Ludwig

The new BBC show Ludwig is much like The Mentalist, less serial killery.

Pulled Noodles

I am not convinced the new noodle shop in Leicester actually pull their own noodles, which is a signature of Lanzhou noodles...

Lunch Thali

We had a lunch thali at Herb, it is really good.  I wonder what they put in them!

It helped that they were extremely mild.

Self Service Dinner

James and Sarah both has problem of the concept of assembling/cooking dinner on the dinner table... I think it is not in British culture...

Image Search

Image search is making life so easy.  You used to either have to know what that thing is or ask someone who might know what that thing is, now the search is getting good!

Richmond Vegan Sausage Roll

So I had a Richmond vegan sausage roll.  It was better than Gregg's, but it is still a bit pointless.

Tomato Ripening

So tomatoes can ripen off vine, you just need to be patient.

The Sun Inn

So it has been 8 years since we last ate at the Sun Inn.  They understandably put the price up to £13, which is still cheaper than a lot of Sunday roasts.

The food was fair, we were stuffed!

Yale

One of the mythical creatures statues shown in Kew was a Yale: mythical goat type thing.

Shoei's Return

After using Bell for the last 8 years, I am finally returning to Shoei!

 

Have I Got News for You US

So they just started going Have I Got News for You in the US.  It is okay.  Looking forward to seeing more.

Tea Coffee Success

I have made the tastiest tea coffee thusfar.

Loose leaves tea, ground coffee, brewed together, sugar, evaporated milk.  Yummy.

Harvest Moon Eclipse

Before

About maximum.

Sunflower Microgreen

We left the sunflower seedheads out for the squirrel, when we can harvest them ourselves.  Although they are too small to be eating sunflower seeds, but they can be grown into Microgreen!  Let me have a go at this.

Thorpe Park

To continue the story, the entrance was fully of barriers to make you walk around, so you don't feel like you are queuing, I call this "Heathrow Experience".  We went through bag check and into Thorpe Park as it opens, most of the rides were not yet open.  

I went to the first one that was open, Stealth: 0-80mph in 1.8 seconds.  Because Sarah did not go with me, so I was a lone rider, I even jumped to the front to fill an empty space.  Its magnitude did not dawn on me until I was strapped down.  It was fast, it was scary, and it all ended very quickly.

After that, it was a bit of a daze!

Rush: giant swing is a modern version of the pirate ship, except scarier.  I cheated, by closing my eyes.  I hate pirate ship!

The Swarm: a winged coaster was actually very smooth, very nice.  As I described it, imagine being on Julie's motorbike, fast, smooth, sweeping bends.

The Saw's queue was too long, so I passed the first time around.  The screaming from the riders were not encouraging.

Colossus: world's first 10 looping coaster, in comparison is an old clunky coaster, it was fine, but it has too many corkscrew spins.

Mr Monkey's Banana Ride is a child's size pirate boat, which I just about to tolerate.

We weren't initially planning to get wet before lunch, but we walked past Storm Surge: spinning life raft, and we went for it.  Sarah's rain coat protected her from most of it, and I got a little wet.  The water was still quite clean in the morning. 

High Striker: child's size drop ride was just around the corner, so we forced ourselves on the ride as the operator wanting to get off to his lunch, I swore it was a shorter ride than the children before us.

We nipped to our car for lunch, changed into our wet gear, in preparation of the afternoon wet rides.

Quantum: magic carpet was just by the entrance, we so went on it just after our lunch, thinking maybe we needed something calmer just after lunch.

Sunset Cinema was showing a 4D race car short clip, so we went and sit down for a little bit, there was a bit of chair shaking and air jet spraying.

When we got to Dobble Tea Party, we were the only two in the tea cup, it was a bit too spinney to my liking.

Big Easy Bumpers were very calm dodgem, sparks no longer fly around. 

Most of the roller coasters' queue are getting long.  We queued up for The Walking Dead: indoor roller coaster.  

And Ghost Train: actors in the tube train, much like the real tube experience!  At the end of a tube ride, do we still have a soul?

Nemesis Inferno also came with the Heathrow Experience, and it was also a bit old and clunky.

After that, Sarah was ready for more roller coaster, so we went on Colossus and the Swarm.

The Saw's queue had died down, so we went for it.  It is like a smaller version of the Stealth, with the added thrill of part of it in the dark.

We have ruled out Hyperia, queue too long, and we might not have the stomach for; Samurai, Vortex, Zodias as we don't like to be spun; and detonator that we don't like to be dropped. 

It also started raining, we were ready for the wet rides.  Flying Fish junior coaster was a bit clunky, and we were on the coaster for 5 laps, we got quite wet!

Depth Charge: super slide actually wasn't wet as we imagined them to be, I slid a lot further than Sarah did.

