5 March 2006
Motorway Highwaymen!
Having set off for Liverpool at about 8.30am, we didn’t have time for breakfast, and my youngest son, who was coming with me to see his older brother, was getting hungry. So I promised him we’d stop after driving 90 minutes to get something to eat.
We pulled into the Motorway Services and ordered two cooked breakfasts and a pot of tea, I nearly fell over at the bill… a couple of pence short of £17!! It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if half of it hadn’t been cold. I couldn’t eat all mine, but my son finished it off for me (that child can eat for Britain and still not put weight on! One of the benefits of having ADHD I guess).
On the way home the next evening, (not having learnt my lesson) we stopped at another services, about halfway way home, to get something to eat, this time I had egg on toast (remembering the adverts suggesting you don’t eat a large meal when Motorway driving, as it can make you feel drowsy) and Dom had two sausages & chips, that along with a pot of tea cost just over £10!! When I peeked at the receipt I saw they charged £1.09 for a sausage! £1.09!!! You can buy a really good quality & fancy sausage for 37p in Tesco and this was just a basic normal sausage! it was 99p for a slice of toast, a whole loaf of bread costs less than that one slice of toast, and I’m talking Kingsmill or Hovis, which I bet that toast wasn’t made from! The egg was 99p too, half a dozen eggs can be bought for about 50p, so that’s one heck of a profit margin! The egg wasn’t even cooked nicely, the white was still ’snotty’ (euuuuuugh).
Of course the Motorway Services can charge what they like, as they have a captive audience, you can’t turn around and threaten to use the services up the road, because the next one can be miles away, and it will be just as expensive!
Motorway services have become the modern equivalent of highwaymen, the only difference is, they’re not outlaws!