[Ad- gifted experience] Earlier in the year, we were all invited to the Weald Park Country Show, which is a sort of town fair that had tons of different amusements, food stands, shops selling little goods, animals and more. We ended up only being able to go on the last day, but are sure to attend next year as well! The Weald Park Country Show really has a lot going on, so we spend the whole day there!
We love a bit of mini-golf at our household, so when summer came, we set off to a new golf course. This time, we went to Rascal Bay Adventure Golf in Brentwood. I’m not sure if Rascal Bay really knows what theme it want’s to be, and instead seems to combine pirates with dinosaurs, throwing in a lava zone and adding… cannibalism? Again, we didn’t really see how all of these connected in a small 18 golf hole place, but we were happy to be somewhere new none-the-less.
In Rascal Bay, you start off in a pirate area, going through holes that are themed around these. One of the first awesome holes we came too was a cannon that made a loud noise if you got the ball through it, spitting it out on the other side. It was a very good start to our golf time and proved to be Kai’s over-all favourite hole! Soon, we hit a hole with a photo opp in the middle – a pot cooking humans, which ended the pirate area for a bit, as we moved onto the jungle area. All of a sudden, the course was pretty focused on animals, the snake being Jupiter’s favourite hole. It looks like a really, impossibly twisty snake, but if you put your ball in you will hear a click and hear the ball being moved before shooting out the tail.
We love going to the beach! The kids love being in the water, they love the sand, and we have basically made it so we can pack up for the beach and unpack afterwards in under and hour. This includes making lunch, packing up all our towels and beach toys, and getting water shoes on! Now that restaurants are back open, we figured we’d try some out near Shoeburryness, our favourite beach of choice. Our first adventure was to the Ocean Beach cafe, bar and bistro.
Continue reading “Ocean Beach Cafe, Bar and Bistro | Restaurant Review”
[Ad- gifted experience] I got the chance to go along to the new Boom Battle Bar at Lakeside as apart of their press day. The self-titled ‘Adventure Bar’ chain is an interesting twist on pubs, as if bars had gone down a different path than ‘more taps’ and instead focused on the pub games. Cribbage and horseshoes are out though, and while darts remain it does so with a twist and is joined by axe throwing, nail hammering and fun-fair style physical games.
Where I’m from we have a lot of pubs, there’s probably a pub for every 3k people in the town, and it’s a big town. We also have clubs, chain bars, and you can drink at the restaurants too. When you walk into most of the pubs though, be that your King’s Head, Red Lion or White Hart, they’re all pretty similar. Lots of tables and low seating, a row of stools at the bar, a tv in each room. A lot of these places feel tired (and tend to be filled with the retired) and certainly don’t feel welcoming – it feels like it’s uncommon for places to gain ‘regulars’ based on proximity, more so on association. Boom Battle Bar in Lakeside feels like a response to that, an attempt to try and make an actual destination that does a lot of things that pubs used to do decades ago; to be a place to entertain, meet up, play a few games and relax.
[Ad- gifted experience] Ever since seeing Circus Fantasia, Robin and I have been keeping our eyes peeled for more circuses to visit. There is just something about all of these different performances, ones that you can not take your eyes off of, in quick succession. It feels magical. Dann always describes it like boss fights in JRPGs – intense, with loud music, drawing in all of your attention and captivating you. Over quickly, when you just want to see more. When we were invited to Paulos Circus, we were all very excited to get along! This circus had acts we had never seen before, which is already pretty exciting! Though Circus Paulos is running at a smaller capacity, due to COVID, it is still packed with amazing performances and a lot of fun.
