Let the holiday continue! I have been neglecting the blog for a few days, been busy and been travelling. As I write this I'm back from our little break and have even done a day's work. But it's time to catch up.
We were heading to Portchester, but as we'd left the car in Folkestone overnight I had to get the car. Ah I did start writing this that morning, I planned to run and I actually did. I was not 100% still and so for the first time since I can remember I did not run a full 5k. I was close to the car at 4k and just stopped there. I remember I was sweating, and not through running too hard, just through still being a bit ill I think.
I did do a covid test before heading off and all clear. Clare took us to the station, and only a slightly flustered start to the trip when the machine to collect our tickets from was out of order. A tense queue with everyone else and we got them. Clare gladly waved us off and we were lucky enough to find standing space all the way to London. Greggs sausage rolls for lunch, a tube ride to London Victoria and comfortably onto the slowest part of the journey. Even slower than normal as it goes because of a slight delay, hopefully I get a bit of a refund for that.
We got picked up at Havant and then a nice catch up with the family and a splendid pasta dinner. Then I abandoned them all and ran to a pub to see my friends. Or so I thought. As I turned up at the first pub, The Portcullis Taphouse in Portchester I was surprised to be there before the friends as there had been talk of going out early. Then checked my messages while sipping my beer and found yes they'd gone early, but to a different pub, to get some food. So, I finished that beer in the good micropub and headed over to the terrible Portchester pub, The Red Lion. Good to see the friends at last even if I could not face any of the beers there. I did have a beer, an alcohol free Speckled Hen, but then we went back to the Portcullis Taphouse as quickly as I could get us there. Then more fun, more chat, and the fourth cornerstone of our evening arrived after his bee-keeping club. Oh yeah I still move on rock'n'roll circles. The other two friends were full of their work travels, one just flown back in from Italy that day, one only just back from the USA.
The micropub closed at ten, but we were not done. I could not persuade them to try The Cormorant but they would agree to go back to the Red Lion as it was on the way to the train station. I was not up for that at all so went for a taxi into Fareham. It gets them all closer to home and me to another pub. First we tried The Delme, but it had also closed at ten, so we carried on to The Cob And Pen. I had one DISGUSTING beer, actually properly off which had to be returned, they were very apologetic, it must be that no-one had ordered that beer all day, surely. It was replaced with a Gales HSB and all was good again.
Then a walk home and it still being Thursday I didn't have a particularly early start in the morning.
I just realised the last Febrewery list is slightly wrong, so fixed up here:
5k: Five kilometres, about three miles in old money.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town. Married to Clare + dad to 2, I am a full stack web developr, + I do mostly js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home-automation and other diy stuff, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and time travel.