Big Sixes On Tour - Hotels From Heaven and Hell - Nottingham

We've teamed up with one of the freshest new bands in the UK right now, Big Sixes, to bring you a daily tour diary or just what it's like to be on the road.

The main emphasis is on the luxurious budget hotels that the band stay in amongst their nitty-gritty nights on stage playing to cities across the UK. Check back daily to find out their latest spotting of beige coloured furniture and why their lack-lustre continental breakfasts just aren't quite hitting the spot, and no, Lenny Henry shall not be testing the beds with them.

Day #5 - Nottingham Travelodge

December the fifth. A service station can be both a blessing and a curse, however the curse is a curse of consistency and similarity. A repetition that's comforting and reassuring. However Nottingham E.M Airport Donnington M1 is much more than that. A temple of gargantuan size that had risen out of the surrounding Tarmac. A cathedral of necessity, a fortress of ambiguous comfort. It's labelled and tagged majesty, glass fronted and glistening in the moon light. 

The hotel lay within. Not just a home for the night but a bastion of possibilities. A great gangway led us to a maze of corridors with a quantity of rooms, so many that we could only marvel. Weary travellers hung about the halls and we exchanged brief but meaningful eye contact, in the knowledge we were both impossibly different but perfectly aligned as we have come to roost in the same nest. We are the lucky ones and that sets our minds to rest. We spent the night laughing and drinking and enjoying each other's company, which was easy to do in such opulent surroundings.

It is a wonderfully bright morning, refreshing showers all round and after hunting down fresh clothes from the bottom of our bags, we went down into the food hall. The glass windows rose from gleaming floor to magnificent ceiling allowing for fresh beams of sunlight to spring and shoot across the slick, shining surfaces of Burger King, West Country Cornish pasty and M&S to name a few. The vast space made sure it included a Harvester and that is where we ate. A bounty of similar colour and consistency, and a selection of dips and sauces that were surprisingly vast in number and yet unchanging in flavour. With that we hit the road with our minds on nothing more than the majesty we had become a part of. The Travelodge, as always a constant in our lives. A joy.

Written by Charles Bush

Big Sixes - Hotels from Heaven and Hell - Leeds and Glasgow

We've teamed up with one of the freshest new bands in the UK right now, Big Sixes, to bring you a daily tour diary or just what it's like to be on the road.

The main emphasis is on the luxurious budget hotels that the band stay in amongst their nitty-gritty nights on stage playing to cities across the UK. Check back daily to find out their latest spotting of beige coloured furniture and why their lack-lustre continental breakfasts just aren't quite hitting the spot, and no, Lenny Henry shall not be testing the beds with them.

Day #2 and #3 - Carlisle Travelodge

There's something to be said for the tranquility of finding your room, in a different city, looking the same as you left it in the last. It speaks to the less nomadic of the touring party like a doting dinner lady, offering out a plaster for a grazed knee. The bulbs cough and splutter before filling the room with belly laugh of lazy light. My sanctuary. My only burdens come from the now harrowing experience of sharing a room with a photographer, a bad judgement on my part. Electricity is sacred for a touring band of the communication era. No plug goes unfilled.
The lights of Glasgow glisten like a gentle tear as we fall down the cities blushing cheek. Alone with the quiet purr of midnight, crawling to bed.
It's 2AM when we pull into the hotel carpark, greeted by the soft light of the moon and wild rabbits, hopping past the headlights. A family of spritely brothers and sisters, praying for grass unfrosted, from which they can nibble. In search of adventure, food and a warm burrow.
I'm handed the keys as a familiar phrase echoes round the concave's of the universe, navigating the depths of our souls until it erupts into our hearts... "put the kettle on mate."

By Charlie Costello

Big Sixes On Tour - Hotels from Heaven and Hell - Manchester

We've teamed up with one of the freshest new bands in the UK right now, Big Sixes, to bring you a daily tour diary or just what it's like to be on the road.

The main emphasis is on the luxurious budget hotels that the band stay in amongst their nitty-gritty nights on stage playing to cities across the UK. Check back daily to find out their latest spotting of beige coloured furniture and why their lack-lustre continental breakfasts just aren't quite hitting the spot, and no, Lenny Henry shall not be testing the beds with them.

Day #1 - Manchester, Birch M62 Westbound Hotel (Travelodge)

The evening came as expected; crisp and conductive to the bones with a light fog draping itself across the roads and hills surrounding us and holding us. There through the mist, in a short but achievable distance stood Birch Westbound, a jewel in Travelodge's crown. 

A fresh faced gentleman with bejewelled eyes welcomed our group into the ikea-listic, boarded lands with their squares of colour emitting their non committal status as barely decorations. Easily forgotten but resonating with us. Brown. Blue. Beige. Cream. Red. Brown. Brown. Brown. 

The 7 of us, who for practical reasons became 6, in our hooded furs and the cold black attire of the mountain man, swept up the stairs to our rooms happy to be home for the night. Our evening had come to the relevant and best conclusion. The sheets were thin and bulging and the lighting fitted the jelly and cake with gravy on top hospital vibe. But to be amongst friends in the house of indecision was why we bothered. Sleep came to all after a few hours of enjoying mother natures gifts. A pleasant sleep. 

It was a bright morning, and there was a piercing brightness. With a late night under our belts it found us grasping for the pillows and covers to hide beneath. 

The shower was our salvation. In our 4 person room, all were provided with warm water and our luck didn't end there either. As we entered the bowels of the food halls clamouring for meat and pastry shapes and fruit tubs and coffee blacker than a travelling cloak and as hot as Satan's kiss, we were not left wanting. 

Refreshed and bellies full we put our wheels to the motorway, the M62 our mistress but, at least for now, the heart remains with Birchwood Westbound.

By Chaz (@omega_rusty)