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It's been something of a disjointed week, with Wolfie's knee still providing limitations as to what we can do. It has gotten better over the course of the last seven days, but he has been trying to rest it, resulting in a rather relaxing weekend with little happening.
He did manage to come out to the coffee meet on Tuesday, largely because he could park in the car park opposite the venue. We had only intended to go for one cup of tea and head home, missing out on the dining part of the evening due to other commitments, but in the end we stayed at the coffee shop until it closed at 7pm as we were having such a good time. It was great catching up with Windsor Lion and Burdfl once again, while it was also good to see the coffee meets becoming increasingly well attended, with upwards of twenty people now coming. This may cause issues with Come Dine With Chee going forward, but for now at least, the main event is proving delightfully successful.
Friday saw the reopening of Brewdog North Street after their week long refurbishment. The first one hundred people through the door when they opened at 6pm got a raffle ticket for a draw for a range of prizes including a trip to the Tower Hill bar to brew your own beer and a £500 bar tab. Obviously I wanted in on this, but told myself that if the queue was ridiculous, I would just go home. I arrived just before 6pm and was delighted to see a modest queue down the street but nothing daunting, enabling me to snag ticket number 29 once we were let inside. Alas, I didn't win, but I did get to sample a number of new beers as well as see the new layout of the place, which was essentially just putting more seating in certain areas. They have a new food menu though run by Sqew, an adjunct of Reds, and their kebabs look particularly appetizing. I also liked the concept of pink hummus, something to which I was only introduced over the Easter weekend. Alas, Wolfie couldn't come down for beers so I was largely on my own, meaning I spent most of my time speaking to the bar staff. There was a fellow loner stood next to me for a while, but I never really plucked up the courage to speak to him so I just bided my time for the draw to be made. This was about an hour after I had arrived, after which I snuck out to the little Leeds Brewdog, where I know more bar staff. This was quieter, and I felt more at home here, so I stayed a while and chatted with friends there. It was here that I noticed Mike Hampshire was tweeting about a fantastic beer he had just had and after enquiring as to where he was, he told me he was over at Slocken which was literally over the road from where I was. With little else to do and the beer already affecting me, I decided to head over there and meet him, sampling some wonderful beer, meeting his wife and chatting about our Estonia trip and the beer scene in the Baltic States. It was a very nice half hour or so, before I felt food and Wolfie calling, heading home to get some fish and chips shortly before 9:30pm feeling pretty tipsy.
Saturday was a quiet day, where I caught up with bits and pieces and generally chilled, with my only plan for the weekend being today. Earlier in the week, I had aranged with Arcais to go to the Vegan Food Festival at Leeds Town Hall. I had booked Wolfie a ticket too, but awaking this morning, he felt his knee still wasn't up to it so he opted to stay at home. This meant it was just me and the panda heading out, and we met up outside her work at around 11:45am. Walking to the Town Hall, we wondered how we would navigate The Headrow, which was awash with runners completing the Half Marathon, but there was a crossing point at which we were guided by stewards to get across the road. The queue for entry into the festival was long but it moved pretty quickly, meaning we were inside not before too long, sampling the range of fantastic stalls they had there. It was far more extensive than I thought it would be, with more than food there too. Indeed, a range of vegan themed t-shirts were in evidence, as were some eco-friendly products and people into crystal healing and reiki. There was even a vegan beer place, whose owners let us sample the five beers they were selling. These were quite delicious and I got a bottle of each, and one to drink outside with the vegan food I purchased. The majority of the stalls were in the main hall, but there were some in the corridors and adjoining rooms. In one of them, Arcais bought a scotch egg whose fake meat was delicious but it surrounded a yellow fluffy cake ball that wasn't too dissimilar to a bathbomb. Meanwhile, we got to sample some excellent chocolate and cheese, which made my afternoon.
After buying a t-shirt, Arcais and I headed outside where the main cooked food stalls were. Deciding what we wanted was hard before we settled on a vegan hotdog, which was perfectly acceptable but perhaps not the best food there. Still, it was great eating it and sitting on the Town Hall steps in the sun, drinking beer and chatting to a friend. The Festival was surprisingly busy and it was great to people watch, while we toyed with the idea of getting more food before we realised we were full. With the time approaching 1:30pm, we decided we would do a little geocaching and come back later, with us leaving out of the back entrance and heading to the canal area. As we did, we noticed one obese runner nearly finishing the half marathon about two hours after the main group had done, and could but not admire his perseverence. We then pushed on, having a pleasureable time picking up four geocaches, including a number which had annoying eluded me. Geocaching is a lot better with friends than it is on your own, and I am hoping to do more caching with friends over the summer. Indeed, one positive thing about caching is discovering things about places you didn't know, in this case the vents which exist around Leeds for the tunnels which carry the city's electrical wires underground. I had seen these black postbox-like structures around before but had never inquired as to their purpose, so it was good to discover what they were all about.
The Food Festival closed at 4:30pm, giving us an hour to revisit it once we had done our caching. This was a perfect time for cake, but we were a little distressed to notice the vast majority of stalls were already beginning to pack up. However, we did manage to get a raspberry loaf in my case, as well as some pies for our dinner. The pie shop were giving loads of stuff away as they wanted to get rid of stock, so I also got some sweet beetroot mini pies as well as a piri piri and sweet butternut squash larger varieties for our dinner. Arcais and I decided to sit on the steps and eat our cake, again enjoying the sun, before we thought it was worth heading back. We had tried to get Wolfie out with an invite to Brewdog to try some of their new vegan kebabs but he wasn't particularly interested. Therefore, we ended the afternoon in Arcais's office having a cup of tea while she printed off some con badges, having a genteel end to the day before we split for our buses.
