Another week in England

My work called for another week to be spent in luvely England. So off I flew, Monday night, to the land of Ale and Fish and Chips… After an eventless flight, I got taxied over to Sinhung’s place, which is just down the road from the office. Much philosophising was done over a bottle of wine…



After a hard day’s work on Tuesday, Adrian picked me up at the office, and off we went to Richmond. We then began the challenging yet rewarding task of visiting as many local pubs as our tight schedule allowed. Having completed this task we headed downriver for a well-deserved meal at the Gaucho Grill. And what a meal it was – I think I possibly had the best steak ever (at least the best one I can recall – and my memory is unusually good when it comes to food ;-). So should you ever head down to Richmond, and fancy a juicy piece of Argentinean meat (no innuendo intended) – Gaucho Grill is the place to go.



My odyssey across the towns of Surrey and Hampshire continued with a night spent in Guildford on Wednesday. After a pasta dinner at Phil’s place, off I went to the pub yet again. Instead of the usual venues (the Guildford Tup/Stoke), I decided some originality was called for, so I ended up meeting the crowd (Manue, Jeff, Nick – and Maxim also joined us later) in the Star this time. After some quite pints there we made the fatal mistake of going to Flares. The place might be heavin’ during the weekends, but it certainly was not when we were there…



On Thursday we had our team meal in Fleet – we actually ended up in Il Castillo again (had a meal there during my last trip as well). After a very nice meal, I was lifted back to Ancell’s farm, where I was forced to have a lonely pint in the local pub while I waited for Sinhung to get back home.

The trip back was somewhat less painful than last time, which is not to say that it was painless. The inbound plane from Madrid was delayed and delayed, and at some point it seemed that the flight to Nice would not take off. But fortunately it did, eventually, after a delay of “merely” 3 hours.… So I was home at 2 AM (rather than 5AM, like the last time…).