Birthday Weekend

Another year older, another year wider. Actually, that's not true - a few minutes in the pool at the gym every morning are improving my health and keeping that middle-aged spread under control.

Saturday we went to Rockers Steak House, on Mill Road in Cambridge. We noticed it at about the time it opened, wandering along at the Mill Road Winter Fair, and had a meal there earlier this year. That was pretty good, so we went back for more. And the food and service were again excellent - we had the sharing platter, the sirloin and rib-eye, and I broke with my normal tradition by having the chocolate brownie. There are a number of new steak restaurants in Cambridge; Rockers gets my vote.

It's a long bank holiday weekend. We went out Norwich way and stayed Sunday night at Dunston Hall. We keep getting these offers mailed to us by Secret Escapes, and this was about the first time we could use one. The weather was fine, we just wanted to relax and chill. In the afternoon we simply had a drink on the terrace, and I had a basic cream tea - one of the best scones I've had in years. The only real criticism there was they seemed very short on staff, so it took a while to get served. In the evening we skipped the main restaurant for the bar - I went for a different arrangement and had the cheese board (in the dessert section) followed by a lemon tart, both were excellent. And the included breakfast in the morning was pretty good too - sausage, egg, and bacon were just right which makes a change for a hotel - although again they seemed a little short and were struggling to keep everything stocked. But overall, a relaxing and enjoyable day away.

We had a couple of sessions in the pool, which is a decent size. Once we had found it - the hotel is a bit of a rabbit warren.

We asked about spa treatments as well, but they were full. So we went to Imagine at Blofield Heath, just down the road. We had the Luxury half-day for two, which basically means chilling out in their facilities for half a day and having an hour's worth of treatments. We both went for massages - speaking for myself I'm not overly fussed about skin texture, but anything to soothe tired and aching muscles is good. This time, I had the hot stone massage, which was a new one - and worked really well with the heat working on those tense muscles. I found the little stone between the toes a litle odd at first. As well as the usual spa facilities, there's a relaxation room, and a couple of pods in the garden for chilling out in as well, which are really nice. To finish, we had afternoon tea in the garden, sitting by the ponds with a family of newly hatched ducklings for company.

Trying to do too much

We're looking around for a new TV. The old one is a bit long in the tooth, although it's actually a staggeringly good TV - but it's a CRT and not HD (although it is a high-resolution TV that does upscaling), so eventually it'll become obsolete, we'll lose compatibility with everything providing inputs, and it does take up rather a lot of space in the lounge.

One rather strange trend I notice is that almost every electronic device attempts to include everything but the kitchen sink. All the Smart TV stuff is, frankly, gunk.

And it's broken at so many levels. Let's cover a couple.

So, in a decent home cinema system, you connect all the inputs to an A/V receiver or some other master device. So why on earth would the TV have a gazillion inputs on the back as well?

Any decent TV seems to come with a million ancillary functions - all this Smart stuff. As do many Blu-Ray players. As do games consoles. As does your phone, computer, and tablet. There's massive duplication going on here. And why on earth, given that you are likely to have all these other devices already offering this functionality, would you want to cripple all your other devices with substandard clones of the same functionality.

I want my TV to display the best possible picture, and to concentrate purely on doing that. I want my Blu-Ray player to play disks, and to concentrate purely on doing that. I want my games console (if I could ever find any decent games, that is) just to be really good at gaming. Adding the extra functionality adds cost, leads to compromises in core function, and will soon become obsolete. Not only that, but the TV offers a much poorer interface that a dedicated device.

The crazy thing is that, in a fully connected home, integrating this level of functionality into every device is unnecessary. Want to browse the web on the big screen? Simply use AirPlay or the like to teleport the display from your laptop or tablet.

I guess my Unix background shows through here, but I want each device to do one thing and do it well, and then I can join them together to provide a complete solution.

Where have all the good games gone?

Years ago, we bought a Sega Mega Drive. It cost us what seemed like a small fortune at the time, and games were pretty expensive. We played maybe a small handful of games extensively - Sonic and variations, and Desert Strike was fantastic. Yes, we still have it, although it doesn't come out all that often.

My brother had a SNES. We borrowed it for a while, just to play one game - Zelda. This was in a completely different league. Not too long ago, I actually went out and bought myself a Game Boy with the rereleased Zelda, and considered it money well spent.

