SHOPPING: Meadowhall & Parkers (Sheffield)

A very last minute decision to spend the last weekend of January driving up to Sheffield so that Rose could check out the ladies classic Formula 1s in Parkers, and since it's quite a drive it made perfect sense to stop off at Meadowhall along the way, where I managed to try on 7 watches - including the £17,000 TAG Heuer Carrera Tourbillon Limited Edition...

DAY OUT: Bletchley Park

Determined to 'do things' in January this year, and having already been to London, we decided to go to Bletchley Park. Under the (quite wrong) impression that it was largely 'indoors' I found myself rather underdressed for the bitterly cold weather encountered when walking between buildings, and despite carrying the 'mulitmedia tour' equipment around our necks for the duration we gave up on that rather quickly as it was too cold to stand outside listening to that.

On the whole, it was okay. Admittedly it would have been a lot nicer to visit on a warmer day, but in any case the simple fact is that there's a lot to see (and even we were there for nearly three hours) but it's very, very repetitive. Really I would advise skipping the huts altogether, or maybe just go into one, because the most interesting part of the whole thing is the initial part and the museum.

The mansion is worth a look too, but for the most part you will find yourself reading and hearing the same things over and over again. There just isn't enough to say, to merit the amount of buildings and every time you go into a room it's like they need to explain everything from scratch, every single time.

On the way home I likened it to a 'Concorde' museum, built in the hangars where Concorde was conceived and built, but without any part of Concorde on display. Because the fact is that after the war everything, including the decoding machines were destroyed, so there really isn't anything to show you. And while they do occasionally attempt to explain how the code breaking works, it's quite difficult to grasp anything beyond the absolute basics..

There wasn't an awful lot about Alan Turing, besides one very small section which only briefly mentions his conviction for gross indecency (being gay), his chemical castration and eventual suicide. What a marvellous way to treat someone who saved countless soldiers lives!

SHOPPING: London

Avery Row (off Bond Street)

A flying start to the year, on New Years Day I submitted a quote request to Watchfinder and four days later we were off to London to take my Grand Carrera in for a trade-in! We took the tube from Euston to Oxford Circus and popped in to Debenhams on the way, arriving at Watchfinder at about 10:40am (ten minutes late, but never mind). I was very happy with my potential new purchases, but because my watch needs testing and verifying you can't collect immediately - which is okay because I didn't want to carry two watches around London all flipping day anyway!

After Watchfinder we walked back up Avery Row to Oxford Street and crossed the road to Selfridges. Rose was rather taken with the 'frosted gold' Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks, particularly the white gold one - sadly they are rather expensive. I tried on a new ceramic bezel TAG Heuer Carrera Twin Time, which was quite cool (once I could find an assistant).

Afterwards we nipped into M&S and then crossed the road to the TAG boutique, where we finally met Evan (from the Bicester store). I sneered at the carbon Aquaracers, then tried on the carbon Carrera, the Max Verstappen F1 and the Mikropendulum (wow), then had a good look at Evan's ceramic Carrera and the Oxford St Limited Edition Carrera.

From here we went back down Oxford Street and hung a left down New Bond Street, we were getting hungry and desperate to get to Richoux, but we had to stop off briefly at Charbonel et Walker to bag a  small selection of chocolates. Hilariously, when I got home I looked at the receipt and noted that their 'pick n mix' chocolates are £95 per kilo.

The store was actually really busy, in fact I don't think I've ever seen so many people in there! I'd also never seen their chocolate bars, we had a sample of the 'whole nut' which was very nice, but I couldn't see a price on them - I'm guessing it was probably £10 for a 100g bar or something ridiculous. It was very nice whole nut, but you have to draw a line somewhere!

Richoux is our favourite place in London, so relaxing and calming after the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, and we spent a delightful hour in there recharging our batteries and getting warm for the rest of the day (5deg outside). We both had the burger and then shared a piece of carrot cake (my favourite!) before making our way to Green Park tube station.

Last time I went to Harrods (with Rich) the watch room in Harrods was in a state of flux, with some of it finished but the upstairs all a bit temporary. Rose hadn't seen the new layout, and we were slightly disappointed to note that Richard Mille had disappeared from the store. Still, we had a nice time looking around in Hublot and Rose found a very tasteful ceramic watch she liked in there (£7000) which she won't be buying any time soon!

Hublot Classic Fusion Black Magic

Another amazing thing in Harrods was the 5M high Lange & Son Split Time display, which was just as detailed around the back as at the front. I wish we had a house we could put that in!

Rather embarrassingly, we wandered into Roger Dubuis and I was invited to try on a £137,000 Excaliber Spider Tourbillon. It was pretty cool, although the white rubber strap looked a bit grubby actually!

We had a wander through the handbag rooms but nothing really caught our attention, so we headed back to the tube and got off at Piccadilly Circus. We headed up Regent Street and had a look in SuperDry, which was ridiculously busy and very warm! Then we wandered up the road and came across a Karl Lagerfeld store, which was full of cool things! Some of the stuff is a bit over priced, but some is reasonable... and then we crossed over and had a look in Kate Spade, where again nothing really grabbed us and the clothes seem to be getting way out of hand now, there's just not enough bags to look at - and a lot of the bags are a bit dull as well to be honest.

After that we decided we'd had enough and headed back to the train station. It was a great day, albeit very tiring, and a splendid start to this blog for 2019!