Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

We went out for my birthday to a local Thai restaurant. But I didn’t check the opening times and it turns out they don’t open for lunch. Luckily, we found a lovely restaurant just down the street.

Earlier this month, Kim and Steve tied the knot. The wedding was held at Bagden Hall Hotel in Denby Dale and included a cèilidh, hog roast and wedding-themed quiz. Best of all, though, it was a reunion of most of the Thundercats team from Sky and a wonderful opportunity for us to catch up. We also made plentiful use of the photo booth. Thanks so much for the invite Kim and hope you had a brilliant day.

DUCC has a bunch of bikes for members to use. Except that last year the university moved them and didn’t tell us where they had put them. Ans infact, they didn’t seem to know. When I went down there the first time, nobody knew where they were. Luckily, our former captain was still around and led us to to the back of an abandoned pub where there was a locked storage room with a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”.

We’ve now successfully liberated three of them and tested them out on some club rides!

Bunratty Castle is a castle and folk park that is open to the public. Folk parks are living museums where traditional buildings have been relocated and are often populated with staff playing characters and or demoing 19th century trades. We’ve done St Fagans and Ulster and this one was also good.

Ulster was excellent: great role-plays and lots of cool stuff. But it was quite spread out. Bunratty was all a little more compact and the map was spot on so it was easy to find your way around.

History, countryside, ice cream. Yorkshire at its best.

Last time we went to Flamingo Land, we were the only people there. And it was lovely. This time, there were lots of other people there and it was annoying. Especially as it costs £49 to come in summer, and is much cheaper in winter. Still, we struggled on.

It is the first time Venla has come with us and she had lots of fun on the rides. Plus we got to see the black rhinos, white rhinos and hippos, as well as lots of other fun animals.

Explorium is a science museum for children. We did the junior section which is aimed at 2-7-year-olds. All of the exhibits are hands-on and they pack a lot of stuff in there. We were there for two hours and didn’t get around everything.

I’ve had a few days off this month so Venla and I used one of them to go to the funfair. They had bouncy castles, rides, and we tried archery. Will Venla be the next Olympic archer for Team GB? We’ll have to wait until she’s big enough to actually be able to draw the bow to tell.

Ulster Folk Museum is an outdoor village located in Belfast where you can learn about traditional living. There are a bunch of shops, houses, mills and churches, some of which are replicas and some of which are originals that have been moved brick-by-brick from various parts of Northern Ireland.

The main area contains a few streets with different shops in. Some of them are real shops such as the sweet shop and fully licensed pub. Many others act as a living museum. On the day we went there was a weaver using a wooden loom, a doctor who gave me and little bear a brief examination, some knitting, and traditional museum. There is also a tea room that offers hot and cold food.

The day we went was Ferguson Tractor Day. Harry Ferguson, co-founder of the Ferguson-Brown Company (now known as Massey Ferguson) was born in County Down and each year the museum hosts a rally for traditional Ferguson tractors. This included plowing demonstrations and a best tractor of the show award.

As a result, the place was rammed and there were parking cars on any spare scrap of land they had. It was very well organised, though. They had plenty of people to deal with the traffic and plenty of staff on in the tea room as well, o you were never queuing for long.

Outside of the main area they have various other buildings to explore and a farm with cows, chickens, geese and pigs.

Might be a bit grim on a rainy day and the paths on the map were not always accurate. But otherwise I would really recommend this museum. There is plenty to see, the demonstrations are good, they had colouring for the kids and on a nice day it is a beautiful walk, too.

Good zoo. My favourite animal was the eagle but there were plenty of favourites, too: elephants, giraffes, zebras, flamingos, penguins, sealions, alpacas, lions, chimps, bongos, giant anteaters, lemurs, a reptile house, and plenty of others.

It is built into the side of a hill and is somehow hillier than the Welsh Mountain Zoo. Worse, the cafe at the bottom of the hill was closed so we had to walk all the way up to the treetops cafe to get some lunch. You do get a wonderful view from the top, though.