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The Royal Oak, including the royal oak in my blog, any mentions of the r0yal 0ak in my family tree and the royal oak in Folkestone.

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Edinburgh (being the second part of our holiday)

Jul17

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Edinburgh is nice. "Our kind of city" the wife wrote on her postcards, and I agree. We got a speedy train there from Carlisle into Edinburgh Haymarket, this was the side of the city we were staying on. We could have been a bit closer to the action but HEY, this was a walking holiday, and we had a serviced apartment instead of a hotel, so we had a lounge and kitchen and all sorts of extra features.

The weather was pretty monstrous to start with. I think we got to our apartment without getting wet, but the rain really started just as we were about to head out again. One of my almost-highlights of the trip was seing a drain burst open in front of me just outside the apartment. I have a fascination with sewers, it was quite cool to see the sudden downpour prove to much for the Edinburgh underpipes and cause a drain lid to shoot up in the air and a fountain of liquid spray out in the road. This was cool for only as long as it took the smell to hit me, this was a waste spurting out at my feet, . It was grim, but luckily all the extra rain washed this filth away in the end. Man I wish I'd had my video camera handy at this point. You'll just have to imagine it.

We did some proper touristy things, including Mary King's Close, a shut off street under the Royal Mile:

Hidden beneath the Royal Mile lies Edinburgh's deepest secret: a warren of hidden 'closes' where real people lived, worked and died. For centuries they have lain forgotten and abandoned...

I would suggest not bothering, it's not as interesting as it sounds. The streets are still technically there, but it's very hard to get an impression of most of them as living spaces as the floors and ceilings are at different levels, and there's practically no surviving decoration or artifacts, and the recreations and projections are bad and the ghost story they told was particularly lame. Lame ghost stories was a bit of a theme of the holiday, everywhere in the UK is using this kind of thing to lure tourists in and are even saying things like "as featured on TV's Most Haunted" and so on. Are we a nation of gullible muppets? Needless to say, we did not feel any ghostliness or cold patches or any kind of bump-in-the-night-ingness. Ah while I'm being negative I recall one more thing about , the crassest most opportunistic part of this trap. In the last room of the tour we were told a Japanese TV psychic had felt a presence, and it was a little girl ghost, and she'd been left behind by her parents and she wanted her dolly. A runner was sent out to buy a doll and this pleased the "ghost". Now there's a big pile of toys and dolls left as offerings to this ghost. We were told that other tourists started leaving toys after hearing this story, and if we'd like to leave something "or some money" that would be nice. I'm glad no-one in our tour party of twenty fell for this, but would suggest to the tour organisers that they hire a stooge to join each party and get them to start the money giving, I'm sure they'd pay for themselves. That's what I'd do if I was cynical and grasping enough.

Eating was good in Edinburgh, we went in two dedicated vegetarian restaurants, David Bann's, and . Bann's was quite fancy really, and the food was great. I can't remember what I had for my main, but that's down to quite a lot of booze too. I had some kind of fake fish cakes for my starter. The only complaint was a big table of students next to us, being all studenty, the bastards.

UPDATE: On checking , I think I went for
Thai fritters
Aromatic, spicy fritters of smoked tofu, peas, ginger, green chilli, lime, sesame and potato. Served with fresh mango chutney and a roast garlic tomato sauce. V
Galette of aduki and aubergine
Organic beer crepe layered with spiced aduki bean and aubergine, topped with juniper pickled cucumber . Served with chunky chips, homemade apple & tomato ketchup and crème fraiche and chives. [V]


was more relaxed, still very nice, though I chose the wrong main. Perhaps unsurprisingly my aubergine and melon soaked in midori was too sweet and melony for me. Other meals in non vege restaurants were also great, there was lots of choice for me, I even had a baked potato with haggis topping. Hots mon, och aye and pass me the , could I be more Scottish?

It was my call to give up on our plan to drink a different short in every pub, we had too many whiskeys and things that I just wasn't enjoying, and getting extra hammered just for the sake of showing off. Scottish beer is not the best in the world, all served a bit too cold, but I did have a very nice pint in on . Very small, but ace, deservedly a CAMRA pub of the year.

Ian Rankin has a book called Fleshmarket Close, which we bought while we were there, along with lots of others of his books, I'm sure all tourists do. We bought quite a few books while we were away, including one by another Scottish crime writer who we met there, called Quintin Jardine. We didn't see Ian Rankin around the town, but we did see , us in Edinburgh and all, what are the chances? He was in jewelry shop that had closed just for him, does he think he's Michael Jackson or something? I shouted "YOU MURDERED PRINCESS DIANA" at him. Well, I thought about it. After he'd gone.