The next console was a PSone. This has been heavily used, but largely for one particular game. Spyro: Year of the Dragon is just superb. You just can't get better. The predecessors were OK, too, but Year of the Dragon was clearly the pinnacle.

We have a PS2 as well. Looking around, there's not much available. The Spyro game for it is dreadful, and there's little else. The kids liked the Eye Toy games, but they've outgrown it and it hasn't been turned on for ages.

The Wii was - and still is - tremendous fun. But largely for Wii Fit and the odd sports game, where the board and the controller work really well. I haven't seen a more conventional game that's generated even a flicker of interest.

To be honest, I don't see myself buying a new console. I simply haven't seen one game that I can see myself enjoying, so what's the point?

I've also dropped out completely from PC games. Years ago, there were wonderful games available - I found Pod addictive, lost too many evenings to Caesar III, Age of Empires 2, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Rise of Nations, and Zoo Tycoon. Some of the updated versions were pretty dismal - Age of Empires III and Zoo Tycoon 2 were shockingly inferior to their predecessors, and there's a whole genre of games that's largely disappeared. Not only that, getting them to work on a current system is at best frustrating, if possible at all.

(And that's without Flight Simulator, a franchise that has largely vanished without trace - it once had a vibrant community and lots of community add-ons, I even built some scenery myself.)

The console and PC games industry has largely got itself to blame; potential customers with considerable disposable income won't bother getting their wallets out for any of the current garbage that's on offer.

Nowadays, I tend to play lightweight games on my iPad. In many ways, the game ecosystem provided by small mobile devices and tablets brings you back to the earlier games - simple, addictive, and fun. (One thing I didn't mention above is that we've collected a fair number of original Game Boy games, some have aged extremely well.)

One of my favourites right now is Harbour Master HD. It's a very simple premise, as with all good games - send the boats into harbour and out again, without any crashes. Addictive as anything.

There are a lot of games on the iPad and mobile devices that are ideal for killing short amounts of time. Puzzles, various logo games, pattern matching, brain training, and the like. The ones that work well are ideally suited to the platform, and fit around a busy lifestyle.

Maybe I am looked at the past through rose tinted spectacles, but I still want to know where all the good games have gone.

Around the Inland Sea

Just over from the Azure Window is the Inland Sea:

Calling it a sea is a little bit of a stretch; it's really more of a puddle.

The hole in the cliff on the left is a channel to the sea. This is what lets the water flow in; it also allows small boats to go out.

It cost us 3.50 euros each, which is pretty good value compared to some of the other trips we saw.

Once through the tunnel, you're taken to see the Azure Window, and into some smaller caves along the cliff. Depending on the way the light catches the water, and what's at the sea bed, you can get considerable variation in the colour of the sea.

Above, you can see that it really is blue.

The boatmen also point out various features - what look like faces or animals in the cliff face. The following makes for quite a convincing crocodile:

Windows on Gozo

We went over to Gozo for our summer holidays, staying just over a week.

One of the main attractions is the Azure Window, in Dwejra bay. Given a rock collapse earlier this year, it might not be around for much longer.

We were staying in Gharb, which is just a few minutes from Dwejra, so we went down several times.

You can also take boat trips from the Inland Sea (you can see one of the boats in the picture above), so this is the Azure Window from the other side:

You can just see Fungus Rock in the middle there.

One afternoon, I took a little walk out from Gharb, to the promontory on the other side of the bay. So you can look back and see the window in context.

On the other side of Gozo, there's another window at Wied il-Mielah:

This one is rather more difficult to get to. We visited the San Dimitri chapel, and then drove across country, along some absolutely terrible tracks. We came across some locals in the middle of nowhere who didn't know where it was and who tried to send us off to Dwejra, as we obviously looked lost. But there is actually a good modern road from Ghammar if you can find it, and a path and steps have been put down the side of the valley so you can get to the window.

Retro Play

I've collected all sorts of thing over the years - Meccano, Stamps, Avalon Hill games, Books, Jigsaws, and Toy Trains.

Most of this stuff is moderately old, and that's the attraction - there's a wonderful tactile feel to old things. But I'm not just interested in these things to collect, I'm interested in using them. Jigsaw puzzles are to be solved, books are to be read, Meccano is for actually building things.

