Leicester Visit

Elvis and I popped up to Leicester at the weekend to visit our chums from university who still live there (and another who travelled all the way up from Cardiff for our meet and greet). It was a jolly long coach journey!!! We started our travels at 8.50am and ended up in Leicester at 3.50pm... 7 hours!!! Luckily I had taken some crochet and of course I had Elvis to entertain me.

Most of the weekend was taken up with chatter and food. Having arrived on Friday afternoon, we spent the rest of the evening talking and catching up and eventually went out for tea at Nandos. Then on Saturday we had a leisurely morning in the garden enjoying the sunshine, finally dragging ourselves out for a pub lunch at The Badger's Set. I had a chicken and leek pie with spring onion mashed potato, followed by the most amazing chocolate brownie and Irish whiskey ice cream.

Afterwards we needed to walk off all of the calories and made our way to Swithland Wood, which is part of the Bradgate estate (do you remember I visited Bradgate Deer Park when I went to Leicester last year?). It was a bit gloomy and drizzly but we wandered on regardless, having to turn back several times as the pathway turned to bog- we weren't overly prepared in the footwear department for mud sliding.

The trees were all still very bare, but the woodland floor was occasionally brightened by a carpet of Celandines, Bluebells or Wood Anemones.

Back at our hostess's house, we had a clean up and a play with the resident furries. There are two cats, Bee and Electra, and a house bunny, Daphne. Electra was a bit camera shy this time around, but you can see photos of her furry little face from my last visit, here).

Bee was quite happy taking selfies of herself in the sunshine.

On the last day we again spent the morning pootling round and packing up what little things we had brought with us, then ventured out for a last lunch, followed by gelato from the Gelato Village. I chose two flavours; coffee, and Richard III! It was absolutely delicious, apparently the Richard III is made of rose water and mixed berries. Yum yum!
Finally it was time to wave goodbye and hop back onto the coach for the journey home.

I was working on my latest crochet project (started specifically with the lengthy coach journey in mind- more on that soon) so it was rather pleasant really.

We have to go to London and then change coaches, and we paused outside 221B Baker's Street and The Sherlock Holmes Museum which was good fun. There were lots of photos being taken of the tourists posing outside the door and pretending to knock.

Elvis and I got home about 9.15pm which wasn't too bad. Maybe I can convince my university friends to visit me next time, I wonder where I would take them?