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.