Jamie's foot whilst we looked for a hospital. I suggested we headed for Weston-Super-Mare as that's the nearest big town. By half luck and half design we arrived at the hospital. It was quite empty so in half and hour Jamie had had his tetanus. We made our way home but we were all so tired we got lost a bit and ended up in Bristol. We went under the Clifton Suspension Bridge and finally ended back at the campus at 2:45am.