The toy trains is a bit more of a problem. It takes a little more time and space. But earlier this year I was asked if I would set up some stuff for the Cavendish Laboratory's summer party - there were outdoor activities aplenty, but if the weather was poor people would be forced inside.

I jumped at the chance. There's so much more space in on of the labs than I could ever have at home, so I could put together a proper layout and give the engines a proper run.

You can see the scale. I would love to have this much space at home.

This is almost all post-war, early 1950s. There's a BR goods on the left, which is part of a complete set. And An LMS engine with a passenger train.

This is a train from my other full set, a tank engine and passenger train. We've also managed to collect some buildings, including a station.

I had a lot of people stop and look. The kids were fascinated, of course. But also the older generation were taken back down memory lane, as this is the sort of thing they would have had as children, so I had plenty of "I remember having one of those.."

Cambridge Pub Crawl

We weren't able to get to this years Ely Beer Festival so decided we would go and visit a few of the Cambridge Pubs we haven't been to before.

We started at the Tram Depot, just off East Road. A pleasant half for me, and Mel had the special offer cocktail. The menu looks pretty decent, and we enjoyed relaxing in the comfortable sofas.

Then on to the Free Press, small and cosy with interesting memorabilia on the walls.

Just along the street to the Elm Tree. An excellent half of mild (of which they had two), while Mel tried the mead. The website says food, but that doesn't seem accurate.

So across to the First and Last for lunch. We weren't planning anything heavy, so shared scallops and mussels. The menu is really rather good, and I highly recommend it.

Over to King Street and a brief stay in the Champion of the Thames. Nice and quiet with a warm open fire.

The King Street Run is somewhat different. Sky TV, intriguing decor, and quite loud music playing. We're probably getting too old for this sort of thing.

The to the St Radegund just as it opened, so we had plenty of choice of where to sit. Known as the smallest pub in Cambridge, it's not really all that much smaller than, say, the Free Press of the Champion of the Thames. By the time we left it was getting fairly full.

Then along to the Hopbine, where we had an excellent dinner on the hot rocks (something it shares with the Portland Arms and the Geldart).

In all the places we visited we were warmly welcomed and were given excellent service. By and large, most being visited Friday lunchtime and afternoon, most places were fairly quiet. The two meals we had were pretty top notch, and I couldn't fault any of the beer.

There's clearly diversity here - from the small and simple pubs to the larger and more modern places where food plays a larger role.

One interesting trend was that books and games were fairly commonplace.

Off to start planning the next event!

The Jolly Scholar

Following on from Tea at Bill's we stayed in Cambridge for our evening meal.

Originally we had planned to use our Tesco vouchers at Brasserie Gerard, but it appears they've gone bust. So back to our list of new places we haven't tried yet.

The Jolly Scholar (the web site is somewhat incomplete at the moment) is where the Bun Shop used to be. We've heard good things in the press, and the one friend who's actually been there was very positive.

The good things we had heard are thoroughly deserved. We decided to book a table for 6:30 but actually got there only a few minutes after 6, as all the shops in Cambridge closed very promptly and it wasn't really the weather to wander. They were just starting to serve food, so we sat down and had a good study of the menu.

The food is exceptional. We both started with the wood pigeon. It was rather more generous than I expected, was very tasty, and the beetroot and chorizo complemented it well. (And there was the added bonus of a small lead shot.) Melanie had the chicken off the special board. My rack of lamb was supremely tender, simply matched to a selection of roast vegetables.

We decided to skip pudding - we were reasonably full in any case, and still had plenty of cakes at home from Christmas, but I would unreservedly recommend the food at the Jolly Scholar.

Tea at Bill's

I was wandering around Cambridge just before Christmas (a bit of last-minute shopping) when I walked past a new restaurant, but had to file it away for future reference.

Over new year we were in conversation on our Seckford Hall break and the couple we were talking to mentioned that they had stopped to have tea at this great place in Cambridge. It took a little while to connect the two places.

So, last weekend we had Saturday out and decided to have afternoon tea and an evening meal. And the afternoon tea location was set: Bill's.

It's quite out of the way, being neither in the shopping centre nor on top of any of the tourist traps. But it was absolutely packed, so word must get around (and I've never seen any advertising either).

There's a large table near the door, and we perched on a corner, with several other groups sharing the table.

