Wedding bells

No, not mine but me and the family are flying back to London tonight for my mates wedding, the one in which I am one of two best men, the speech is coming along nicely, although I’m finding it hard to keep it below two hours.

The wedding is Friday but before then we are doing a mini tour of Oxfordshire and Essex catching up with friends. This after a late dinner last night with a client and then home to pack in the early hours before getting up silly early this morning to come to work. I can sleep when I’m older.

Zooropa

Amongst bundles of discarded wrapping paper, turkey leftovers and bags under the eyes during our trip home I also made my first ever visit to Colchester Zoo, re-discovered some old London stomping grounds and had a couple of cracking pub lunches.

Colchester Zoo was much bigger than I imagined. Our friends had suggested a 4-hour visit and as we drove up there in the drizzly rain I truly wondered what an earth we were going to do for 3 of those hours.

But I should have feared not as we comfortably strolled it’s 60 acres during 3 hours and still left some for another day, although there were a fair amount of exhibits that had migrated for the winter. There are apparently over 260 different species and they are laid out in numerous zones where you can get pretty close to the animals.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Last night after we had crammed into the standing room only carol service at the tiny Mary Magdalene church in Crowmarsh, I had an enjoyable couple of pints of local brew River Crossing in the pub in this picture in the village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, although that photo was taken a year ago!

The Red Lion is a traditional 16th Century half timbered, thatched pub that almost burnt to the ground in 2001 but was rescued by brave local firemen and then rebuilt and is still rightly popular locally.

A Christmas story

Christmas is already feeling like a distant memory but there were some great ones from our trip home, one in particular that I’d like to share was the Torchlit Parade we joined in on Christmas Eve.

The torchlit parade takes place every Christmas Eve between the Oxfordshire villages of Streatley and Goring. At dusk people walk downhill from both villages and cross the small bridge that crosses the tapered River Thames and then gather in a vast meadow with a huge bonfire to sing carols.

Seeing thousands of people holding hessian and wax torches was a wonderful visual, especially with the snow cover on the ground. My son loved it but tended to wave his torch around a bit like it was a sparkler and we did well to escape the parade without the Fire Brigade being called!

Goring and Streatley are inexplicably linked but are in fact in two different counties with the Thames acting as the border. Streatley is in Berkshire and is the smaller of the two villages, while Goring is in Oxfordshire and both have some stunning old buildings and some brilliant pubs such as the Miller of Mansfield and The Bull.

No one could tell me how long this tradition has been going on for but it was a fun thing to do before Santa visited.