The Ripley Fair

Last weekend we were driving to the supermarket when beside the road, we noticed an poster for Ripley Fair - believe it or not. Ripley is a nice village, not far from our place, and every village fair we've been to so far has been great fun. No decision necessary. We were on our way.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't on our side, but we were doing better than a lot of other people in Britain, so there was nothing for it but to brave the elements. We're glad we did cause we had a great time......

Flooding on the way into Ripley.... luckily for us, this was about as bad as we saw.

Ready for the weather.

Ominous clouds over Ripley

The girls enjoyed Roger the Ventriloquist...

He's a funny guy!

The rides were fun!

The vintage cars were worth seeing too, but check out the poor sods in the distance who had to play cricket all day.

And just like The Titanic, the band played on.

Dorksville

Here's a snippet of the quality conversations we have at Chateau Keezee:-

"Why don't we go and have a look around Dorking today?" says I,
"Haha, you should live there cause you're a dork" says they.

Yes, the town nearby of Dorking always gets a laugh when mentioned around our house.

Anyway, Dorking deserves to be blogged because it has the big Rooster roundabout on the way into town.... we call him Fitzy. It's good to know Lucy and I aren't the only Roosters fans in Britain - there's an entire town who love them as well.

Fitzy


Fitzy's bum

Its a nice town to stroll through especially if you like antique shops. Other nice places nearby include Box Hill, Leith Hill and Denbies winery - all closeby.

Well worth a visit we reckon.


The girls at Denbies Winery


Box Hill school... they've been meaning to buy the gardener a ladder for some time now.


This is the train station at F'ingham Junction, which is just near the town of F'ingham... home of F'ingham Palace.

Pubs we like

It's a well known fact that are a lot of pubs in Britain. In fact there are 49 pubs within 3 miles of our place - its true, I googled it - and this is a "semi-rural" area. It's difficult to visit many of them with young children, nevertheless, with the support of my lovely wife, we have managed to find quite a few family-friendly pubs (i.e. pubs with beer gardens) in and around Surrey.

We had a nice afternoon at The Fox, in Fox Corner, which is a nice little village not far from Woking. Its a quiet spot and the food was great. There's a cubby house (or is it a wendy house?)in the beer garden to keep the kiddies entertained as well. We love the beautiful lawn in the beer garden....




We're big fans of the Wetherspoons chain of pubs. They're not popular with proper drinkers as I understand it, but they are particularly good value and fact that kids get an activity pack with their meal is an absolute god send for us. The King & Castle in Windsor comes highly recommended by the Keezees. Its right across the road from the Queen's place, and I understand she's one of the regulars in the bottom bar. We've also visited The Sennockian in Sevenoaks and The Jack Phillips in Godalming.


The Anchor at Pyrford lock is a great spot (as regular readers will know)... pretty busy for Sunday lunch, so get in early.



The Jovial Sailor in Ripley is a Chef & Brewer chain pub, and is nice looking with a decent beer garden out the back. The Sunday Roast we had on father's day was OK - but to be honest, I expected better.

The other Chef & Brewer pub we've been to is the Rose & Crown in Kew, near Richmond. Its a nice scene on the weekend when you can watch the cricket on Kew Green from the front of the pub. Being a trendy pub in trendy Kew, it is a bit ex'y.

Speaking of watching a game from the pub, there's also The Cricketers at Richmond, which is another good spot right on Richmond Green. I'm not sure about the standard of cricket here though, as there looks to be a steady stream of players heading in out of the bar during the game.



When in the real trendy parts of London, the Keezees recommend the Prince Edward for a quiet ale and a Pimms & lemonade. Given the area, it's not pretentious at all - you could even call it "daggy", but in a good way. The amount of fruit included with the Pimms made it a bit of an artwork actually. We should get a photo next time.

Back to outer Surrey, The Castle Grove is one of the pubs in the Chobham area, and this one has a decent size play area. The pint I had was a bit iffy, but it doesn't seem a real busy place, so I should have studied what the locals were drinking before I ordered.