Tidal Wave promised to drench us and it delivered, I had not been this soak for a long time.

Just as the park closes, we squeezed onto another Storm Surge ride, by now, the rafts are full of water at the bottom, that also got my feet wet!

I left the park shivering...  It was a very accomplishing day.

Surrey Day 6: Woburn

On the way north, we went to Woburn Go Ape, it was a nice, old course.  We took the opportunity to look at some animals.

And also stopped at MK Pride, had a walk around.

There were more delays on the road.  Before we get home, we even did a supermarket sweep, going to two supermarkets!

We are so glad to be home.

Surrey Day 5: RHS Wisley

Finally at last,we went to RHS Wisley.  RHS Wisley was the reason why we went to Surrey.

There were road works in the area, so the drive was not very nice.  The garden was unlike Hampton Court and Kew, a hillier version of Harlow Carr with a greenhouse.

There were different birds than Harlow Carr, I might have seen a Kingfisher.

Surrey Day 4: Kew Garden

Kew turned out to be out only day driving into ULEZ, why we brought Pizza instead of Danby.  It was very much London, traffic was not nice. We got there at 10am.

Having learn out lesson the day before, we agreed to stop every hour or so for refreshment as to make sure we are not exhausted.

All the greenhouses have now reopened.  I was steamed/cooked in them, not pleasant.

We finally got back to the car at 6pm, definitely got our ticket's worth.

Surrey Day 3: Hampton Court Palace

So in order to calm down from Thorpe Park, we went to Hampton Court Palace thinking it would be an easy day.

We left the house later, we parked at Thames Ditton and took the train to Hampton Court in order to qualify for the two for one offer.

Since the forecast was going to be rainy in the afternoon, we walked around the castle ground first, in the wind. That has exhausted us early.

We finally left the Palace in the afternoon, and walked back to Thames Ditton, in the rain, by then we were driving in rush hour, which we had to pick up top up groceries.  We ended up at home late, so much for an easy day out.

Surrey Day 2: Thorpe Park

I only realised we would be near Thorpe after I booked the accommodation.  Since then, we were preparing to go mentally.

We thought the park would open at 9am, only in the morning we checked and it was going to open at 10am, so we watched the boats on the Thames for an hour.

When we parked up, it was getting busy!  We actually got in the park before 10am.  Most of the rides were not open yet.  The first one open was Stealth, without thinking it through I went for it.  It was hair raising.

I will probably write up the rides separately, all in all, it was a good day!  I went on 18 different rides, I think we got out money's worth of thrills. We just have the nurse our mildly concussed brains the next few days.

Surrey Day 1: Windsor

We opted for the free option in Windsor, Windsor Great Park.

We went to Windsor Farm Shop first pick up some ham and sausage roll.

We parked up at a free car park, took a bus to Sunningdale, which was not £2/journey.

We strolled through the park, if we had done the park another day, we could have watched some polo!

The ham was a little salty, the sausage roll was okay.

The last stretch, the long walk, felt very long, even though it was downhill for a short mile.  

RHS let's us park at Saville Gardens, so we moved the car to have a look. 

Surrey Day 0: Thames Ferry

We were in the Weybridge area, and we had to take a ferry across the Thames.  The area's water is managed by a lot of weirs and locks, it is not tidal as we thought of Thames.  It was £5.5 return for that little hop!

Walnut Pesto

The pesto grows well this year, it grows so well that I had to make pesto! 

Dynamic Pricing

Oasis's concert tickets' dynamic pricing made to the news, we are just looking at Thorpe Park, and they also use dynamic pricing.  So unethical...

Green Tomatoes

One of my tomatoes has irreversibly snapped, so I had to take all the tomatoes off and hope they will ripen..

No Fee

When something advertises as "no fee", we just need to know where did they charge more, for this case, the poor exchange rate.  There is no such thing as free lunch...

Cat Beeper

So my neighbours have cat beepers, I am not sure they are effective.  One of the neighbourhood cats start pooping on my front yard, repeatedly.  I tried to add scent to deter them, they literally just move to the unscented bit!  Awful!  I just don't want to buy another piece of plastic...

No CHATS

I was chatting with Haylie, then we talked about money.  Surely everyone wants to send instant payment, free, who want to pay CHATS?!

Fushsia Berry

I showed Shelly a fushsia, I offered it to her, and she actually ate it!  So when I offered her a second one from another fushsia bush, it was hard for me to refuse my own medicine.  Shelley thought it resembles blue berry, I think it resembles grape, either way, fairly mild and tasteless. 

Chilli Honey

So when I was in Manchester a few month ago, I had a pizza with chilli honey.  I thought the pizza was too wet.  Then when we were in Kirkstall Market, Ninny and Mark also had pizza with chilli honey.  Apparently it is a thing, but I definitely don't like them.