Weekend in Somerset

We spent the weekend at a hotel in Somerset with a bunch of friends to celebrate a birthday. The hotel is a massive affair set in several hundred acres of parkland and a number of activities were planned. First off Nordic walking, which is essentialy normal walking but with poles. Poles are helpful in helping you get up capacious hills and in striding along with longer strides than you might do ordinarily, but otherwise largely vestigial. It was a beautiful day and lovely countryside with lots of fresh clean air, so a really good start. Afterwards we went to the gym and did a quick 10k on the bikes, followed by a swim and sauna. The hotel also had a room they called a "tropicarium" which was essentially a sauna room for lightweights that none of us really saw the point of.

The hotel had two restaurants and in the one where we had a table booked that night, the menu didn't look too promising, especially the vegetarian options. In fact I probably came out of it better than the others, having chosen a brie, apple and gooseberry (?) tart, which turned out to be very nice - not least perhaps because there turned out to be only one gooseberry in said tart, which I thought was rather random. Everyone else had an assortment of overcooked meat and what looked suspiciously like Smash.

Later we sampled the entertainment, which turned out to be a rather shabby cabaret followed by a DJ, who took some convincing to play anything we wanted to dance to but which was aided by the copious consumption of vodka. We ended up on the dancefloor to the bitter end, pleading for one last tune before staggering off to bed. Not, however, before we got chatting to an older couple who appeared to have (a) swinging tendencies, (b) some very minority tastes and (c) designs on the pair of us :beats hasty retreat:.

On Saturday morning we went walking at a deer sanctuary nearby, where we got to feed them and cuddle some of the friendlier ones. The sanctuary is run by a chap who is passionate about deer and has been for years, who went from seeing some wild deer once in a forest to now running this large sanctuary for more than 100 of them on 80+ acres. And I thought our own slope of creature keeping was a slippery one! What a great (and somewhat wild haired) guy, and the facilities were excellent. It's lovely to meet people who are passionate about doing their best for animals in the way that he clearly is.

Lunch back at the hotel was followed by wine tasting, dinner, a tribute band and more vodka-fuelled dancing until 3am, this time unmolested by swingers although Sid proved a hit with the ladies - lol.

Considering that we rarely drink we managed to escape the after effects of the night before quite neatly, which was nice. I had a back massage then went swimming and spent some time in the steam room, before a very light lunch and what was billed as a chocoholics' tea party for the girls and target shooting for the boys. The tea party was a fest of chocolate based drinks and cakes served as afternoon tea, where we all ate our own bodyweight in choccie doings topped off with champagne and strawberries, until we could no longer move and felt rather green around the gills. Luckily dinner was not until much later, so we had the opportunity to crash and recover for a couple of hours before trying the other restaurant, an Italian. I had vegetarian antipasto (very good) followed by rigatoni arrabiata and absolutely no dessert, vodka or further dancing.  

It was a great weekend and I am very glad to have tomorrow off before returning to work.