Fun, London

Celebrating quirky Englishness in style: London’s 2024 Tweed Run

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For many years my good wife kept on voicing her grievance that we never made it to the annual Tweed Runs. FINALLY ABLE TO JOIN THE TWEED RUN We always seemed to be out of town on the respective weekend. Yesterday, for the first time, we got our shot at this jaunty cycle ride through central London. Ellie had bought our two tickets (£50 each) six weeks ago, as soon as they became available. The tickets always sell out quickly. I’ll freely admit, my expectations had been low. I’m not huge on cycling in Londontown. It just feels a tad dangerous.   NOT ANOTHER FRANKFURT COUNTRYSIDE BIKE RIDE I also had less than fond memories of the Frankfurt Countryside Bike Ride Ellie & I had joined a few years ago. Ellie has done next to no cycling since childhood. Kudos to her, I thought, when she had come up with […]

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London

The 2024 Orchid Festival in Kew Gardens

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Yesterday, Ellie & I visited the 28th Orchid Festival in Kew Gardens. The only one we had previously visited was in 2017. Turns out, that when Kew Gardens aren’t busy celebrating the demise of women’s and gay rights with shows like “Queer Nature” (specifically linked to the obnoxious Queer Theory), they can still put on a good show. THIS YEAR’S THEME: MADAGASCAR As in previous years, the festival is ‘themed on’ and ‘inspired by’ one country. This year it’s the world’s fourth largest island, Madagascar, with its unique flora and fauna. The country is home to some of the world’s rarest plant species. Over 14,000 of its plants are found nowhere else in the world.    Moreover, the nation’s lush rainforests and tropical dry forests also happen to be home to about 750 endemic orchid species (plus another 150 non-endemic ones). While only a tiny fraction of the tracheophytes shown […]

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Activities, Fun, London

Driving Supercars around the Top Gear Race Track with Everyman Racing

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Ms B, whose nickname amongst her girlfriends as a high school kid was Voucher-Chick, found an amazing offer on Buyagift.com: £109 to race three supercars around the famous Top Gear race track and be a passenger on a high-speed ride. I didn’t need to be told twice. The moment she told me about the insanely good-value offer, I was on my laptop, buying the voucher. Truth be told. I spent significantly more than that (tripling the total) to buy upgrades in terms of cars, 6 miles instead of 3 miles per car, to buy insurance, zero excess, and an extra lap on the high-speed passenger ride, but I’m still thinking this was perhaps the most fun in relation to cars I’ll ever have had, until I die, unless my recent part-time venture into stand-up comedy starts to pay off big time (haha, joking, it won’t). It seemed to take forever, […]

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Fun, London

Alastair Moon’s House at Lock’d – Best Escape Room Experience in London

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We thoroughly enjoyed our first escape room experience with Lock’d Escape Rooms London (Grandpa’s Last Will – our review here), so when we were invited to come back to review their latest room, “The House of Alastair Moon” we were very excited. Mr B was busy, working abroad, so he missed out on this one and three of our friends joined me. Opened after three years of research and development, The House of Alastair Moon is Lock’d’s most difficult room, so I was pleased to have such a great mix of different skills and backgrounds with me, including a globetrotting English dentist, a Korean-born finance professional, and a French lawyer. Two were first-timers, while myself and another friend had experience “escaping” before…   All photos, including feature photo (c) Lock’d Escape Rooms Being a group of four turned out to be a good choice, too, because it allowed each of […]

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