END OF THE ROAD
After spending the better part of a week in Belgium, we headed back for the motherland to catch up with some friends that we couldn’t manage to see when we were previously there. We had two weeks to make a bit of a road trip out of it and to check out as many country pubs as we could… Never shy of a good honest challenge, we managed to see inspect hundreds of pubs throughout England, Scotland and Wales – with our absolute favourite being the Red Dragon in Kirby Lonsdale. We were only passing through Kirby Lonsdale for a quick pint and toilet stop and absolutely feel in lust with the quaint little village – and moreso with the Red Dragon that we ended up staying the night… And the next night… And the night after that. Not sure if it was the low hung ceilings, the open fireplace or the ice cold Fosters (yes, Fosters is huge in the UK) but we got hooked on this little establishment and made friends with the locals. We managed to get a lovely room upstairs from the main bar (handy much?) and were served a proper British fry up every morning – even handier after our meager attempts to keep up with the locals the previous nights. We eventually made our way south again towards London and caught up to bid farewell to Aunty Cherrie near Oxford. We then moved on to Cambridge again to see one of Kez’s primary school buddies, Jen Doyle – who took us to a quirky and adorable little pub that only served warm ales and five types of soup: dark brown soup, reddish-brown soup, light brown soup or green soup. We stuck to the dark brown soup. We had a fantastic night with a million laughs, reminiscing about our schoolmates from Nundle Primary and how many children they all had – and the varying fathers. Then it was on to Chelsmford to have a night with the lovely Kate Agnew (and her equally lovely Dallas) – another school friend of Kez’s… again reminiscing about the glorious Calrossy days. Oh, and the Spice Girls got a mention too – sorry Kate! It was then back to where it all began – London town to catch up with Simone. We were invited along to a party in the city which was bigger than anticipated – our own fault for thinking that we would be able to put the brakes on at a sensible hour with Simone in our presence! But a fantastic night regardless. We had a fairly slow morning but woke up to a delicious cook up thanks to Sim and Thomas (aka Frenchie) and then had a hit of tennis across the road from their spunky pad. We eventually gathered our things and jumped onto the M5 – bound for a quiet night with Daz and Suz who we met in Hawaii on our honeymoon. Well, there was nothing quiet about it – we started off with a few pre drinks, then went out for dinner then came home and well… carried on till the sun came up. Daz is a fantastic DJ (as is Suz the cool cat) and taught us how to play the decks – Ads thought he was the next Steve Mac and hogged the station but Kez eventually managed to get some vinyl time too which the neighbors would have been pleased about. At 4:45am. Essentially, we couldn’t have had a better finale for London if we tried!
WIN:
Wheelstand Eddie. The best dancer on 2 wheels.
FAIL:
Once again, we had our traditional bender just before 28hours of flying and transit to Vietnam. Epic fail.
theflightclub 