June 2007 – Steve's Blog

Weekend… what weekend

So its the weekend – those two days when you don’t go to work, those two days when you relax and don’t do the things that last week you said you’d do this weekend.

Ahh – if that was only the case.

I headed into work at 6:30am yesterday morning, worked through lunch and got home at about 7:30pm last night.

Then today, Kathy got up early to pop over to Richard and Michelle’s to feed Blackie (Kathy is cat sitting for them for the weekend) and then she went off with Nick, Colin and Linda to move Mintball over to Norbury Junction for some maintenance work.

I had to stay home as I had to work from 11am to 5pm.. OK today I could work from home so at least I got a couple of things done – I actually mowed the lawn which wasn’t as easy as it sounds, but at least Sooty won’t get lost in it again.

Talked to one of the neighbours about the houses going up behind us. The builders have ripped out the old GCHQ fence and the concrete covering over the culverted Rymans Brook. On Friday, after the heavy rain, there were several “springs” in what will become the garden of the house behind us.

It seems the concrete and the gravel and the large kerb edging GCHQ had put in place had been put in for a reason and that was to stop the surface run off from the site flooding the houses that we live in. Now there is MORE built up area on there than there was before, hopefully more of the water will go into new drains but……..

The Day after the

Well it has to be said that yesterday was a good day… Due to a slight miscalculation on timings Nick and I nearly missed the train but after a mad dash we made it to the station… just to find that the train was late. Richard turned up as did Mike and Paul and, after some problems with tickets, got on the train to Gloucester.

We had planned to start at “The Fountain” but we actually decided that as we were walking past the “New Inn” we might as well start there. They had 8 Real Ales on and the Theakstons Mild was extremely quaffable and enjoyable. The “New Inn” of course is a complete misnomer in that it dates from the 15th Century. Unlike a lot of buildings in Gloucester a lot of the structure of the New Inn retains, if not its original form, a close approximation to it.

After that we took a gentle walk down to “The Linden Tree” – a Wadworth Pub that has 4 Wadworth’s Ales and 4 guest Ales. We decided to have lunch here and it was extremely good value. Its a bit of a hike from town but more than worth it.

After lunch we were going to head back into town via “The Nelson”, but it was closed, so we stuck our head in at “The Whitesmiths” which is an Arkells pub and has some very impressive 17th Century wood work visible inside their “new” extension.

After a refreshing pint of Moonlight we continued the walk back into town and called in at Cafe Rene. Sitting outside in the shade in the Marleone the name “Cafe Rene” almost seems to fit as there was a distinctly European feel to the setting, as the following photo hopefully shows:

Outside Cafe Rene

From Cafe Rene it was an easy walk back to the Cross where the four “Gate” streets meet and down Westgate street to “The Pig In The City“. Obviously the PITC was refurbished a few years ago to make it “trendy”. Its now aged and slightly worn which makes it actually feel more pub like and less “showroom”. After a quick pint there it was a short dash across the road to the Dick Whittington,

The Front of The Dick Whittington

which despite its rather Georgian front is, like so many other buildings, a Georgian front on an older Tudor Building. We sat in the beer garden which is tucked away down the side of the pub behind the church. As the sign indicates the pub was serving Hook Norton Ales.

The final call of the day was The Fountain where we had a couple before heading back to the railway station and Cheltenham.

All of these pubs (but especially The Whitesmiths) are within easy reach of Gloucester Docks

Pubnight Pub Crawl

Today Pub Night Council are off on a pub crawl round Gloucester. We are only planning to do a handful of pubs, but those we have picked have a wide range of ales – which is more important than the number of pubs as far as we are concerned.

Combining blogs

Well today I decided to pull over all my old posts from the blog on Camsigh.

Using the export and import features of WordPress made it a breeze.

Now all I have to do is go through all the posts, remove a few that are now redundant, put each post into the correct categories and then tag the posts with appropriate tags.

Colds and stuff

Well after the trip on the boat last weekend I went down will the mother of all colds. I was OK on Tuesday but by the time Wednesday rolled out I was feeing stuffed up and my throat was hurting.

Woke up on Thursday morning feeling like a train wreck : tonsils all inflamed, no voice, stinking headache, hot and cold sweats – the works. Spent half of the day asleep. Went to bed early and got up on Friday still feeling pretty ropey and all sweaty and clammy.

It seemed a shame to waste the weekend – its the first good one we’ve had for a bit and so many things needed doing: the front lawn needed mowing and there was stuff to do round the house but frankly I just didn’t have any enthusiasm.

Last night we went out to celebrate Richard’s Birthday – started with drinks at Laze Daze and ended up with a curry at Mahek’s which has become, amongst our friends, the favourite place to go for a curry.