26/04/2013 - Epic Road Trip!

This morning brought a cup of tea (or 5) in bed whilst psyching ourselves up to make our loooooong journey down to Winchester, which is near Southampton. For those of you not familiar with UK geography, Southampton is on the south coast of the UK.

Map taken from Google Image Search

See, that's quite a long way. Ok, this map is a little bit misleading, as England is a small country, but you can see the distance between the two locations is a lot of the country.

There was an extra bonus to our long trip - we had to go via Chester! Paul called the jeweller who stole had my engagement ring to make our wedding rings. Well, the rings were back and ready to go! It was a relief to me as it meant I didn't have the responsibility of looking after Paul's Mum's diamond ring that she leant me yesterday. I felt a lot safer, knowing I only had my own to take care of, which I'm pretty good at already. I hope I haven't jinxed that!

Here we are by Chester Race Course. Just to prove we went to Chester!

MY PRECIOUS IS BACK!!!

Yes, I am incredibly happy to have it back, and it's all extra shiny as they've cleaned it up a treat, so double yay!

It was a long 4-hour drive from Chester down to Winchester. After checking into our 'luxury' (dump) hotel, we took a drive into Winchester to have a look around.

This is Winchester Cathedral. Impressive, no? It was very pretty to look at. It's also a gorgeous day!

We stopped at a nearby pub that my colleague A recommended to us: the Wykeham Arms. 

Here's Paul, enjoying some classic literature on my kindle, whilst enjoying a pint, sat at an old-style school desk in the pub. Great, huh?

The pub has a really friendly atmosphere and we'd go again I think. Apparently the food is really good as well, so we'll have to check that out at some point!

Due to time and financial contraints we ate at the ridiculous Little Chef next to our hotel, which only had about a third of the items on the menu which were all madly expensive and very disappointing. We knew it would be. No gourmet cuisine for us tonight. Sadly.

Then we headed back to our quality room to settle in for a night in front of the tv and to crack open this bad boy.

 Yep - a wine box. Because we knew the only way we'd get through the evening was with wine. A lot of wine!

We didn't get too drunk though, honest! We watched Shaun of the Dead and had a relatively early night!

Before I leave this post, I'll give you a sneaky peek as to the little treasures we picked up along with my engagement ring.

On the left is my wedding ring with my engagement ring. On the right is Paul's ring. Mine is perfect. Paul's is too big! It turns out between getting his finger measured 5 weeks ago and today, he's lost weight in his fingers! Which sounds funny but it's true!

We will take it back in August to get it resized just before the wedding in case Paul loses any more weight.

Aren't they pretty?!