Avoncroft Museum is home to the National Collection of Telephone Kiosks. There are so many interesting examples to look at!
Avoncroft Museum – Telephone Boxes
Avoncroft Museum
Zoë and her Dad took me on an outing to Avoncroft Museum. It is an open air museum where you can see lots of buildings that have been rescued. It is really interesting.
It was a windy day but the weather stayed dry. We had lots of trips to the tea room to warm up!
Harry Potter and The Cursed Child
Amy and Zoë went to London to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the theatre. I went along too!
We had lovely weather, sunny and not too cold.
The show was amazing, just like magic! Amy and Zoë are massive Harry Potter fans so there was quite a lot of excitement and they both had a brilliant time. It was a fabulous day out!
Sunday Scramble January 2020
It was a slightly chilly and damp Sunday morning when we headed to Bicester Heritage for the first Sunday Scramble of the new year.
It has been a while since I have been on the look out for Corvettes, but there were quite a few today. I especially liked the C7 Grand Sport.
Another highlight was an N gauge model railway in the back of a car!
It was really busy and there were lots of interesting cars to look at, here are a few that I particularly liked.
Weston In Winter
On Monday we took a trip to Weston-super-Mare to celebrate Emily’s birthday. Last time we went it was really quiet, but this time it was sunny and not too cold so the seaside was busy!
We went to the pier and had fun in the arcade.
We had a nice walk along the beach enjoying the sunshine. It was a great way to end the year.
Feeling Festive at The Vyne
We had a family meet up at The Vyne and got to see the house decorated for a Victorian Christmas. This has become a Christmas tradition with Zoë’s family.
There were lots of festive touches in the gardens.
We ate some cake before going into the house.
There were many Christmas trees with beautiful decorations.
The decorations around the house had a Christmas Carol theme.
We enjoy our Christmas visits to The Vyne, but we really must come back in the summer at some point!
A Very Porsche Christmas
Today I went to the Porsche Club GB Christmas at Bicester Heritage. I had to wear a hat as it was quite cold, but I got to see lots of 911s in different colours and from different eras, there was even one my size! I got to eat a bratwurst too, I had a very good day.
The Boaty Weekender – Other Stuff
We flew from Birmingham to Barcelona on Wednesday 7th August for The Boaty Weekender.
We stayed at the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel near the port on Wednesday night. We were upgraded to a suite and given cava and cocktails! A good start to our holiday.
The view of Barcelona from the roof was great, even if it was a bit grey.
On Thursday morning we woke up and could see the boat from our window!
We boarded the boat at about 12pm, giving us plenty of time to explore before anything started happening.
We had food and drinks and found our stateroom.
We took part in the first round of the pub quiz and did well enough to make it through to the final, we did quite well in the final and finished about mid table.
Zoë and I had fun at the Collage Club session. Pauly came and joined in too, we all had fun cutting and sticking.
Cagliari, as viewed from onboard.
There were some other impressive boats in the port.
We made use of the sun loungers very briefly, it was too warm in the sun!
We popped along to the towel animal demonstration, very impressive!
We found the bridge observation room. There was a big model of the boat!
Pauly took me in the pool with him for a little paddle, I can’t get too wet as I am very absorbent!
Then before we knew it, the weekend was over and we had to disembark.
For our last night in Barcelona we stayed at the Hotel Miramar, it was quite posh!
The Boaty Weekender : Food
Our trip to Barcelona and The Boaty Weekender involved a lot of food, and most of it in the form of buffets!
We stayed at the Eurostars Grand Marina hotel at the port the night before we sailed. We had cocktails and food at the hotel.
Breakfast on Thursday morning was at the best hotel breakfast buffet we have ever had!
As soon as we got on the boat we checked out the cocktails, they were Belle and Sebastian themed!!! The Party Line was my favourite.
It didn’t take us long to find the buffet and have our first of many meals.
Friday morning breakfast.
We managed to drink a lot of cocktails!
We had one meal at one of the paid restaurants, La Cucina. It was nice, but we were quite happy eating the buffet food the rest of the time. During this meal we did see dolphins so we were really glad we went!
Breakfast again. Saturday morning we had a freshly made omelette that was really tasty.
We stayed on the boat rather than going into Cagliari, more opportunities to eat!
We had afternoon tea in our stateroom, it was a lot of cake!
After all the cake we had a plate of vegetables.
Breakfast On Sunday .
Sunday lunch included mashed potatoes, Zoë’s favourite, so we managed to have three kinds of potatoes, woo!
we had a final breakfast but we were in a rush to disembark and I forgot to get a picture.
We went to the aquarium in Barcelona, after that we grabbed a quick lunch before going to our hotel.
We stayed at the Miramar Hotel, we had a much needed coffee and then more cocktails by the pool.
The breakfast buffet selection was a little disappointing, but tasty.
We arrived back at Birmingham Airport and were not ready for real life again. We had food and cocktails at the airport .
Now I need to go on a diet!!!
The Boaty Weekender – The Bands
Last week (how is it a week ago already!) we set sail on the Boaty Weekender. Four days at sea with some of our favourite bands!
Thursday
The first band we saw was The Vaselines in the Atrium. It was a great start!
Next we saw the solo show by Stina of Honeyblood, also in the Atrium.
We were so excited to see Belle and Sebastian on the pool deck just after we had set sail.
Tracyanne & Danny played in the Atrium.
We only saw a bit of Teenage Fanclub on the pool deck as we tried to fit too many things in! We quickly followed them up with Django Django in the Spinnaker Lounge, awesome and very loud!
Friday
The first band we saw was Alvvays on the pool deck, it was very hot!
The Belle and Sebastian Q&A session was good.
Camera Obscura on the Pool Deck was one of my highlights of the weekend. So good to see them play again!
Honeyblood at the Spinnaker were really excellent.
Hinds in the Atrium were so much fun!
Saturday
This was the day in port at Cagliari so there weren’t any bands until the evening. We stayed on the boat and had a bit of a rest.
We saw Buzzcocks with other artists joining them. So good!
Camera Obscura in the Atrium was next, a really intimate and fun gig.
Belle And Sebastian were playing on the pool deck again. This time we stood on the walk way behind the stage, it was fun to see them play from behind and be really close to everything.
Afterwards there was a B&S dance party, we danced around a lot!
We popped over to Magnums to catch Wojtek the Bear, our new favourite band! We went back to the dance party and carried on dancing all night!
Sunday
We woke up a bit tired from our very late night dancing.
We drank coffee and watched The Vaselines from the shade as it was very warm on deck!
In the afternoon we had the Belle and Sebastian Fold Your Hands show in the Stardust Theatre. This was for the people who booked early.
Later on, we also saw Camera Obscura in the theatre, another great performance, so happy to have seen them 3 times!!!
We had a little bit of time to catch a couple of songs from Mogwai on the pool deck.
We went back to the Theatre to see Alvvays again. That was the last gig we saw of our Boaty Weekender.
There were more bands we didn’t get to see, it was hard to decide which ones to go to at some points! If only we could have gone to all the gigs!
Little Knitted Man 