He did manage to come out to the coffee meet on Tuesday, largely because he could park in the car park opposite the venue. We had only intended to go for one cup of tea and head home, missing out on the dining part of the evening due to other commitments, but in the end we stayed at the coffee shop until it closed at 7pm as we were having such a good time. It was great catching up with Windsor Lion and Burdfl once again, while it was also good to see the coffee meets becoming increasingly well attended, with upwards of twenty people now coming. This may cause issues with Come Dine With Chee going forward, but for now at least, the main event is proving delightfully successful.
Friday saw the reopening of Brewdog North Street after their week long refurbishment. The first one hundred people through the door when they opened at 6pm got a raffle ticket for a draw for a range of prizes including a trip to the Tower Hill bar to brew your own beer and a £500 bar tab. Obviously I wanted in on this, but told myself that if the queue was ridiculous, I would just go home. I arrived just before 6pm and was delighted to see a modest queue down the street but nothing daunting, enabling me to snag ticket number 29 once we were let inside. Alas, I didn't win, but I did get to sample a number of new beers as well as see the new layout of the place, which was essentially just putting more seating in certain areas. They have a new food menu though run by Sqew, an adjunct of Reds, and their kebabs look particularly appetizing. I also liked the concept of pink hummus, something to which I was only introduced over the Easter weekend. Alas, Wolfie couldn't come down for beers so I was largely on my own, meaning I spent most of my time speaking to the bar staff. There was a fellow loner stood next to me for a while, but I never really plucked up the courage to speak to him so I just bided my time for the draw to be made. This was about an hour after I had arrived, after which I snuck out to the little Leeds Brewdog, where I know more bar staff. This was quieter, and I felt more at home here, so I stayed a while and chatted with friends there. It was here that I noticed Mike Hampshire was tweeting about a fantastic beer he had just had and after enquiring as to where he was, he told me he was over at Slocken which was literally over the road from where I was. With little else to do and the beer already affecting me, I decided to head over there and meet him, sampling some wonderful beer, meeting his wife and chatting about our Estonia trip and the beer scene in the Baltic States. It was a very nice half hour or so, before I felt food and Wolfie calling, heading home to get some fish and chips shortly before 9:30pm feeling pretty tipsy.
Saturday was a quiet day, where I caught up with bits and pieces and generally chilled, with my only plan for the weekend being today. Earlier in the week, I had aranged with Arcais to go to the Vegan Food Festival at Leeds Town Hall. I had booked Wolfie a ticket too, but awaking this morning, he felt his knee still wasn't up to it so he opted to stay at home. This meant it was just me and the panda heading out, and we met up outside her work at around 11:45am. Walking to the Town Hall, we wondered how we would navigate The Headrow, which was awash with runners completing the Half Marathon, but there was a crossing point at which we were guided by stewards to get across the road. The queue for entry into the festival was long but it moved pretty quickly, meaning we were inside not before too long, sampling the range of fantastic stalls they had there. It was far more extensive than I thought it would be, with more than food there too. Indeed, a range of vegan themed t-shirts were in evidence, as were some eco-friendly products and people into crystal healing and reiki. There was even a vegan beer place, whose owners let us sample the five beers they were selling. These were quite delicious and I got a bottle of each, and one to drink outside with the vegan food I purchased. The majority of the stalls were in the main hall, but there were some in the corridors and adjoining rooms. In one of them, Arcais bought a scotch egg whose fake meat was delicious but it surrounded a yellow fluffy cake ball that wasn't too dissimilar to a bathbomb. Meanwhile, we got to sample some excellent chocolate and cheese, which made my afternoon.
After buying a t-shirt, Arcais and I headed outside where the main cooked food stalls were. Deciding what we wanted was hard before we settled on a vegan hotdog, which was perfectly acceptable but perhaps not the best food there. Still, it was great eating it and sitting on the Town Hall steps in the sun, drinking beer and chatting to a friend. The Festival was surprisingly busy and it was great to people watch, while we toyed with the idea of getting more food before we realised we were full. With the time approaching 1:30pm, we decided we would do a little geocaching and come back later, with us leaving out of the back entrance and heading to the canal area. As we did, we noticed one obese runner nearly finishing the half marathon about two hours after the main group had done, and could but not admire his perseverence. We then pushed on, having a pleasureable time picking up four geocaches, including a number which had annoying eluded me. Geocaching is a lot better with friends than it is on your own, and I am hoping to do more caching with friends over the summer. Indeed, one positive thing about caching is discovering things about places you didn't know, in this case the vents which exist around Leeds for the tunnels which carry the city's electrical wires underground. I had seen these black postbox-like structures around before but had never inquired as to their purpose, so it was good to discover what they were all about.
The Food Festival closed at 4:30pm, giving us an hour to revisit it once we had done our caching. This was a perfect time for cake, but we were a little distressed to notice the vast majority of stalls were already beginning to pack up. However, we did manage to get a raspberry loaf in my case, as well as some pies for our dinner. The pie shop were giving loads of stuff away as they wanted to get rid of stock, so I also got some sweet beetroot mini pies as well as a piri piri and sweet butternut squash larger varieties for our dinner. Arcais and I decided to sit on the steps and eat our cake, again enjoying the sun, before we thought it was worth heading back. We had tried to get Wolfie out with an invite to Brewdog to try some of their new vegan kebabs but he wasn't particularly interested. Therefore, we ended the afternoon in Arcais's office having a cup of tea while she printed off some con badges, having a genteel end to the day before we split for our buses.
