Camden with Charlie

Charlie and I decided to nob off to London for a few days of sightseeing. It all started in Wigan Wetherspoons followed by a quick journey on the train down to Euston and a tube up to Camden. We arrived at our funky apartment and then went out for some drinks which quickly degenerated into chaos. The next day was our proper full day in London and it started by walking up to the top of Primrose Hill to take in the views

We then hopped on a bus and headed into Central London. I think we might have had a beer somewhere before heading to Covent Garden – but where that beer may have been is a mystery to me.

A spot of lunch in Covent Garden before embarking on a mission to find the Dr Martens shop…without using google. We wandered here, we wandered there – drinking beer in both places…at one point we ended up in the Bear and Staff where we met quite possibly the dullest and least helpful barman in the whole of London.

Eventually we worked out it was on Neal St, then we cheated a bit since we were pretty pissed by this point and looked up Neal St on Google Maps.

We made it and Charlie got his DM’s. At this point we wanted to do the tourist thing so we went over to Punch and Judy and drank beer on the balcony watching some pretty epic street performers.

It all gets a bit blurry here but we got on the tube, on the wrong spur and ended up down by London Bridge. Got out of the tube and ate dinner in the first random pub we came across, The Southwark Tavern, which served pretty wonderful food actually, and then we hopped onto the correct tube and went over to South Kensington to meet up with Gerome

This brought the night to an end – we uber’d back to Camden and passed out.

On the last day we grabbed our stuff and left the unbelievably insecure apartment we rented…turned out you didn’t need to put a code in – just turn the handle and off you go … and headed down to Embankment to show Charlie one of my favourite views in London from the bridge outside Embankemt Station. I always thought it was called Hungerford Bridge but that could be the bridge the train goes over – according to Google maps it’s called Golden Jubilee Bridge.

We finished the London mash with a glass of wine in Gordon’s Wine Bar. I’ve been to this place many times but it’s the first time I’ve ever managed to find a table in the vaulted section. It seems daytime drinking has something going for it after all

We both slept most of the journey back on the train being rudely awoken just before Wigan. In the mad dash to get off the train I managed to lose my pilfered emergency wine glass. Sad face.

Moel Famau

We forewent [ if that’s even a word ] the usual NYE celebrations and instead got an early night so we could get up bright and early and drive to North Wales…Loggerheads to be precise, so that we could climb the lofty heights of Moel Famau.  We got there and the first hurdle was that we needed £2 to park on the car park.  Since I pretty much pay for everything via contactless this was a bit of an issue.  In my rear view mirror I could see a queue of cars forming behind me as everyone in the car [ including kids ] were scrabbling around trying to find some change.  Fortunately Emma found a couple of pound coins and in we went.

We set off walking in our boots, hats, scarves, snoods and jackets.  After about five minutes the scarves, hats and snoods came off and the jackets were unfastened.  It was hard going and we were all getting pretty hot.  Amelia was loving it

 

At one point we thought we were getting near the top as all the trees started thinning out….nope, we just popped out above the tree line and then saw that the summit was a loooong way away.

We persevered though and made it to the top.

After some sandwiches at the top we started walking down again….Amelia cheered up by this point

This is where the fun really began. We didn’t realise Moel Famau was such a popular New Years Day walk. As we were coming down the hill there was a mass of people heading up. Some were in trainers and shorts, pretty much everyone had dogs, there were some guys walking up smoking a spliff and I’m sure I saw some guys walking up with tins of beer. Anyway, the important part was the car park was rammed and so people had started parking on the road. This reduced the access road to a single carriageway meaning people were trying to get out whilst people were trying to get in and it was just deadlock. We ended up stuck on the road for about forty minutes until somebody managed to organise the people coming up the road to pull onto peoples drives and reverse back down and all sorts of stuff. Eventually we got away and made it to Nana Pat’s for a New Years Day lunch. In summary, beautiful walk, definitely do it again…but not on New Years Day.