Sheffield

Last weekend I had a cracking weekend in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

The Friday night was mainly spent in the Sheffield Tap pub, generally acknowledged with good reason to be the best station pub in the country. The only other thing on Friday night which lasted a similar length of time was the walk at Retford station from platform one to platform three. Down the stairs, on to platform two, walk along to the end of the platform, along a bit further, round the corner, over a bridge, along a bit more, down some more stairs, and then you're there. Luckily we had fifteen minutes to change trains so just made it to the second train on time.

Saturday morning started with me being dropped off by car in the middle of the beautiful countryside. I had a nice six-mile run from Deepcar to Hillsborough along the route of the river, mainly downhill fortunately. It was some glorious countryside just minutes from the city.

We then went to Bradford to watch Oxford play there. There was time for a couple of pints in a very good old man's pub, the Corn Dolly, before the match. They did some good food too - like chilli for £2.10. Unfortunately, this food was only served between the hours of 12 and 2 on Monday to Friday. Our search for somewhere quick to eat between the pub and ground took us to the cafe of a branch of 'Asda Living' in a retail park.

The match itself was a good one for the neutrals, like the three Spaniards we met on the walk to the ground, one of whom was a student at the University of Bradford. It was not as much fun for the Oxford fans, ending as it did 2-1 to Bradford.

We checked out another highly recommended pub after the game. It was a huge pub with lots of different rooms off the bar. One of the rooms had been booked out for a child's birthday party and another for a convention of Country Music Singers.

Then it was curry time. The venue we had selected was the more traditional of the two we had seen recommended. It was unlicensed so we bought some beers on the way from a Polski Sklep selling all kinds of Eastern European beers run by a Iranian. The curry was ok, importantly and notably it was very cheap.

The Sunday was an unseasonably hot day. We went out into the Peak District for a long walk and picturesque along Stanage Edge to Hathersage, avoiding the occasional boggy area on the route. The scenery was beautiful and the sunshine was an unexpected bonus. The walk ended in a good pub which was doing a reasonably priced carvery, perfect for Sunday lunch. After another pint in another decent nearby pub, it was back to the train station and back to London. The strange orange ball in the sky had caused my forehead and nose to go a red lobster-like complexion, but other than that and the football result and the slightly disappointing albeit cheap curry it was a fantastic weekend!

Viva Espana

I was invited to a weekend away for the Stag Do of an old work colleague. I wasn't going to know anyone else who was going - they might all be heavy drinking types who enjoyed clubbing and strip bars. Given that they were friends of my friend and that the weekend away was in sunny Valencia during a chilly February back home, I thought I'd accept.

The weekend started with an early wake-up on the Saturday morning. My flight was at 8am from Gatwick (on Easyjet), which meant leaving my flat at 5.30am. That was considerably better than the alternative - a 6am Ryanair flight from Stansted. The other ten guys who came along were all from Norwich (including my friend), so they had selected the latter option. This meant that they arrived in Spain a couple of hours before me, but I had more sleep - ha!

I dropped my bags off and met the gang, who were having a beer or two and a few glasses of Sangria in the Plaza de la Virgen in front of the cathedral. I thought it would be rude not to join in, after all Sangria is traditional! We then climbed up the belltower of the cathedral and got some pretty good views of the city. We also got some pretty good views of the sporty one of the gang doing chin-ups from a bar below the massive bell.

Inspired by the sightseeing aspect to the tour, the next plan was to take an open-top bus tour of the city. There were two routes one could take - either around the old town, or a longer route which took in the port and beach areas of the city. I'd have chosen the first one myself, but the majority view was to take the second route. It has to be said that it was not the most interesting tour, although the route did pass some nice areas. The area of the 'City of Arts and Sciences' is really impressive, then the port area is ok, and there is the Formula 1 street circuit to see. But the recorded commentary was pretty poor. Whenever we passed something that could potentially be interesting, we were told that to learn more about it we should 'buy the DVD available from the driver after the tour'. Two of our group decided to sack off the tour and go to use the 'Valenbici', which are bikes for hire to traverse the city, much like the Boris bikes in London. I assume that the idea has not yet made it to Norwich. Meanwhile, the early start, the sunshine and the dreary commentary got the better of me and I dozed off for part of the tour.

In the evening, we went to a rather splendid restaurant. After some calamari, prawns and ham starters, we had some delicious traditional Valencian paella, which is a meat paella which traditionally includes chicken and (shh, don't tell Amanda) rabbit. And we had some delicious seafood paella as well. It was all reasonably priced too!

Then we had a few drinks in the central area of the city. We found a great bar which had bottles of various local artisan ales. I found another member of the group who was more of a connoisseur when it came to beer, while the others stuck to the San Miguel or similar.After a few more beers, everyone was flagging due to the early starts, so the night didn't turn out to be the crazily late Saturday night I was expecting.

The Sunday morning was spent in the Aquarium in the science and nature park. The displays were fairly good, but the architecture of the whole site was the highlight. Each type of water / geographical area containing the fish and wildlife was in a different interestingly shaped building in a separate part of the complex.

We got back to the centre of town to find out that that day was the start of the Fallas festival in the weeks leading up to the start of Spring. This meant that at 2pm there were ten minutes of firecrackers in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, called La Mascleta. It was very noisy and we were all amazed that the all the windows of the buildings in the square didn't break. It took a few minutes for my hearing to recover.

