Saturday, December 30, 2006
So then, now all of that's done and dusted... Christmas, and the run-up to it.On the 21st, Andrea and I went back to Milton Keynes for a couple of days, mainly to drop off pressies for my family, but also to do a spot of shopping.
As it's a damned long journey, we figured it'd be better if we stayed the night in a hotel, and while we'd initially booked a room at Newport Pagnel services, at the last minute, Andrea managed to get us a room in The Cock Hotel in Stony Stratford.
This was ultra cool for two reasons.
Firstly, Stony Stratford is my absolute favourite place in the whole world, and at Christmas, with all of the lights up, the place is absolutely magical.
This pic really does the place no justice at all, but you get the idea.
Secondly, we've stayed at The Cock Hotel before, and though on that occasion, our room was a little shoddy, we really liked the atmospehere of the place. So this time, we were thrilled to bits when we got a vastly better room for an absolute knock down price.
As you can see, the room was a decent size, with a double bed, decent sized sofa, HD TV, and wonderful decor and general ambience.
Now if that was all, I'd have been impressed, but the view from the window was really good too. Maybe if it hadn't been Christmas, it'd have been a little less impressive, but as it was...
This was the view looking directly out and down, while looking up the street a little...
So that's the run-up... what about Christmas itself?
Great day.
The build-up to Christmas is always pretty stressful, or at least, I find it so... so the fact that Christmas day was a really chilled and relaxing day was a real bonus.
With Andrea's 3 offspring all in attendance, it was a full house, with much food, drink, pressies, and tv. Just how things should be.
What did Santa bring me?
Among lots of other really cool stuff, top pressies were a Colecovision (early 80s games console... expect to find details in my Consoles And Computers section in a week or so), some books on photography and historic buildings, and Top Gear DVDs which repeatedly caused me to wake Andrea, coz I kept laughing at them, watching with headphones while she slept.
Yup... top Christmas.
Labels: Christmas, holidays, hotels, photos, Stony Stratford
Steve 9:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, January 30, 2006
This sunday was the first aniversary of Andrea and I meeting.To celebrate, we spent the weekend back in Milton Keynes, staying at the Cock Hotel, in Stony Stratford.
The Cock is a famous place, though you may not know it. Ever heard of the 'cock and bull story', or "We'll ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross"?.... that's The Cock Hotel in Stony.
Saying that... the quality of service, and general level of maintenance in the place left something to be desired. Some of the staff were great, but jeez, some were really miserable bastards... and the faults and safety issues in the place... if they'd had a surprise health and safety visit, they'd be shut down in an instant.
This didn't matter hugely to us though, as we'd booked into the place on a discount online bookinjg scheme, and weren't even paying half of full price. Had we been paying full whack though, I suspect we'd have left and gone somewhere else.
Anyway... not wanting to go on about the hotel, coz it wan't a biggie really....
So, did we have fun? Yup, very much so. I can't say we did anything unusual, exotic or out of the ordinary... we just enjoyed the time going to places we used to go to when I lived there, like down to the river, or for drinks in the Vaults Bar while they had a folk workshop.
Oh yeah.
After 5 months, I got a haircut at last. It's kinda funny, coz I could get it done here really easilly, but I waited to travel 105 miles before I had it cut, so I could go to the same place I always used to have it done.
We'll definitely go back again, and next time, we'll probably go see some friends and family too. We decided not to do that this time, coz.. well... being a special occasion for us, we just wanted the time to ourselves.
A year eh? How'd that happen?
Labels: hotels, Stony Stratford
Steve 3:54 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 14, 2005
What a great weekend.On saturday we went for a bimble round Stony Stratford, for no particular reason, other than it's a nice place to go, and stopped into The Vaults Bar for a drink.
Andrea's not at all familiar with the finer points of Milton keynes, so what better place to start?
Next we ambled on over to Willen Lake, and stopped for munchies in the resteraunt by the lake. Not the cheapest place on earth, but otherwise unpretentious, and a very easy place to just drop into when you don't feel like cooking.
Sunday... more Gran Turismo sillyness. We nipped into town and I picked up a Speedster force feedback wheel.
I dunno. I'm not sure if I should've got the Logitch wheel or if I just suck with wheels, period. Either way... I find the game almost unplayable using the thing... and after losing around a minute and a half on my laptime at the Nurburgring, even after lots of practice and optimising the wheel settings, I've gone back to using the pad.
Playing this morning, I've gone back to complete some of the slower, less exciting races, and in doing so, won a 1964 Ginetta G4. This is a tiny little British sports car that initially only has around 90bhp, but weighs in at around 400kg, so it's very nippy. Just for fun though, I stuck a stage two turbo in the thing.
Hahahaha.
Absolutely mental. I highly recommend it, just for laughs.
Labels: games, gran turismo, Stony Stratford
Steve 1:07 PM [+] (0) comments
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