Mud, mud, glorious mud!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
It's Monday morning, I've almost finished my mug of tea and waiting for the sun to make an appearance so that I don't feel like I'm going to work in the middle of the night. It's been quite an interesting weekend. Oh God, that's right. We tried to have a relaxing day in Guildford on Saturday. What this would involve: a 10 min. train ride, walking around the pretty cobble stoned streets and going in and out of interesting shops. Maybe buying something. Having a pub lunch, and maybe buy a good looking pastry with a coffee before heading home.

Instead, South West Trains is doing engineering works (in the complete opposite direction to Guildford I might add) and therefore suspended all but one service to Guildford an hour. So we buy a full fare ticket (what the hell are we getting for full fare anyway?) and wait. Once in Guildford, we try battling the crowds to get to the high street. We browsed in Habitat for a while, musing on all of the cool things we can buy when we actually settle down in Canada, and then decide we're hungry. But Christ, you can't get out of the store. Of course! A rally is happening in the middle of the high street and that means crowds are blocking the exits to the stores. Plus, that means you can't go where you want (i.e. further down the road), so we ducked down a side street in desperate search for a drink for my nerves.

We went to The George's King's Head which was fantastic, good beer, atmosphere and food. But by the time our cash ran out we were drained and just wanted to head home. Of course, it started raining, but that's neither here nor there.

Later that evening I left my good husband for the YMCA where a charity music event was scheduled. Some teenagers were trying to raise money for a family where the mother was terminally ill, and so six young bands were scheduled. I was in the cafe for the evening, generally chilled out, and having flashbacks as to how hard and cruel it is to be a teenager. Then one death metal band starting singing "&%@# the YMCA" and when told to tone it down he started inciting the crowd, there was some violence, and a Glaswegian volunteer came up to me and said "Call the police." Sadly, I didn't get it, and he had to shout the third time "Call the police, noow!!" So I scrambled to the front desk and then couldn't remember the number for the police. ...was it 119, 199? and do I have to dial 9 to get a line out?... but I asked someone, and now know it's 999, which is a number anyone should be embarrassed to forget. By this time the bands were cut off, and there was a mini-riot taking place with kids ripping down posters, trying to get their money back, throwing eggs... all in all it wasn't very pleasent and a lot of lessons need to be learned about properly organizing these types of events.

So the police showed up, kicked everyone out, made their incident report, and then had to escort the staff out of the building as the kids had been waiting outside to show their displeasure. A very interesting experience in all. We then went to a flat to drink, and I got home around 2pmAM.

At 11am the next morning, Stephen and I set off on a 20 mile bike ride. That's right! Stephen's bought himself a bicycle (the men's version of the one I have--they match and everything ;) and we chose the perfect day- overcast and raining.

We were pretty well soaked in the first hour, and 2 pubs, 4 hours later we were at home wrapped up in hats, scarves, fleeces and ordering in pizza.

We had a really good time though...lots of slipping through mud and splashing through puddles. We will however try and cycle in better weather in the future.

Here's the fearless map-reader on the canal:

We never got lost--congrats!

I must go and straighten my hair and apply make-up for work.

Adios.

***
Stephen here, just making some edits to clarify things as Elisabeth seems to have succumbed to the problems of typos that result in early morning blogging.

Anyway, the bike ride was lovely. We started on the Basingstoke canal where a heron very nearly flew into Elisabeth (Who had to duck to avoid it.) and then followed the River Wey south.

I hadn't quite realized that there was such a large canal culture so close to us with lots of canal boats (Called 'narrow boats' in posh Surrey) and plenty of people fishing.

We then sort of went cross-country and diverted from following the Wey's tow-path which was hard going at times as things were pretty muddy, and then had a pleasant hide through various small villages (Send, Worpleston, St. John's) before re-joining the Basingstoke canal.

The pubs we stopped at were lovely. I've been told that all the best pubs are the ones that you can't reach via a train station and that's pretty much spot on. My only complaint was the very chi-chi Jolly Frmer where we stopped for lunch. After a lovely goats cheese bruschetta for starters, we both ordered the aubergine canelloni (10 ounds a pop!) which amounted to 3 slivers of eggplant and a handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half sitting in about 3mm of creamy, melted mozarella. It was something I'd pay 2.95 for as an entree but a main course? Colour me disappointed.

So we went home and ordered Dominos pizza.

In the end we did 20 miles in 5 hours (including a 1/2 hour and hour long rest [pub] stop) in mostly pouring rain and I can't wait to do it again. My ass is also bruised beyond belief and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle sitting down today.