head over the water, on the Transporter

A couple more recent photo galleries for you:

• The annual Swanage trip - a month or so later than usual this year, so we were even luckier than usual with the weather. The standard Saturday pub crawl had to omit the Purbeck, usually a focal point of Jägermeister consumption and pool competition, as it's still closed following a drugs bust earlier this year. We managed to work around it, though, by taking along a hip-flask full of Jag and having a ceremonial swig on the pavement outside. Incidentally the evil-looking cocktails pictured alogside the breakfast things are Green Bastards, which are made by mixing a shot of blue Bols with a pint of cider. Yum. The reason there's a picture of an Appletise ice bucket in there is that we were having a discussion about when it switched to being called Appletiser. Their website is a bit vague, but the answer appears to be 2001. The strange picture of the guy with the sword is taken at Kirkwood Park golf course, and portrays the proprietor in the guise of some sort of mystical democracy warrior; this is by way of publicity for his website. Have a look at some of the embedded YouTube videos if you like; if you're trying to gauge the nuttiness quotient you'll find the first mention of the Illuminati tucked away here.
• We had a visit from Doug and Anna yesterday and to entertain ourselves we went to a couple of pubs up in Caerleon, most notably the Red Lion, which has nice London Pride, good grub and a nice big garden out the back with a gravelly pétanque area and a pub rabbit hopping around. The original plan had been to visit the nearby Roman remains, but we got a bit carried away drinking and playing pétanque and had to skip it. Instead we headed down to have a ride on the newly renovated Transporter Bridge, and very exciting too. It moves a bit quicker than you might expect, so the crossing only takes a couple of minutes, and it's free to pedestrians, so you can just ride to and fro all day if you like. The sign pictured shows the distances to the handful of other transporter bridges in the world. Anyway, we went across and back and then went to the pub again. We had intended to go to the Waterloo, which we've been to before to eat (and very nice too), but it was shut, so we went round the corner to the West of England instead, which despite the welcoming tone of their website I couldn't honestly say I'd recommend. Anyway, I took a few pictures from the bridge, which can be found here.