DAY OUT: Meadowhall & Escape Room (Sheffield)

Having decided to go and see Devision Redux at the Corporation fairly last minute, we rashly decided to make a day of it and incorporate shopping, cocktails an escape room and a meal into the schedule! Which of course was utter madness, and so it transpired...

So after going shopping first thing and leaving just after 10am we arrived at Meadowhall about 11:30 which was too early to eat our lunch. So we headed off into the centre and after visiting Beaverbrooks and looking at their new exclusive Aquaracer we split up and I visited the TAG Heuer boutique, where I saw Gina and tried on a few watches. 

When we came back together we headed to Lindt and Hotel Chocolat and then back to the car to dump our rather impressive haul of goodies in the coolbox. After lunch we headed back into the centre and did a little more shopping before we headed off to Sheffield about 2:20pm.

We parked up at our usual car park (Wellington Street NCP) and then strode off towards the 'Cryptology' escape rooms, which were a good little walk away. 

Henderson's Heist was a really good escape room and we just about managed to escape (61m, in a room that's officially 60m) without too many hints. Our games master was quite funny, playing two different characters before we even got into the room and giving us Oakham 'Toy Shop' vibes. The room is divided into three parts and is quite automated, there was only one padlock in the whole thing. 

It's amazing how different escape rooms are from each other and as such it always takes us a bit of time to get our head around what we need to do to crack on with it. We did waste quite a while trying to steer the delivery truck through the maze, as we didn't realise you didn't need to stop it before every turn... but we got there eventually.

I'd definitely go back and try another one of their rooms.

We got out of the escape room a little earlier than planned so we went for a walk towards Kuckoo (which we believed opened at 5pm). Originally we had booked a table for 6pm at the Green King on West Street, but they cancelled it a couple of days prior. Stupidly I thought, okay well there's a Slug and Lettuce next to Kuckoo and another pub next to that that also does scampi... 

The Kuckoo website said it opened at 5pm but wouldn't let us book a table until 6pm, which was obviously too late. But we figured if we got there at 5pm we would be the only people in there and we'd easily be out by 6pm in time to go eat. 

In actual fact the sign on the door said it opened at 4pm, and I now wonder if you couldn't book before 6pm because they were fully booked?

However, walking around the main area where the bars were it soon became apparent that Sheffield was a lot busier than anticipated. We passed the Slug and Lettuce, which was heaving with drinkers and loud music (as was pretty much everwhere) so it quickly became clear that was a non starter.

As we were quite thirsty we decided to call in at the bar in the Radisson Blu hotel, which was actually a genius idea because it was really nice in there. I mean it would have been nicer if I hadn't been dressed for a gig, and then maybe we could have eaten there too.... although we weren't too sure when they started serving. 

It was a bit of a chore to get to the bar as somehow we went in the arse end of the building and walked around in circles for ten minutes before we eventually somehow managed to find the main reception and a lift that was usuable by non residents! Oh well, we'll know next time. As we left to go to Kuckoo we saw that the menu was actually quite reasonable and if we'd known what was about to go down we could have just bloddy stayed there and had a cocktail and a burger!

But unfortunately we were set on going to Kuckoo and when we finally found our way there around 5:30pm, we were told that it was booked until 6:30pm, Argh. I really don't know why we didn't just go back to the Radisson Blu and try and get something there, but instead we ended up going to Marks and Spencers and Tesco Express and then sitting in the car in the car park eating hot cross buns, crisps and flapjack cookies. 

As nice as the cookies and buns were it was SUPER FUCKING ANNOYING that all our careful planning had turned to complete shit. I mean Meadowhall and the Escape Room were great, and the hotel bar was really nice. It was just super frustrating that we ended sitting in the car for an hour instead of having a nice meal and a cocktail (and still consuming a shit load of calories anyway).

Thankfully, the evening got better from here and I will talk about that in a separate post...