The terrible experience of attending concert in UK.

Poor Rita and Jennifer...

Will you be excited if you have a chance to enjoy Ronan Keating's concert at one of the most beautiful castles in UK? It is certainly yes for me and Rita. We planned this trip long ago and were very excited in this first experience in UK. However, after the concert, we both agreed that it would be our first and last concert in UK and we won't recommend people to have any concerts in the castles, no matter whoever is performing that night.

The concert is located at Leeds castle in Kent, quite close to London. It won'tbe my first visit to Leeds castle, however, Rita and I still want to take a look at the castle before the concert begins. I thought about the difficulties we may encounter on the way back to London, however, I had no idea how to solve the problem after checking some much information online. We were thinking that we will still be all right anyway.

How to get to Leeds castle from London? Normally you could take train to bearsted and connect another shuttle bus to Leeds castle or you could take coach to there directly. And you could get the all-in-one ticket (train or bus + admission) at train or coach station. On 1st of July, we went to buy the tickets and the staff told me that they are not allowed to sell tickets to Leeds castle. What? I was puzzled and did not know how to reply him. In this case, we could only get the return train tickets to bearsted station and see how we could get to Leeds castle from that train station. I felt so bad already at the moment.

However, the castle opens till 6-7pm daily except the concert or other special events are progressing. Therefore, when we noticed that the concert will be ended around 11pm, we started to worry about how are we going to catch the last train ahead back to London. Unfortunately, we must choose to enjoy less Ronan's concert or stay over at bearsted. God knows where Bearsted is. It is like that you are in the middle of nowhere and the problem is how are we going to get to Bearsted from Leeds castle at nearly midnight time??? Rita and I decided to leave the concert earlier to catch the last train from Hollingbourne train station (according to the staffs at Bearsted station, hollingbone is the nearest train station to Leeds castle). Both of us felt quite relieved after getting all the information we needed and the brief picture about how to go back to London that night.

It seemed that every difficulty had been solved---believe me, you would not know what terrible things happened to us later on.

Oh…well…well…we shared the taxi to Leeds castle from Bearsted train station with one of staffs who is arranging Ronan's stage tonight. When we arrived at the main gate of Leeds castle and we looked at people queuing for the concert with lots of preparation, such as: tent, umbrellas, chairs, foods, drinks, blankets and so forth. Then,Rita and I looked at each other and laughed out loud for we brought food and drinks with us ONLY. I did not even bring umbrella with me. Remember: The weather in UK is always unpredictable and changeable, so it started to rain heavily since we were queuing for entering the garden/park.

The concert held at the big garden/park in the Leeds castle and there were 2 types of tickets: reserved and unreserved. The reserved ones are closer to the stage with seats and of course, more expensive than the unreserved ones. You need to find your own places to enjoy your concert anywhere in the garden/park. Anyway, it is more like a picnic style of concert. The weather was so damn cold that day and it rained so hard. Rita and I were freezed to death. The small umbrella could not prevent us from getting wet at all and that made both of us thinking of going home immediately. We had dame expensive hot chocolate (2.5 pounds) and easy raincoat (2 pounds) but still felt so chilly. Rita and I were thinking of getting home all the time…
BELIEVE ME: YOU WOULD NEVER WANT TO ENJOY YOUR CONCERT IN RAIN.

The rain did not stop at all till the concert begun; however, Ronan Keating was not the first one to perform. A female singer, Beulah sang for the first half hour. To be honest, we thought that was Ronan's concert and therefore, we did not expect some guests to show up or at least not at the beginning. You would think that Ronan will show up right after her singing, right? Well….NO la!! I think that each famous singer has his/her own band so they have to change the whole band team afterwards and it took about another 30 minutes. The concert started at 730pm that day, however, it was almost 840pm when Ronan finally showed up.

You could feel how popular Ronan is right after he spoke the first word from the crowds' loud shouting and screaming. Both Rita and I could not help ourselves singing along, standing up and shaking our bodies. Even we were quite far away from the stage, we could still see Ronan's performance quite clear through the big TV screens. He sang very well and of course, he is so good looking as well. We felt that our hearts were taken away by his gentle expression of eyes and tender voices. I REALLY ENJOY THE LIVE CONCERT SO MUCH!!

Ronan sang many of his hit songs and also sent out the message of helping African children away from poverty. I think that he is really trying to use his fame and ability to help children and people in need. What a nice superstar!!

Rita and I just did not want to leave the concert earlier but we must… We finally forced ourselves to get out of the concert around 955pm, just about the end of the concert. The crowds were shouting 'Encore! Encore! Encore!' but we could not stay for Ronan's another 3-4 encore songs for catching the last train back to London. We asked the staffs there to direct us how to reach the Hollingbourne train station but they had no idea at all. They even told us there would be some taxis around the main gate and we could just take taxi to the train station. Our miserable trip started from now on then. We got lost on the way to the main gate, could not find any taxis around the main gate and we even could not book taxi to pick us up—however, all the taxis were booked or they could not pick passengers up from Leeds castle—just too many weird instructions in UK. In addition, we had already missed the last train we planned to catch by that time. Rita and I were thinking of whether to stay there overnight or take a taxi back to London. No matter which solution we would take, it would cost us a lot of money indeed. To be honest, I really regretted to come to this concert.

We confirmed that there won't be any public transportation running to London from any stations after 1040pm. Can you believe that?? All I could say is that Leeds castle is really in the middle of nowhere. So…what could we do??? It would cost us 120 pounds to stay at that hotel and we had no idea whether they still had any available rooms. Therefore, we thought maybe we could try to go back to London by taxi. The old gentleman at reception was so nice and he booked us a taxi back to London with a quite reasonable price-60 pounds. We both agreed with the price and therefore, we decided to take taxi back to London.

Tell you the truth that it was not the end of our disaster yet…

We got on the taxi and the taxi driver was asking us the final destination in London. I asked him will that be the same price to go anywhere in London and he replied me YES. Oh..god…that would save Rita and I a lot of time in taking buses home. And so we told him the address and he checked it on his map and navigator then told us that would take him 2 hours to get there and another 2 hours to go back. That would be too cheap for 60 pounds therefore, he would like to charge us another 30 pounds more. Come on!! We of course were not going to accept this. Therefore, we gave him another place to drop us but he could not find the place at all on his map and his stupid navigator so he gave up and said that he would drop us at our place. We did not reply a single word even we knew that he was not willing to do so—but he decided to do so, not us. Anyway… he was not happy with that indeed and he murmured something like we got a too cheap offer and so and so. I think that we were just too nice and we told him that actually he could drop us anywhere he knew in central London when he said something else later on. You could tell that he was much happier with our offer immediately and he became more friendly and nicer as well. The taxi driver knew nothing about London and his stupid navigator could not find him the shortcut to get to Piccadilly Circus and therefore, it took us almost 2 hours to get to central London. (He even stopped in the middle of highway twice to check the address on the map and navigator. Unbelievable!!)

The tube is not 24 hours running in London and therefore, all we could do is taking night bus home. Both Rita and I did not have that experience before and that was a new try again. You could imagine how less frequent buses would come in midnight and we had to transfer at least twice to get to Rita's place. It was 230am on 2nd of July when we finally got home. What a long journey.

It was a very different experience from attending a concert in Taiwan. At least you do not have to worry about the transportation. Anyway, apart from the weather and transportation, I do enjoy Ronan's concert a lot and would like to attend his other concerts in the future but only if it would be held in the convenient locations.