212: Bristol 2012: Day Five, Six and Seven

Our first holiday with Our Sidekick

Five (Friday)
On Friday, we went to Wookey Hole. In all the time I’ve known Chris he’s said “One day we’ve got to go to Wookey Hole” – every time he’s drove past to Soul Survivor he’s repeated it. This time we finally went and we took Our Sidekick with us. I’m kind of excited about walking around caves and things like that but there is a moment where I get a little claustrophobic, but it’s such a tiny moment that I just tell myself off and then I’m fine again lol. I didn’t have my proper camera with me (and I wouldn’t have wanted to risk damaging it or dropping it lol) so I just had iPhone pictures. We did find out that some sections of Doctor Who have been filmed in the caves at Wookey Hole. There were a bunch of younger children who kept talking through the information bits which was a bit of a shame – I think if I was to go back I’d try and go back in term time. When we went to Honister in November there was literally 5 or 6 people in our group and the two boys were sensibly enough not to talk through the information bits.

Bristol 2012 - Wookey

Bristol 2012 - Wookey

Bristol 2012 - Wookey

Six (Saturday)
We decided that having explored lots during the week, Saturday would be a chilled day and we’d explore by foot around Bristol. Having wandered to St Nicholas’s Market we grabbed some lunch – me and Our Sidekick had a sausage baguette thing. Unfortunately the baguette was so crusty that it was too hard to chew although the sausages were freshly home made. Chris went off for a wander and found a gluten free, meat free, dairy free, cardboard free and monkey free (I’m kidding!) place so that he could have normal food given that his gluten free attempt continues. (He’s off to the Docs this week to see if he needs to continue or change his mind).

During our crazy wander we still ended up at Millennium Square which was pretty cool. We stayed and watched about ten minutes Boxing then headed back to the hotel. We got ourselves sorted out and headed for dinner at a local Carvery and then to Cineworld Bristol to see Dr Seuss’s The Lorax – it was really good. I don’t know whether it was just because of how much sport was on or because of the location of the cinema but there were 8 of us in the screen at the most! I’d expect it to be that empty on a Monday or Tuesday evening not a 7:30 showing on a Saturday in the school holidays.

I had something in my eye. @thecgbj (@cgbj) came to my rescue. Then a small water fight broke out between @thecgbj and #oursidekick.
On our way back to the hotel I got something in my eye and I tried to rinse it myself with a bottle of water. Chris had to help me in the end and my arm and shirt got soaked. Somehow a small water fight broke out between Chris and Our Sidekick which involved Our Sidekick getting rather wet and then trying to get Chris back and failing epically – but the pavement ended up very wet!

Seven (Sunday)
Sunday was about packing up and travelling home. I snapped this picture of our trolley while we were in the foyer of the hotel – how did we end up with so much stuff!

Time to check out and head home.

The weather had cooled off and was turning wet again so we were prepared for wet weather. Chris and I had already discussed about heading home via Stonehenge – I think Our Sidekick would have been more receptive to the idea had it not down poured in the middle of it and been packed to the rafters with tourists (Are there rafters on an open air heritage site?). It was nice to finally go but I think English Heritage are making a mint of it – when you can park illegally the other side of a 8 foot fence and still see it lol. It was still good and we still got to use the audio tour which meant I learnt lots about it that I didn’t know. It was interesting to learn about all the folklore etc behind how Stonehenge came to be where it is.

We then headed back through Avebury to come home. We listened to Elaine Paige on Sunday and Johnnie Walker’s Sounds of the Seventies (It was focused a bit around Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells – it’s an amazing piece of music!). I then switched the radio over to BBC Radio 1 so that Our Sidekick could listen to the Top 40 Countdown. Somewhere in the middle of that all we’d stopped at Devizes for lunch and even managed to find gluten free Cherry Bakewells for Chris.

We arrived home about 6ish and got stuff sorted out. We watched Rebecca Adlington win her Bronze Medal – me and Kewey discussed via text message about how we didn’t breathe for the whole race. I cheered and shouted at the TV. I think it annoyed Chris and Our Sidekick. We had an unexpected visitor which meant that I had to hi speed tidy the living room in the time between the visitor ringing the door bell and said person sitting down in our living room.