Now there's also plenty of pubs we've seen, but not been into. Some promising candidates include:
The Seven Stars at Newbury, near Ripley
The Claremont, right next to West Byfleet Station.
Strangely, we haven't been to any of the local West Byfleet pubs. I'm sure we will soon. Here's the list.
The White Hart in Pirbright is a lovely looking pub in an equally nice looking village. I've had a peek inside and liked what I saw and the beer garden looks just as inviting.
The New Inn in Send is another one right by the canal.

I could go on, but I'm off to Waitrose to get some takeaways....

Mad Monday

No touristy shots today as its only a back to work Monday, but there's enough mayhem around Chateau Keezee to warrant a blog update....

Nice day again, so what better way to celebrate than to break out the bubble machine..


Brilliant fun


Oh ooo, Caitlin's found her harmonica in one of the hundreds of toy boxes delivered from Australia.


The harmonica was a Christening present from the Byrnzees... she loves it, but after an hour we sort of get over it a little.


Its strange the things you miss from home... Keezee misses the bubbly blonde weather girls. But where there's a will, there's a way.

Le Tour

We woke up this morning and were shocked to see a yellow ball in the sky, emanating heat and brightening up the general scene after what seemed like weeks of rain. So instead of the planned box unpacking (our stuff from Australia arrived this week - geez there a lot of it) we decided to head into London for the day to check out Notting Hill and the Portobello Road market - and look for the blue door from the movie.

Well it was all very nice and the antique stalls were particularly interesting - I almost bought a 100 year old leather football and a WWI helmet, but remembered we probably had something similar in a box somewhere at home.

Portobello Rd Market - more exciting for some than others


Lots of nice houses nearby, but we couldn't find Hugh or his blue door.

After quite a bit of browsing, we headed back towards Hyde Park to have a look at Kensington Palace, where Princess Di lived of course. There were people everywhere, many of them in lycra, and it slowly dawned on us that the Tour de France was in London today.

We followed the crowd and it was a bit of a hike, especially with only the single pram meaning Lucy and Caiti swapped spots every 50 yards. Eventually we made to an area with lots of people, flags and fencing and we could proceed forward no further - this must be it. I jumped up above the crowd and saw something that looked like a cyclist off in the distance, so now I can say I have seen the Tour de France. But little did I know that the real Tour was about to begin as we searched for a tube station amongst the crowds and blocked off streets.


The gardens at Kensington Palace.

A better look at the aforementioned gardens.

The Tour de France.... I swear its in there somewhere.

Excited cycling fans. One eating ice cream.


We couldn't even get near the stairs at Knightbridge tube station, and access to nearby stations was blocked by the race course, so we kept walking and eventually ended up at Victoria mainline station. Lucy was very good walking most of the way without complaining (much) so she deserved my generous offer of 20p to access the ladies toilets in the station.

The train for West Byfleet leaves from Waterloo, so it took a bit of fancy timetable investigation to travel via Clapham Junction to make it home. Clapham Junction claims to be Britain's busiest train station, and is the natural habitat of train spotters. We saw two of them with their notebooks out, which was quite a treat for us. It looks like Caitlin is a train-spotter-in-waiting, as she proudly announces "nrain" every time she sees one go past.

Happy train passengers.


Happy train spotter.

More Long Boats

In the last few weeks we've been to lots of scenic and interesting places, where on arrival we've realised we've forgotten the camera. Farnham Castle, Guildford Tower and The Knole House at Sevenoaks (House is a huge understatement by the way... more like Municipal Precinct) spring to mind as particularly scenic examples of our forgetfulness.

So instead of beautiful photos of places such as this, we present for your entertainment more long boat pictures....



Here we are at the Wey Navigations (a man made canal running alongside the Wey River) near Pyrford lock - a pleasant 5 minute drive from Chateau Keezee. This seems to be quite a popular place for long boats - the lock was very busy.


The boats are parked on the edge of the waterway and extend up around the bend.....


.... and then along the next bend as well.... what could be the attraction here?


A quick look at the map might help us.



Ahh, here it is: The Anchor at Pyrford Lock. This pub is recently reopened and comes highly recommended by the Keezees - it is beautifully fitted out, has food, beer, Pimms and (very importantly for us) a playground. Not a bad view from the beer garden either.