A Very English Weekend
Hi there
While John was loving it up in the Madrid office, I was experiencing a truly English weekend.At 9:27am Saturday morning, Steve and Penny picked me up in a gun metal VW Golf courtesy of Streetcar and we began our trip to Essex. I should mention two key points. One- Steve was EARLY! Two- We had no directions. Steve was planning on using Emily, his Sat Nav, but she decided to be fickle for most of the trip. So, he pulled up a map of London on Google Maps and we zig-zagged our way through the city, up and out to wonderful Essex. And we managed to only make two wrong turns! It's amazing how little traffic there is in London at 10am on a Saturday morning. We even made it across the Tower Bridge with no wait. See?
The whole trip to Essex was scheduled because a friend of ours read an article about The Company Shed, a wonderful fish restaurant on the coast of Mersea Island that serves fresh fish at its finest without the trimmings. You bring your own beverages, sauces and bread/butter. It sounded like a good excuse for a weekend away and the trip was born.
The thing about Mersea Island is that it isn't always an island. It is connected to the mainland by a causeway, which floods every day at high tide. If you don't make it to the causeway by hightide, you have to wait an hour or so until the tide starts to recede before you can go across. This made our meeting time very important. We arranged to meet on the island at noon. Let's just say our car made it but the other two didn't.
Don't worry- we didn't enjoy the seafood without them. We waited at a cool 15th century pub and all went in together after the tide receded. As a pregnant woman, I was limited as to what I could eat, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the rest of the gang chow down on what was described over and over again as the best seafood/oysters/etc. they had ever eaten. Here's what the table and the gang looked like after several seafood platters, dozens of oysters, a few lobsters and a couple of bottles of champagne.
After lunch, we checked into our B&B, which looked like something out of the Brady Bunch. We had a great night. Played some Jenga, ate yummy pub food and enjoyed magic tricks by our two youngest companions. I retired early (11:30,) but there was apparently a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit into the not-so-wee hours of the morning.
The next morning, after a wonderful breakfast, we ventured to a park where we flew kites and took in the awesome English coast. We experienced true English weather on Sunday. It was rainy, windy and chilly when we ventured out to the park. The rain would stop and start, as is common. Then, the sun came out! It was wonderful. The sun reflected off the sea. It was truly magical.
And just as we were heading to the cars to find lunch, the sky opened up! There's nothing like crossing a large open area of grass with the English sky pouring down on you. I was at a strong disadvantage, not being able to run to the cars like everyone else, but it was okay, because I was the only one with an umbrella.
The trip finished with a great pub lunch and a three-hour drive back to London, which saw Penny, Steve and me finding our own alternate route through the streets of Hackney and miraculously getting Emily to work just as we found our way to Tower Bridge again.
It was a great weekend. I only wish John could have joined us.
For those of you who are wondering, we didn't do too shabby last night at Quiz Night. We were bang-on average. But we were up against some stiff competition. This pub has a Quiz Night League with standings and everything! So, I was quite impressed with our team. We might try it again before we leave.
Tonight is John's last batch of football matches. Hopefully, his extremely swollen fingers won't hinder his goal-keeping abilities.
While John was loving it up in the Madrid office, I was experiencing a truly English weekend.At 9:27am Saturday morning, Steve and Penny picked me up in a gun metal VW Golf courtesy of Streetcar and we began our trip to Essex. I should mention two key points. One- Steve was EARLY! Two- We had no directions. Steve was planning on using Emily, his Sat Nav, but she decided to be fickle for most of the trip. So, he pulled up a map of London on Google Maps and we zig-zagged our way through the city, up and out to wonderful Essex. And we managed to only make two wrong turns! It's amazing how little traffic there is in London at 10am on a Saturday morning. We even made it across the Tower Bridge with no wait. See?
The whole trip to Essex was scheduled because a friend of ours read an article about The Company Shed, a wonderful fish restaurant on the coast of Mersea Island that serves fresh fish at its finest without the trimmings. You bring your own beverages, sauces and bread/butter. It sounded like a good excuse for a weekend away and the trip was born.
The thing about Mersea Island is that it isn't always an island. It is connected to the mainland by a causeway, which floods every day at high tide. If you don't make it to the causeway by hightide, you have to wait an hour or so until the tide starts to recede before you can go across. This made our meeting time very important. We arranged to meet on the island at noon. Let's just say our car made it but the other two didn't.
Don't worry- we didn't enjoy the seafood without them. We waited at a cool 15th century pub and all went in together after the tide receded. As a pregnant woman, I was limited as to what I could eat, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the rest of the gang chow down on what was described over and over again as the best seafood/oysters/etc. they had ever eaten. Here's what the table and the gang looked like after several seafood platters, dozens of oysters, a few lobsters and a couple of bottles of champagne.
After lunch, we checked into our B&B, which looked like something out of the Brady Bunch. We had a great night. Played some Jenga, ate yummy pub food and enjoyed magic tricks by our two youngest companions. I retired early (11:30,) but there was apparently a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit into the not-so-wee hours of the morning.
The next morning, after a wonderful breakfast, we ventured to a park where we flew kites and took in the awesome English coast. We experienced true English weather on Sunday. It was rainy, windy and chilly when we ventured out to the park. The rain would stop and start, as is common. Then, the sun came out! It was wonderful. The sun reflected off the sea. It was truly magical.
And just as we were heading to the cars to find lunch, the sky opened up! There's nothing like crossing a large open area of grass with the English sky pouring down on you. I was at a strong disadvantage, not being able to run to the cars like everyone else, but it was okay, because I was the only one with an umbrella.
The trip finished with a great pub lunch and a three-hour drive back to London, which saw Penny, Steve and me finding our own alternate route through the streets of Hackney and miraculously getting Emily to work just as we found our way to Tower Bridge again.
It was a great weekend. I only wish John could have joined us.
For those of you who are wondering, we didn't do too shabby last night at Quiz Night. We were bang-on average. But we were up against some stiff competition. This pub has a Quiz Night League with standings and everything! So, I was quite impressed with our team. We might try it again before we leave.
Tonight is John's last batch of football matches. Hopefully, his extremely swollen fingers won't hinder his goal-keeping abilities.
posted by Jamie & John | 4:25 AM
1 Comments:
It was very nice of you to feed that bearded tramp to seafood.
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