We both had the standard cream tea. I actually drank tea (Earl Grey), while Melanie went for hot chocolate. The scones were delicious. If there was a criticism it's that the jam was a little runny (so you can't pile it high, and it runs off your scone), but that's nit-picking.

Overall, it's a little gem, and we hope to go back. (The burger on a board looked very tempting.)

New Year at Seckford Hall

We decided to try and get away for New Year. The girls are old enough to look after themselves for a night or two, so we can spread our wings a little.

It's also Melanie's birthday just before the new year, so that gives the opportunity of a double celebration.

We had a look around, and there are lots of places doing new year breaks. We wanted something not too far from home (which ruled out places like Scotland or the South West) but not in Cambridge itself. We wanted the night before new year, whereas a lot of places offered new year and the day after. And I definitely didn't want somewhere that was a formal black tie dinner.

We went to Seckford Hall, near Woodbridge in Suffolk. The distance was about right, the facilities looked good, and it met all our requirements.

They have old rooms in the main house and some more modern rooms. We went for one of the older rooms, with a 4-poster. It's a little more quirky, and has more character, although the floor isn't exactly very level!

The package included cream tea. It's more like stuff-yourself-until-you-burst tea. Lots of scones, jam, clotted cream, cakes, and of course tea. Delicious and very filling.

We had a good meal in the restaurant. We decided to sit in the bar and have a small drink beforehand, and they brought canapes out, let us peruse the menu, and took our order while we were still in the bar. Then, only when they were almost ready with the starter did they take us through to the restaurant. This is definitely more pleasant than occupying time at the table reading the menu, taking your order and then waiting for the food to arrive.

The food was excellent both in quality and quantity. I had smoked salmon cannelloni to start, with pork medallions for the main. Now, I'm rather partial to a cheese board for dessert, but decided against it as I would almost certainly have exploded if the quantity had matched all the other items we had. And coffee was again back in the more relaxed seating of the bar.

We took advantage of the small leisure facilities at the hotel. We swam several times and treated ourselves to a massage with Mary Scott.

On new years eve, we drove up the coast to Southwold. OK, so we did have a little walk along the beach and the pier, lost a few coins on the penny falls. But the primary reason for the trip was to do the brewery tour. This was really interesting. The last time I went on a brewery tour was (I think) about 25 years ago in Oxford. The Adnams brewery is somewhat more modern. The time of year meant it wasn't in operation during our tour, but this did have the advantage that we could get around more freely and study the equipment more closely. And of course, there's the obligatory tasting session and the free beers from the shop!

On to the New Year Dinner Dance. I have to confess that this sort of thing has never really been my cup of tea, and a gammy knee and broken elbow don't make it any easier. Of the dancing I'll just say that there was some, and I was occasionally seen to stand on the dance floor shuffling from one foot to the other. Any photographic evidence has been systematically destroyed. We were put onto tables of 8 (or so) for the meal. The hotel had clearly given a little competent thought to the groupings, so we were put with some very nice people and had a very enjoyable evening.

So, I would recommend both the general idea and Seckford Hall itself. Despite my general bah humbug attitude, I haven't ruled out doing something similar in a year's time.

Quarter Century

Twenty five years ago today, I married Melanie at St Aldates in Oxford.

So, recently we've been celebrating.

We had a party just over a week ago for family and friends. Having had a look at several places, we selected The Gonville Hotel here in Cambridge, and were very pleased. They gave us a superb lunch (the beef was rare, just as we like it, and they did salad without tomato, just as asked). We had a good buffet in the evening as well, although I have to confess to being rather full and not having much room to do more than sample it. We had a regular cake at lunchtime, and then a pile of cupcakes from Dorringtons in the evening. (They do a cardboard stand, but we bought a rather posh perspex arrangement and it looked stunning.)

This last weekend we went down to Ipswich and stayed for a night at the Salthouse Harbour Hotel, on the waterfront. We've never been to Ipswich (except to change at the railway station) so thought this was a good excuse to go to a decent hotel somewhere different. We stayed in one of the penthouse suites (after 25 years you get to treat yourselves) and, yes, it does come with a telescope. The room was spacious and comfortable, the bed luxurious, although the bath and shower were slightly compact and some of the bathroom fittings a bit the worse for wear. We treated ourselves to a joint massage at Flawless Image as well, the Vespers Drift Away, which was really superb.

