Tag Archives: Day out

How is she 18 already?

Posted on by
Reply

So, not so long ago it was my daughter’s 18th birthday. As promised to her last year I took her to Alton Towers for two days with the Gold Fast Track for both days.

I picked her up on the Saturday and we headed up to the hotel. When we arrived, I found out I made a huge mistake! I booked a double room and not a twin. Oh shit! I tried everything I could to get us changed, but I was told they had no spare rooms. It is what it is.

We unpacked and headed to the restaurant for dinner. You can usually tell how good a places food is by how good their burgers are, and that’s what I had. Burger and chips. It wasn’t too bad! Headed back to the room and chilled for the evening watching some TV.

Next morning arrives and I had barely any sleep. The room was horrendously hot. I set the air-con to the lowest temperature, no window to open, because why would you put an opening window in the room. It felt like we were in the middle of a heatwave in there!

Funnily enough when I complained about the room being baking hot, they suddenly found a vacant room to switch us into. We each had our own beds and a working air-con with windows that actually opened! We could get a decent nights sleep!

We got ready and headed to the theme park. Below is a mix of both days events.

Continue reading →

A day trip to Venice

Posted on by
1

When flights are cheap, the world is your destination!

Both me and my son jumped at the chance to have a day trip over to Venice, Italy. £37.50 each return from Stanstead! Hell of a bargain, who could say no to that?

The day started at 7am. We headed up to Harlow. Had a breakfast, got some Euros and parked up at the train station. Jumped on the train and headed to Stanstead.

Of course after checking into the airport and going through all the security we headed to the nearest pub! Two pints later we nearly missed our flight, but thankfully made it just in time!

Continue reading →

Scafell Pike 2021

Posted on by
2

I made it. I finally made it! I reached the top.

Continue reading →

Bluebells

Posted on by
Reply

As the weather is beautiful right now and we are at the height of the bluebell season I decided that I would grab the camera and head on out to somewhere and see what I could do.

Obviously it’s been a while since I’ve taken any proper photos so this was going to be a whole new thing for me again. Learning how to use my camera properly was the object of the game, so I decided that I would take all photos on manual. This would help me get to know my camera again.

Location of choice was Dene Country Park just on the outskirts of Shipbourne. I arrived there just after 11am and began my journey wandering through the woodland. For the first 15 minutes of my walk I only saw the odd Bluebell. I thought I had missed them. A little while later I was greeted by a sea of purple. It was beautiful.

Sadly the camera can never do justice to Bluebells, but I tried my best. Tell me what you think.

DSC_24740

DSC_24741

DSC_24749
Continue reading →

Alton Towers

Posted on by
1

It’s now half term and the kids have some time off of school, so they were coming down to mine for just over a week, but first I thought it be good to take Ryan to Alton Towers for the weekend as now he is tall enough to go on all of the rides.

I finished work on the Friday at 6am and moseyed on home and slept until 4pm at which time I got up got showered and packed my things. It’s now 6pm and I’m driving to go and get the boy from his mums. I arrive just after 8pm and was greeted with massive hugs and kisses from both of the kids. I spend about 45 minutes there before heading up the A34 to our destination. 4 long hours later we arrive in Stoke at our hotel. Turned out to be the wrong hotel – I had put the post code for another hotel I was looking at in the Sat Nav. No big deal as the actual hotel was only 5 miles in the direction we just come from.

We arrived at the proper hotel just after midnight. Checked in and headed to our room. I go in and there are two single beds. I stand there scratching my head thinking “I’m pretty sure I booked a family room”. We went back down stairs to reception and they changed our room to a double as they didn’t have any more family rooms left. It means sharing the bed with Ryan, but that wasn’t a problem. He snores just as much as I do!

IMG_8201

We were up at 7.30am the next morning and headed off to the nearest Premier Inn hotel as they do some cracking breakfasts. We filled up on grub and then headed off to Alton Towers arriving just after 10.30. We entered the park after the 15 minute walk from the car park and headed straight to our first ride.

IMG_8179
Continue reading →

A Night at the Hilton

Posted on by
Reply

Up at 4am, working 10 hours, 90-minute drive to Gatwick, and then 10 hours of drinking.

Well that was my day in the simplest form. Obviously there was much more to it. There was an award ceremony, photos, silly antics, meet and greets, laughs, eye candy, and an all round drunken time.

As our company lost their contract it will be our last ever winter ball sadly, however a cracking good time was had.

I left work at 4pm ran to Asda and grabbed some vodka and then made my way to the Hilton. I arrived just before 6 and got straight into the shower. Shortly before 7 the friend I invited turned up. Drinks in hand we headed into the crowds and mingled.

Dinner and celebrations started at 7.30. After the awards the live music started, and the drinking began.

At about 10pm a photo booth was set up where people could dress up and take photos. I had to get in on it this year. We grabbed a few friends to come and join us to have a laugh. I even grabbed someone from upper management!

IMG_6213

IMG_6214

IMG_6215
Continue reading →

C.E.R.N.

Posted on by
Reply

Visiting C.E.R.N has been one of the things I have been wanting to do for quite some time. I found out recently that they have tours of their facility and ordinary members of the public can request to join them.

After finding out they did tours I naturally got excited. It took me a couple of weeks to find a slot between seeing the kids, work and an availability in the tours. The next challenge was the price of the flight. I thought it was going to be expensive as hell to get a flight over to Geneva, Switzerland. Turns out it wasn’t! Using a website a friend from works introduced me to called Sky Scanner I was able to book a return flight for £42! It makes you wonder how it’s even possible!

I’ve never been on an aeroplane before, so the trip over to Geneva was going to be a completely new experience for me. I was so excited but so scared at the same time. I didn’t know what to expect.

IMG_6068

So this was the plane I was about to get on


Continue reading →

Ryans 10!

Posted on by
Reply

My son is now 10 years old! His birthday was on the 14th, but I had to see him the weekend before. This was a good thing as I found something that Ryan would enjoy so much.

IMG_5890

Ryan is heavily into beatboxing. He watches hours upon hours of videos on youtube of various artists performing their talent. What better gift could I get him than to take him to the Championships?
Continue reading →

Day at the beach

Posted on by
Reply

It’s summer and its nice and hot. What is there better to do than to go to the beach? Thats exactly what we did. We packed our stuff and headed down to Camber Sands.

Unfortunately at the time of going to the beach Operation Stack was on which closed the majority of the M20 and caused chaos with the traffic in the local areas. We decided to go through Maidstone and down the A229 and then onto the A21 to Hastings heading to Camber from the West. It took a little longer to get there, but it was much more desirable taking that route than being stuck in hour upon hours of traffic!

We arrived just after 2pm at which time the parking becomes half price, so thats a bonus! We parked up and unpacked the car. I lathered up the kids with sunscreen and headed up the huge sand dunes over to the beach. We spent the next couple of hours playing about in the ocean.

We had loads of fun!

DSCN0330

DSCN0366

DSCN0348
Continue reading →

The Eden Project

Posted on by
Reply

Last year when I had the kids with me we visited the Eden Project in Cornwall. At the time I didn’t realise but I bought annual passes. I don’t think it cost that much more than a regular ticket to be perfectly honest, so thats why I probably didn’t notice.

Anyway, we decided to visit again this year. We had a good time down there and as hey had the dinosaur expedition on again, we definitely had to go and visit. Below are a few photos we took while there.

DSC_23828

DSCN0226

DSCN0228
Continue reading →