That evening, we went on the lad's event we had all signed up - going to see a Spanish football match. Valencia vs Sevilla at the Mestalla. We were fairly high up in the stands, but not as high as the Sevilla fans who were obviously put as far away from the pitch as they could possibly get. Valencia looked quite strong until the 30 minutes mark and took the lead, but Sevilla came back into it and drew level just before half time. The second half was almost all Sevilla and it was no surprise when they took the lead. They held on to win 2-1. The eleven of us were all wearing Valencia T-shirts which the best men had arranged prior to our trip. Each one had a nickname and a different number from one to eleven on the back, so we had a whole team! The Stag had 'El Venado' on his shirt. This was supposed to be Spanish for 'The Stag', but unfortunately Spanish doesn't (apparently) have a word for 'Stag', so the shirt either said 'The Deer' or 'The Venison'. Our matching shirts were obviously spotted outside the ground, and so 'The Venison' ended up being interviewed by a journalist with a film camera outside the stadium after the match, fortunately in English! He spoke about Valencia's defeat spoiling his Stag Weekend, and how was bitterly disappointed that Mehmet Topal had not been playing.

After that, it was time for another traditional holiday event - being ripped off with rubbish food in a touristy area. After last night's food had been so good, it was time for normality to be resumed. We wanted something quick and easy, that's why we ended up near the hotel. I chose the tapas, I thought while in Spain, do as the Romans do, and have some tapas. Eventually I ended up with three bowls of chips, one with some dates wrapped in bacon which I had asked for. The patatas bravas, admittedly I had also ordered those, were in fact a bowl of chips with tomato ketchup and mayonnaise on top. I now have a 100% record of bad tapas in Spain. Not a patch on the Queen's Head and Artichoke's tapas! As far as I know, the home of tapas is in fact the Regents Park area of London.

The weekend had been sunny so far, about 25 degrees C during the day, so on Monday we went to the beach, after a traditional Valencian breakfast of horchata, a sweet nutty drink, and fartons, which as well as being hilarious, are dough sticks. We played a bit of football on the beach and I dipped my toe into the freezing Med. The others were staying until Tuesday morning, but Easyjet flights were fairly late in the evening, so I decide to head back on Monday night. So after lunch at the beach (more paella, no chips), I headed back to the centre for a final wander round.

I had really enjoyed my trip away. I had had a good mix of spending time with the stag party and spending time wandering around the city on my own. Valencia seems like a really pleasant city, just don't eat in the cafes around the Xativa underground station....!

Long's Park Castle

As it has been so long since one of the Abingdon School lot had a wedding (whose fault could that possibly be? I blame Pie!), we haven't had an opportunity to meet in a random part of the UK (or Belgium) recently for a long weekend and a decent catch-up as a large group. To make up for this shortfall in meetings, Paul and Emma were at the forefront of organising a weekend away, just for the sake of it.

Paul sent round an e-mail a few months ago with a number of cottages that were available for large groups of singletons, married couples and small children. He finished his e-mail with a final, more expensive option - we could stay in a castle in Wiltshire. Fairly obviously, expense and practicality were ignored as the lure of living for one weekend in a castle was far too great. I'm sure Paul knew the rest of us well enough to know that Long's Park Castle would be the winner, but he feigned surprise at the decision. However, he was still happy enough to go along with the plan, so he duly booked it for a weekend at the end of January.

I arrived on the Friday night after work and everyone else had already arrived. As it was dark, I couldn't check out too many of the castle-y elements to the place, but I could see that it met most of the basic criteria - I mean it had turrets and battlements and that kind of thing. The darkness however did not affect my view of the fine suit of armour in the dining room, nor of the smaller suit of armour in the spiral staircase up to one of the towers.


The dining room was the main focal point of the property, as the table was long enough for all fourteen adults and four children to sit comfortably at the same time. The conservatory was the other large meeting area, most of us could fit in there at one time. The conservatory was also alternatively known as 'Gary's bedroom' as I had been the last to commit to attending this weekend so didn't get a proper room!


Although it was called a castle, it quickly emerged that (as most of us had expected) it was in fact just a large house with turrets and battlements added. The rooms were, possibly as a result of this, very warm as the heating was on permanently, rather than being cold and draughty as we might have expected from an actual castle, especially on a chilly January weekend.


The immediately surrounding scenery, as I found out on the following morning in the daylight, wasn't the most interesting, but it was a bit greener and contained more fields and woods than you would find in London, so it definitely qualified as 'getting away for the weekend'. The scenery a bit further afield was much nicer. We drove to a very nice country pub for a gastro lunch, then had a short walk along the Kennet and Avon canal. At that point, those with small children and those who were of a more sensible disposition turned back to the car park and drove back to the castle. The more adventurous ones and I decided to walk back to the castle. "I reckon it's only a couple of miles", said Desy, waving his iPhone in the air. This walk took us along a variety of footpaths, bridleways and muddy fields, going over stiles, through gates, past a red phonebox which was actually a library, around a pile of silage, before eventually turning for home along a busy main road about five miles later. We got back to the castle just as it was getting dark, so perfect timing.


The castle was notable for having signs up on every wall, electrical appliance, door or piece of furniture telling us what we were not allowed to do on / in /with it. Each bedroom did have a notice telling us not to have fun, followed by 'only joking'. However we knew what the owners' views really were, and we did feel that the notices were unduly rude and prescriptive, and did suck a bit of fun out of the house. We did though still manage to have a bit of fun. It was only after we'd climbed out of the top floor window and walked along the battlements that we found that such behaviour was strictly prohibited.

It was a interesting place though, and the purpose which we had hired the castle for - to meet up as a large group and catch up with each other - was well met!


After leaving the castle, we spent an afternoon in Lacock, which is a village and abbey owned by the National Trust where everything is olde-style and quaint and well-preserved. We had a good time wandering around there before we said our farewells and headed our separate ways - after a cake from the cake shoppe of course!