I had a bit of a busy, guiding free weekend. I even extended it by taking Friday off, and appreciated the fine weather (although it all rather wet down here this morning).
Friday Dr T & I headed to the big smoke, with a leisurely lunchtime arrival (due to the railcard and having to start from Fratton). We headed to CHQ for some shopping first, before a short walk to Wellington Arch to wave the EH card. We’d both never really been around this spot of Hyde Park Corner, but I can heartily recommend the arch as a place to visit. The views down constitution hill are rather fine, and you can see queenie and phillie’s tennis court (nobody was playing) as its also next to Buck Palace.

We then headed to the Banglatown (aka Brick Lane), for a lunch time curry, I couldn’t make up my mind and gave up and went for the lunch time special at Preem (a usually mighty fine curry restaurant). Alas this was a poor choice as the curry was a strange puree sauce and the lamb had gristle … I shan’t be having the lunch special there again (although have had their other curries which are fine…so a shame). We then wandered around Taj Stores (spice & weird veg heaven … although the string beans still haunt me from my Bangla trip, string is the right work!) before hitting the 24hr Bagel shop (for they make mighty fine bagels, far tastier than supermarket variety) for supplies.

We then headed to St Pancras for the main reason of our trip to the big smoke… Having had a drought of beer festivals down south (yep we’ve been missing the east midlands gaggle (hmm what do you call a group of beer festivals?) at this time of year) we went to our first of the year, the London Drinker Beer Festival. Due to the fine weather (I was in short sleeves virtually all day) it was rather hot, not helped by the cramped venue. LOL it was the first festival where we had bouncers! I think they came with the venue, or maybe CAMRA’s getts a bit more rowdy in the big smoke. But the beer and cider was good and we were happy, the food (produced by the CAMRA volunteers) looked mighty good although we were still full with curry.
Saturday was a more restful day with food shopping before the Newcastle match (as our friends were out so change of plans) along with a spot of housework.

Sunday saw us finally make it to Portchester Castle (after too long!), once more the sun was with us and this time the views from the top were of Portsmouth Harbour and Portsdown Hill. We then headed to Fareham to see their new shopping centre, and make a few purchases … we were planning to drop in our friends, who we parked near, but during our shopping expedition they had scarpered to try out their new all terrain buggy with baby (I think dad had fun, not sure about baby!).

Then it was home in time for Enterprise (Dr T) and Time Team (both of us) to finish off Sunday with.