Just to be silly we walked along to the cinema to see Johnny English Reborn. An OK film, with some really funny bits mixed in with some quite average scenes. In Cambridge, we prefer Cineworld (over the alternative Vue) because the seats are better and there's a better angle to the seating so you can see over the people in front; the one in Ipswich felt a bit tired and tatty.

Before eating, we had a swift drink at Isaacs, the pub on the waterfront next to the Hotel. A decent pint, although clearly it must get a bit rough - plastic glasses and bouncers at the door.

Dinner at the Hotel was good, but slightly disappointing in that our first two menu choices weren't available (we fancied sharing the Chateaubriand), and they had run out of our first choice wine as well. The scallops for the starter were really good, but slight disappointment with dessert as well - no blue on the cheeseboard. The quality of the evening meal we had was good, no doubt about it, but we were just put out a bit by not getting what we were looking forward to three times.


Here's to the next 25 years!

Trying the Guided Busway

The Cambridge Busway opened recently - two years late, and millions of pounds over budget. So, many of us have taken to calling it the misguided busway instead.

A couple of weeks ago we went to St. Ives (to the beer festival, which meant that public transport is an ideal choice). As that's directly served by the busway, it seemed an ideal opportunity to try it out and see what all the fuss is about.

Compared to the old bus service, not much has changed. We got on and off the same vehicles at the same places, and the cost was the same. By and large, I would have said that journey times were pretty similar too. The bus is definitely comfortable, but the ride is anything but. On the regular road it's very smooth, but the guided sections aren't that great. The track is made up in sections, about a bus length each, and as the bus goes across these you get a regular pitching movement that can start to make you feel seasick. I can't imagine this getting better over time - settling is likely to make the joints worse and the track less even.

OK, so the bus is great for getting from a few places in Cambridge to a few locations along the busway. But that's all. It's very much a one-trick pony. It doesn't fit into a larger scheme, or address any of the area's other transport problems, or have any flexibility to evolve to meet changing needs. And that, to my mind, is a fundamental weakness to the whole project. It doesn't do anything to address issues of freight transportation or long-distance traffic, or even local traffic between villages, and isn't going to take any significant traffic away from the A14.

That's over a hundred million pounds of investment, with minimal impact in a very restricted area. Meanwhile, public transport in Cambridge itself remains extremely poor - overpriced, limited choice, and unreliable.

Variations in Travel

Just back from a short week in Munich.

We flew easyJet from Stansted. I'm not personally a fan of budget airlines, because they go to a great deal of trouble to give pretty shoddy service. (I can't believe that not having assigned seating makes any difference at all to their costs, and would make loading the plain much easier and quicker - not to mention being able to track which passengers are on board - I remember on one flight waiting for almost an hour on the tarmac because the number of passengers on the plane didn't match the number who had checked in.)

Why Munich? It was a short trip, so we wanted to fly from Stansted to make it easier. And just looked down the list of destinations. Munich is a fantastic place anyway, and has the advantage that you actually fly there (and not to some random tertiary airport miles away from it).

We've tried a number of different ways to get to the airport. In this particular case, we chose Stansted because it's pretty close to Cambridge. If we get an early flight out of Gatwick then we normally go down the night before and stay locally: then the hotel look after the car and offer a shuttle to and from the terminal, which works out pretty well. (And avoids the not insignificant risk of missing your flight due to being stuck on the M25 for half a day.) But for Stansted we have tried an airport Limo, which works quite well, and in this case just booked a taxi from Panther which is a similar price and just as good.

Going by coach or train would be a reasonable option, but for one thing - actually getting from our house to the bus or train station is a significant issue. It's not particularly cheap and, while it's close it can actually take quite a while. We're on the right side of Cambridge that we can just head straight for Stansted without having to fight into or through Cambridge itself.

Using the total shambles of a bus service to get to the railway station isn't really an option. You're often needing to travel early or late when the bus service doesn't operate, and even when it's supposed to be operating it's a total lottery as to when it might turn up - for our local service that's supposed to run every 10 minutes that mean allowing an extra 45 minutes to be sure you get their on time.

I hate parking at airports. If I drive down myself then I'll normally use valet parking. This isn't really any more expensive and is so much more convenient. It saves typically an hour and is much less hassle.

Having got to Munich we entered a different world. One of fast, cheap, reliable public transport. Well, almost (I'll come to that bit later).

