I've just had a fantastic week away in Durham for the summer school for my OU course. Fantastic stuff. We flew to Newcastle from Bristol, got the Metro to the station then the train to Durham, so it was only a couple of hours door to door (although that's more money to Future Forests to offset that evil CO2!). It was an early flight, and thanks to my objection to buying anything other than beer at airports we had a particularly early 7am pint. Still, start as you mean to go on eh?<br /><br />We got to Durham pretty early so we got a chance to look around too. Durham is quite similar to Bath in that it's a pretty small city with lots of old bits, and there are several nice pubs to sit in and while away the time. As we discovered. Soon enough it was time to go back to the university to register. We were based in Hatfield College for A214, which is right next to the cathedral in the nice old bit. Some other courses had summer schools going on further out, but we didn't really have anything to do with them. We were lucky as all of the buildings we used had great locations, and were close together. Can't fault it.<br /><br />The hall we were staying in was... basic. I've seen and lived in some halls in my time, but these were pretty ropey. It was no problem for a week of course, but I might have got slightly depressed if I was in there for a year. Still, there were some great people in there with me. There were so many great people on the course that it just didn't seem long enough to meet them all - I was still meeting fascinating people on the last night. Does this all sound a bit gushing? Well, it really was that good and some of the people really that great. To top it all off, the work itself was great too. Hard in places, but great. It was so good to be with loads of people doing a subject they love - just like university again really, and actually in a university obviously added to that.<br /><br />If you ever do an OU course with a summer school, make sure you go! You won't regret it. If I had to come up with a regret, I'm just sorry that I won't be able to do it again.