GARDEN: 30th May 2019

SHOPPING: Meadowhall (Sheffield)

An early start today brought us to Meadowhall just as it opened. Nothing much to report, I spent 45min in Goldsmiths talking about watches, and another 45min in TAG Heuer talking about watches. So a great morning for me. Add in a trip to Hotel Chocolat and Poundland and our day was complete.

Except it wasn't, as after having lunch at home we went over to see Rose's mum and then shot over to Corby to visit the big Tesco there, before coming home for tea and then watching 'Spotlight'. Quite a day all round really!

GARDEN: 16th May 2019

DAY OUT: Newark

Newark, a place I'd barely heard of until a few weeks ago. Didn't really know where it was, didn't really care... but then I discovered a jewellers in Newark had in stock a mint condition, solid gold TAG Heuer 6000 Chronometer. Realising it was on the way to Lincoln, a plan was hatched, to visit Newark, check out the watch then journey on to Lincoln for cocktails and dinner in the Marco Pierre White restaurant. Brilliant.

We arrived in Newark at about 11:15, and after some difficulty trying to park in the outlying 'tourist' car parks, we travelled in to the centre and parked instead in the half empty multi storey car park. This was a win-win since the day was hot and sunny and the car stayed cool and fresh throughout!

We wandered about a bit, then found the castle, which isn't so much a castle, as much as a ruin, well, I say a ruin, but it's really just one ruined wall... at least it was free! We attempted to enter the 'River's Edge' pub, but it seemed closed, so we went back over the road to 'The Ram' instead.

The Ram was a decent pub, very nicely decorated (in fashionable grey, obviously) with excellent toilet facilities that would come in handy later! We had a couple of diet Cokes and then set of to find the jewellers.

The shop was great, with a fine selection of high quality pieces (Hublot, TAG Heuer, Chopard and Breiltlings amongst others) and the guy was friendly. The watch was amazing, but a lot of money.

After that we went back to the car for lunch, then headed back towards the castle for the boat trip. We were a bit undecided about the boat trip as it was 1.3/4hrs, but in the end it was really good. We had two utter pissheads at the back of the boat talking utter shite, and a group of four pensioners with Sommerset accents to the side of us - we were laughing all the way.

The seats were bloody hard though and we were glad to disembark a few minutes early as we had to go back to the car, grab our clothes, go back to The Ram, grab another drink and get changed before we drove to Lincoln for our evening out.

MEAL OUT: Marco Pierre White's / Electric Bar (Lincoln)

This was out third visit to Lincoln, and once again we made a b-line for the amazing 'Electric Bar' on the 5th floor of the Doubletree Hilton (which we've stayed in 1.5 times before....). The cocktails are amazing, I had an Electricolada (Coconut Rum, Absolut Vanilla, passionfruit liqueur, with coconut and vanilla syrup, shaken with pineapple juice, lime juice, milk and cream). Rose had a Clockwork Orange (Pimms, Beefeater Gin, Absolut Mandarin, strawberry puree, vanilla syrup and lime juice), which surprisingly turned out not to be a long drink, but it was very nice all the same.

After our cocktails we grabbed a Coke and wine and moved into the MPW restaurant, which we had reserved for 8pm. The restaurant was about a third full, which was perfect for us, not too busy and not completely dead. I had the Chicken Kiev again and Rose had the steak and ale pie, both of which were delicious. For dessert Rose opted for the Billionaires Shortbread (which was actually a sort of mousse/cheesecake kind of thing) and I had to go for the vanilla cheesecake and blueberry coulis. I must admit, it wasn't as good as the 'best cheesecake of all time' that I had in the Oxford MPW restaurant, but it was still very nice (rather than a moussey kind of cheesecake it was a more standard baked vanilla cheesecake).

Looking out of the window over at the car park of the Holiday Inn, we noticed some excavations and wondered if it was a 'dig' as it seemed to be very structured and not at all builder-like. Our waitress Chloe told us that it was a 'dig' and that they'd already recovered 21 Roman skeletons!

After our meal we were stuffed, so we headed back to the bar for another drink while I waited for my cocktail to wear off. I had a mocktail now called 'Strawberry Fields, which is strawberry and coconut syrup, shaken with lemon juice, pineapple and cream. Again this wasn't quite what I was expecting, being shorter and thicker than I thought, but it was still very agreeable. Not so good for the diet though!

When we eventually headed off we found the A46 was shut so we had to go a good 30-40 minutes out of our way to get home, which was a pain in the backside, but still it turned out to be a fantastic day and well worth the journey.