The best way from the airport into Munich is the S-Bahn. And they have this "partner" ticket that allows up to 5 people to travel on the one ticket. From the airport which is a fair way out, that's under 20 euros for unlimited travel around Munich for the whole day. (Just within the centre itself the ticket is about half that price.)

Within Munich there's the S-Bahn itself, which spreads out to a number of suburbs, the underground, trams, and busses. This time we stayed near the main railway station, so just had to choose the right service depending on our destination.

We fell foul of a couple of failures of german efficiency on this trip. The first was that one of the tram lines (the 19) has a huge chunk taken out of the middle of it, while they do maintenance. This doesn't actually cause much of a problem once you've worked it out, but it wasn't obvious - the notice plastered on the stop was in german, and the announcements on the trams were also in german, so we spent a couple of minutes scratching our heads working out what it all meant. And then got back on the tram we had just jumped off which went a slightly longer way round.

The second problem was on one of our day trips. We went out to Herrenchiemsee, which should have involved a simple train ride. Again, more maintenance work, so a simple train ride turned into one train which departed half an hour later than normal, then an unmarked bus through the countryside, then another train (just the random next train, not an actual connection to the bus). We then had a little tourist train at the end, and 3 boat rides to get round the islands. Fortunately the return trip was direct, but I'm not sure we would have liked to have tried the trip out without a tour guide.

Some bus drivers are the same everywhere. We had one occasion when we were waiting at a stop, the bus drove past ignoring us, then decided to stop 20 yards down the road. We run after it, just get to it and he pulls off again.

The flight back was delayed a little, but waiting was a right pain. Some pillock decided to start queueing about 45 minutes before boarding, and of course everyone else then has to queue - because if you don't then you won't get a decent seat or be able to sit together. So you end up standing in a queue that snakes all across the departure lounge, cutting it in two, and blocking access to the shops, for an hour before anybody shows up. (Even worse, the people who started the queue all had speedy boarding and therefore didn't need to queue at all.)

Brasserie Gérard, Cambridge

We went out to Brasserie Gérard in Cambridge last night, as a meal for Hannah's Birhday.

Now, Brasserie Gérard is one of our favourite restaurants. The service and food are always excellent, and the menu is a good match for our likes.

I started with the tiger prawns. Firm flesh and very tasty, although I think I would have added some more garlic for an extra bit of zing (which is probably one of the reasons you don't want me running a restaurant!). Main course was my usual steak frites - in this case the filet, and it was delicious. I'm not a great fan of the faux filet (aka sirloin) - I prefer either the onglet or the full fillet myself. Then the cheeseboard to finish.

Of course, the really good thing about Brasserie Gérard is that you can use your Tesco vouchers, which makes it extremely affordable!

Prince Albert, Ely

On Friday I went to the Prince Albert in Ely.

There's no website, but it's in the Good Beer Guide and I managed to locate it easily enough. And, almost by accident, managed to find the car park that it's right next to.

I thoroughly enjoyed my pint of Mild. I knew ahead of time that Mild was served, and that was one of the reasons for choosing the Prince Albert to spend that part of my evening in.

I also had sausage, eggs, and chips for dinner. Which was just what I expected - tasty and cheerfully served.

If you compare the food on offer to those pubs which have a much larger investment in food, then the choice isn't that great and the prices aren't the cheapest. I suspect both are because they simply don't do enough food trade to allow economies of scale to kick in. But what you get is of decent quality, and what you would expect from a small local.

I would have loved to stay longer (and have a bit more of the Mild), but had to collect my passengers and head home instead.

Film Review: Robin Hood(s)

We watched the 2010 Robin Hood film (the one with Russell Crowe) the other night.

It's an OK film, but it really didn't work. It didn't really make sense to me in terms of the Robin Hood legend, which they've definitely mangled beyond all recognition. The plot itself is a little confused, and the film seems to lurch unsteadily from one phase to the next. Occasionally I would be impressed by a bit of gritty reality, and then put off by some errant inanity. The other outlaws aren't well fleshed out and seem to be peripheral, while every time I see Marion I think "Galadriel".

Seriously, this would have been a much better film if they had written a story from scratch and not confused it with the Robin Hood legend.

I haven't seen it for a while, but the 1991 version starring Kevin Costner was a much better film. Not only was the story more coherent, but it flowed much better. And there was a dark undercurrent to the film that gave it some backbone.

