perlmonger and I had a pretty nice weekend. We spodded about on Saturday morning, before setting off for a trip to Bath.
This may precipitate another posting later about joined up public transport, but we went on the train, from Nailsea and Backwell – a station 4 miles from us in the wrong direction, but easier to get to than Bristol Temple Meads. So a journey which is 17 miles by road (although would have taken _at least_ an hour to drive, and then would have almost certainly resulted in extreme frustration and nowhere to park at the other end), took a 4 mile car journey, a half hour wait for the Weston train to Bristol, as one was literally pulling out of the station as we climbed the steps, then a 10 minute wait at Temple Meads for the Brighton train, which was packed. Given that the total time on the train is about 21 minutes, this journey took about 1 1/4 hours …
We actually went to Bath to get P some trousers from Orvis. Not because he particularly wanted trousers from Orvis per se, but because I’m still sitting on £135 worth of the gift voucher I won almost two years ago, and we might as well use it up. We thought.
But not only did they not have the trousers he wanted, they didn’t have one single pair in his size, so he couldn’t try anything on to see whether they fit … So we still have £135 of Orvis voucher, because there wasn’t a single thing in the store that I liked, apart from a Barbour jacket in nappa leather. At £400; I decided against.
We had lunch in a little cafe, cheese and spinach omelette, which was surprisingly nice, then we split up, P to do some photography and me to do a little light shopping. A case for my new sunglass things (which I might write a post about), a lanyard for my Nikon Coolpix, and a couple of bits from M&S including – oh joy, oh rapture – a pair of brown jeans. This is serendipitous, as my last pair are literally falling apart, and I love them dearly. Then the journey home in reverse, and lamb tagine and cous cous in front of the X Factor, and then Thursday’s Question Time.
On Sunday, after a leisurely start, we booted up and went for a walk to the Farm Shop – the long way round, so a couple of hours across the fields, doing the second half with two back packs of fruit and veg (and eggs, and mince, and cream). Returned and made some potato scones, then after some tinkering with the Photocena site, I went and made a vat of spiced red cabbage, and roasted a duck and some spuds. We caught up with a few episodes of Brothers and Sisters too..
So a nice and relaxing weekend.
Yes, but be fair – if you’d caught the first train it would have beaten the car, plus you actually have more than one train an hour..