Bumping into strangers twice in 4 days in different parts of the country.

I work in a school in Gloucestershire and on the last day of the summer term 2011, I accidentally left my raincoat behind, which meant I didn't have it when we went down to Cornwall two days later for a week's holiday. Fortunately, the weather was good so I didn't need my raincoat. On the Thursday of our holiday we visited the St Austell brewery and my husband and son went on the guided tour while I waited in the bar area and had a cup of coffee. While I was waiting, the next group of people for a guided tour started arriving and waiting in the bar area. I enjoy watching people and I noticed two women, one in her 60s and the other in her 30s. They resembled each other so I assumed they were mother and daughter. We returned home to Gloucesteshire on the Saturday and on the Monday I drove to Cheltenham to go shopping. However, on the way I stopped off at school to pick up the coat I had left behind and stopped to chat to a couple of colleagues who were working. (You were wondering what the raincoat had to do with it!) This meant that my journey to Cheltenham took about 15 minutes longer than it would normally take. As I turned into the car park in Cheltenham I saw two women at the ticket machine who I recognised but couldn't place. Then it dawned on me that they were the same two women I had seen at the brewery in Cornwall 4 days earlier! I approached them and said I had seen them at the brewery. They hadn't noticed me but told me they were from Cornwall and were visiting friends in Malvern and were just visiting Cheltenham as tourists for the day. What strikes me as strange about this story is that if I hadn't left my coat behind at school, I would have arrived in Cheltenham earlier and would not have bumped into the two women in the car park. It also struck me as slightly odd that two local Cornish people would visit a tourist attraction during the peak tourist season!