My favourite Robin Hood has to be Errol Flynn, though. That is a stunner of a film. From 1938, even. It's bright, cheerful, funny, and unashamed fantasy. Yes, certain aspects of it are complete nonsense, but it all fits together to produce a hugely enjoyable whole.

Camden Market

A little while ago we went down to London for the day. After dropping one daughter and boyfriend off at ExCeL we drove into London, heading for Camden which is somewhere we visit every few months.

On a Sunday we park on the Outer Circle of Regent's Park, just round from London Zoo. There's usually plenty of space, parking charges are quite reasonable. And then just walk a few hundred yards across to Camden. (Driving into London on a Sunday works fairly well - not too busy, and no Congestion Charge to worry about, although getting to Regents Park just skirts the Charging Zone.)

This time, while Camden was packed as usual, there were an awful lot of FC Barcelona shirts and Spanish accents in evidence. The fact that they had won the Champions League Final the night before might have had something to do with it, I guess, and they were out in force shopping for souvenirs before heading home.

While I quite like the atmosphere in Camden, and love browsing, I've come to the conclusion that it's not really my scene. Mel and the girls come away with tops, dresses, shoes, and assorted accessories. I've struggled to do anything as simple as finding a good book at one of the 2nd-hand bookshops.

There are huge numbers of places to eat. We often end up at the Ice Wharf, the local Wetherspoons place. It's set back a few yards (nothing more, really) from the hustle and bustle of Camden itself, but seems fairly quiet, and the menu seems to be able to provide for all the fussy eaters in the Tribble family.

Snug Bar and Loch Fyne

With the girls off at the Jarman Centre sleeping in a bivouac, we decided to go out for a meal.

As our meal booking was slightly late, we decided to take an earlier bus (when they're still relatively frequent) and stop off for a drink first. So we called in at the Snug (there are two in Cambridge - their website calls this one on Lensfield Road the Trumpington one, and it really isn't anywhere near Trumpington). It was reasonably quiet, so we had our usual small table with a couple of armchairs at the back, and settled down to a Zombie and West Indies Yellowbird.

Then along the street to Loch Fyne. And it was pretty full, explaining why we were given a slightly later booking. We started off with The Fisherman's Plate, which had a good selection of fish (although a little more bread wouldn't have gone amiss). Mel had the King prawns and scallops, while I went for the Pan-fried fillets of seabass. Both main courses were excellent.

The meal itself was pretty good - what of the downsides? Quality is good, value for money fairly average; the service was of pretty good quality although a little slow, both in taking our order (another waiter had to come and welcome us and explain today's specials) and in the fact that the starter (a cold platter, so no preparation delay) took a significant time to arrive. But they're obviously doing something right as the place was packed out, and usually seems busy.

Denny Abbey and Farmland Museum

We went over to Denny Abbey and Farmland Museum yesterday. We went fairly early as rain was threatened, and were fortunate that the rain stayed away while we were there (although we could see threatening clouds to the west and rain rolled in after we got home).

There was a special event day. It was interesting, and certainly kept us occupied for a couple of hours. I think they could have made more of it though: another vehicle or two would have made a massive difference, and the real ale and cheese were somewhat underwhelming.

I think we found that the special events didn't add all that much to the visit. Which is a bit of a shame because there had clearly been considerable effort put in, but I got the feeling that a little more effort would have made a huge difference.

As a regular visit it's probably not going to be more than half a day, which is slightly tricky given the opening times. But it's interesting and definitely worthwhile.

We actually visited Denny Abbey some years ago. In fact, it must have been quite a while ago. We don't remember the Farmland Museum, so was probably mid '90s, and my recollection of the Abbey buildings was that they were in much worse repair.

Cambridge Beer Festival

Last week was the Cambridge Beer Festival. Held as usual on Jesus Green, the usual array of fine ales and other specialities such as mead was available.

At the beginning of the week anyway! I went for a quick lunch (courtesy of the well known Cheese Counter) on Tuesday and Thursday, and we went for an extended lunch and afternoon session on Saturday. When we arrived on Saturday the choice was already starting to look a bit thin, and by the time we left just after 5 on Saturday there really wasn't much left. I guess record attendance helped drink the place dry.

As always, a thoroughly enjoyable event.

A reminder: join CAMRA. Not only do you get in free, and much quicker, but you're supporting a worthy cause.