Yo Puppy!

Saturday was a rather fun day. We spent it in the Bristol and Bath areas, meeting up with a small group of furs. I prefer smaller gatherings to meets these days as it's far easier to meet new people in smaller numbers. This was the case with Porsupah, who I have spoken to regularly over the last few years but who we had not met before the weekend. It's great to find a fur with whom I have something in common - in this vase beer and gastronomy - and it was very easy talking to him. The relaxed nature of the meet helped too.

We spent most of Saturday walking around the ancient city of Bath, seeing the Roman buildings and beautiful cathedral which we couldn't really digest last December due to the throngs of Christmas shoppers which had descended on the city to view the Christmas Market. We also got to walk alongside the tranquil canal with its stunning textured eighteenth century bridges. This was a rather pleasant stroll in the summer sunshine, particularly if you are a train spotter as it is near the main railway line. There were many people chugging up and down on barges - largely groups of men on a drinking session quaffing dubious beer - but it was great to see a little bit of countryside, particularly so close to the city.

By 3pm, as happened last time, the alcohol lovers amongst us were craving beer so we went to a rundown working mans pub where there was a particularly delicious IPA on tap. The day had started out as a tea shoppe crawl but we only went to two - the place where we met which did a lovely white vanilla hot chocolate and an establishment after the first pub which was quite pretentious and served little outside of coffee, which wasn't good for me. The apple juice there was exceptional.

Ambery, who had organised the day, wanted to watch the Brazil v Chile World Cup game at 5pm so we headed to a bar that was showing it on a big screen. Only Ambery and myself were interested in the game but this place had good beer so people were happy, although the layout in the TV area wasn't conducive to talking in a group. As a consequence, the non-football furs went outside in the second half to chat, leaving me in a bit of a quandary as I had come to see them yet Ambery wanted to watch the game. I tried to do both simultaneously.

We drank a lot of different ale here before going to the Salamander brew house, where we had an exquisite meal, in my case black pudding scotch egg for starter and fish and chips. We had some nice Bath Ales here, a brewery which is one of my favourites which we sadly can't get in Yorkshire, while I had a nice chat with the waitress at the end. I'll be honest, I was quite pissed at this point but coherent enough and fully in control - the result of eight hours of casual drinking, not caning it.

Our party had diminished as the day had professed, leaving us with just seven now. The three of us who were staying in Bristol soon found the train calling so we bade everyone goodnight and headed back. After this, we had a drink of crappy beer in the Travelodge before Wolfie went to bed, leaving Ponpon and I alone to talk about the salient issues of the day. I like Ponpon, politically we are quite similar while our outlook on life is largely meshed too. He's also fabulously easy to speak to, and we spoke about a range of subjects from fetishes to philosophy to politics. We continued this over breakfast on Sunday in a nice artsy cafe by the river, as we had done in Graze the previous morning. We had hoped to meet up with Ponpon on the Friday night but we were down quite late due to traffic so we only had a quick drink in BrewDog before retiring - Ponpon was too tired. I also needed to be drunk for the Saturday night as the bed was so terrible on the Friday - one of the worst night's sleep ever - I don't recall it being as bad last year at the same place (if not the same room).

There are plans to go back to the SW in September for the chilli festival as well as travel to Wycombe later in the year. I hope they both happen as these weekends are always magnificent.