Travel diary: Myrtle Beach

This weekend we have been at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. We are staying in a huge hotel on the sea front, made up of lots of privately owned but centrally rented condos. Ours is very nice and very well equipped. It's high up and has a balcony overlooking the next door hotel, which is also huge. We can just see the sea from our balcony. The hotel has several swimming pools and a "lazy river". The latter is a lot of fun; you sit on a "tube", like a blow-up beach ring, and get carried around a little circuit on a slow water flow. We all went on it last night for a while, then swam and then went into the hot jacuzzi. Today we spent the early afternoon on the beach, where the sea was pleasant, with decent waves, and the sand was hot. The weather was well into the 30s Celsius and we all got pretty hot after a while. It must get very hot down here in July and August. Coming in low season like this is ideal. And it's not too crowded at this time of year.

We've had a few minor incidents along the way. We picked up a flat tyre on the way down; we saw it as we walked out of the Mad Boar restaurant, where we'd had a nice lunch, about 30 miles from Wilmington. There was a big nail in the tyre. Triple A put the temporary tyre on for us while we went back in to the Mad Boar to have some coffee, and we got a new one fixed about 20 minutes away from Myrtle Beach.

I'm writing this in the small hours after the toilet overflowed and poured water all over the bathroom and kitchen. I managed to stop the flow before it reached the carpeted area. A lady came to mop it up for us, but the fire alarm went off in the hotel while she was doing it, about 90 minutes ago, and she never came back. Eventually, I just finished the job myself and will probably give up waiting and go to bed soon. In the mean time, I've got lots of extra work done, with the Today programme on Radio 4 in the background. We'll ask for some money off our bill for the trouble.

Viola has taken several photos, and I hope to add some when we get back later today.