I do have more things to add about Edinburgh but thought I should post something while it's still fairly fresh. We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 while we were there. It's rubbish, don't bother.

Stay tuned for some pictures to illustrate this post, and some links, and tales of Blackpool, Keswick, and York.

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Particularly fulsome weekend, with curries.

Nov18

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Splendid weekend, a bit different this time, starting off with a half day on Friday. I headed to Winchester to meet up with some friends, and really needed the extra time to make the most of the night. Clare stayed home watching Children in Need after a particularly hard week at work organising The HHA's AGM, luckily it went AOK, AFAIK. Fairly easy train rides there, I didn't bother loitering anywhere in London, as there was a train ready to take me to as soon as I got to , so I was there before anyone else was out of work. Had a walk around, it's a very nice city. I scoped out where we'd be going later, and then ended up in a great pub The Westgate Hotel, that I'd like to return to soon, maybe for a curry, as they have a connected Indian restaurant, unusual. Not sure it's the type of place my friends there would like though, they are after swanking London style bars which apparently there are not many of in Winchester, which surprised me. We went out to the newly opened , which was nice, but as with any new bar a bit too busy so maybe service was a bit slower than it could have been. Then, on to my first curry of the weekend.

I can't remember what last time's at Winchester's was like, but I do know the name and that we went there, as I looked up the old blog post and emails and things and knew that we were going to a different place this time. So, Gurkha Kitchen it was then. I like Winchester Curry Club, some guys who review, uh, can you guess? They seem to say that is the best place in town, but I didn't think it was that great. My food was OK, nice and spicy anyway, but I wasn't sure about the carrot chutney we got with our popadoms, and the place generally seemed a bit faded. Still, the company more than compensated, nice to see so many friends at once, even though being on the end of the table rather than the middle, I didn't get to join in all the conversations. Took a few pictures in there, they didn't really turn out so well though, still getting used to this new camera. After the curry we had time for a cheeky night cap in a pub possibly called The Royal Oak, and then back to Rich and Miriams, as they were generously hosting me for the evening. Next morning I had a replacement bus service part of the way, so it took me a good couple of hours to get back to London, where I was meeting Clare for a days fun.

After a coffee, so we could sit down and plan out the days hilarity, time for lunch. For a very rare treet, we went to Wagamama, the one in Soho though, so really it was a completely different Saturday lunch for us, and not exactly the same as we always have. We met Emma, and shared a free bottle of wine, which was the promo of the day from www.wagamama.com, very nice. In the afternoon we sort of shopped, we were on a bit of a mission for something specific that we completely failed in, so we did some general ambling about, and went in some pubs. Oh we did manage to buy a case for our new camera, but that was about it I think.

Best pub of the afternoon was The Pontefract Castle, very nice there, and quite calm and relaxed (in the downstairs bar anyway) considering how close we were to Oxford Street
I hardly ever go for a curry these days, but next day we had another, in possibly the best curry house in London, if not the world, . I had vegetable kofte and "Grandad's Special Dahl" which I always have I think, delicious, I should have ordered more rice and maybe a bread too.

Last stop of the night was The Intrepid Fox, at it's new (well new to me anyway) location under . all the way, we weren't really dressed for it but we had a great time.

Long journey home on the vomit comet, I slept all the way though which passed the journey marvellously. We did try and get another drink for the journey, but by quarter past eleven none of the shops near the station were selling alcohol, I'm sure it never used to be this strict. We didn't really want it anyway, and not having that extra one means we feel fine and dandy today. Cold, man it's freezing here, but good.

Chili for dinner, and a film of some sort, maybe a costume drama or something. We have no crime to watch, Amazon have been rather letting us down recently in terms of how quickly they turn around our DVD rentals. That's how they can afford to do unlimited DVD rentals for 9.50 per month, you only get one at home at a time for that price.

Back to work tomorrow. We fitted a lot in, which made the weekend go even quicker. I feel sure I've missed out some stuff, but I've been on the computer too long today. I must emphasise again how nice it was to see friends that I don't see very often this weekend, and I am looking forward to the next social. Shame it's such a long way for me to travel, but easier than trying to get them all down here in Folkestone I suppose.

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Royal Oak (Brookland)

Sep1

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The Royal Oak restaurant food :: [comment] :: [delete]

Great place to eat and drink. Food is superb and choice of beers, lagers, wines etc is all you could want. Friendly, pleasant hosts who always make you feel welcome.

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