Today was another “must-do” tourist attraction with Stonehenge. This is about two hours from London but, thankfully, we didn’t have a hard time finding a tour to take us out there. I used to be quite interested in Stonehenge and it was interesting to see how much the thinking on the site has evolved since I was a pup. Certainly worth seeing. In the evening I went out to dinner with some fellow Remotes to Pergola on the Roof which is a neat concept. It’s the top of the old BBC garage and several restaurants from around town have set up on top and you can order from all of them.
Author: Nomad
Day 79 | August 13
We certainly covered some ground today. We began the day by taking the train up to Oxford to see what’s to be seen there. I did the tour of the Bodleian Library at Oxford and then embarked on the greatest quest of my life to reunite with Clarke. Once we had found each other we strolled around town and saw a lot of the other tourist attractions; Radcliffe Camera, The Covered Market, Exeter & Christchurch College etc. Then we trekked up to where Tolkein used to live. Interesting to see this little cottage that someone else now lives in. The only indication he lived there is the blue plaque on the front. Continuing in this vein we walked down to The Eagle & Child where “The Inklings” used to meet and stopped there for some refreshment. Then we headed up to the cemetery and saw where he was buried. Wrapped up the day with more strolling around to some of the earlier mentioned tourist sites and then took the train back to London. We had dinner in Soho at Cecconi’s and then I took Clarke over to introduce him to my favorite London hangout, Scarfes Bar.
Day 78 | August 12
Started working through some of the major London tourist attractions today and headed over to the heart of them with Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) and Westminster Abbey. We did the audio tour of Westminster Abbey which was interesting but the coolest part for me was simply walking around and see the graves/tombs of so many significant people who are buried throughout. The Lady Chapel was another strong point. The other thing that’s frequently put to me as a must do is Churchill’s War Rooms and it is right across the way so we headed over there for that tour as well. I had to get to work so I rushed at some points and I wished I had a little more time. Overall, very interesting. I had to rush up to The Hoxton to do some work so I spent the afternoon doing that. After that I met back up with Clarke and we went to Barrafina in Soho. Everyone must have had the same idea because I ran into two other people I knew there. After having all of the tapas we turned in for the night.
Day 77 | August 11
Started the day early to try and get ahead on some work before the arrival of one of my oldest friends. Headed over to the Timberyard to work for most of the day to get caught up on work and then met my buddy in Oxford Circus. We walked a good ways around London just scoping things out and popped into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and then, randomly, a place called The John Snow to get some refreshments before calling it a day.
Day 76 | August 10
A pretty uneventful day today spent catching up on work (almost successfully, I might add). Left early with the rush to get into London and packed myself like a sardine into the tube to make my way over to Department of Coffee and Social Affairs for some coffee, social affairs and work… mostly the last one. A nice spot but I couldn’t navigate the WiFi so I had to tether and I had no power! However, they had good filtered coffee which prompted me to forgive them. Around lunchtime I headed over to the Ace Hotel which is another spot that lets folks congregate in the lobby to work. I think the setup there was a little better than the Hoxton which also lets folks do this. However, the hipster levels were a little high at Ace for my likes. I spent a long time there before heading over to meet some folks for beers at the Draft House and we called it a night with some rousing political discussion.
Day 75 | August 9
Today began with horseback riding in Hyde Park. I had to book this well in advance so I was nervous about the London weather. It couldn’t have worked out better, though. Perfectly sunny and just a little bit cool. I headed over early to get some coffee and breakfast and make sure I could find the Hyde Park Stables. Things really came together on this one. I had booked a semi-private ride around the park which is you, another person and the guide from the stables but the other person who was supposed to go with us didn’t turn up. Since it was just me and the girl from the stables we got to have a little more fun with it and in stretches where the pedestrians thinned out we were able to get a bit of a trot up and play things a little more by ear.
I stopped for more coffee and then headed home to shower and change. I was hoping to find a nice outside spot to post up and work but by the time I was done the weather had turned so I just headed upstairs and worked for the remainder of the afternoon.
In the evening I went to the Holborn Dining Room for dinner and had a shrimp burger which was both novel and excellent. This is in the Rosewood Hotel and right across from the restaurant is Scarfes Bar which is just awesome. The setting is all dark wood, darker leather, candles and books everywhere and to top it all off they have great live music every night and killer (killer expensive too) cocktails. Unless something truly awesome pops up I think Scarfes is going to takeover for Vox (even though it’s a totally different vibe) as my haunt now that I’m in London.
Day 74 | August 8
A pretty uneventful day today. Early ride over to the little Islay airport and a quick hop to Glasgow before heading back down to Heathrow. Had to stop and tend to some time sensitive work at the airport so I had lunch there. Uber home and then just focused on catching up on work for the rest of the day.
Day 73 | August 7
Pro tip: I don’t care how full you are, if you’re going to drink scotch all day long don’t skip breakfast. By the end of the day yesterday I was feeling it a little. So today I made sure to hit breakfast at my hotel hard, cereal, yogurt and full English breakfast.
The first stop today is Lagavulin, my favorite whisky and basically the whole reason I came up to Islay. I did the tour and their “Sensory Tasting Experience.” The tour was pretty standard. One thing that has struck me about all of these places is how small they are. Lagavulin is four stills, two wash stills and two spirit stills. That’s the whole outfit. Oh, also worth mentioning, Islay has a really laid back attitude. At one point our guide dipped a cup into their nearly finished wash (just the barely, yeast and water before it goes to distillation) and passed it around so we could all have some. Kind of weird… just like “barley-y water.” The sensory tasting experience was interesting. In addition to drams of their various “expressions” they had deconstructed the various flavors and aromas of whiskey into little vials for comparison. The bottles on the left contain vanilla, malted barely, sherry infused oak, sea salt, peat, souchong tea and dried figs. The idea was you could compare each element to the flavors in each whiskey on the right. Kind of a neat idea. And now I have a box full of the constituent elements of scotch so… yeah, that’ll come in handy?
I wanted to hit Ardbeg but they didn’t have any activities that fit into my schedule. They are just a short walk from Lagavulin and they actually have a cafe at their distillery so I opted instead to just walk over their for lunch. The Ardbeg distillery is easily the most picturesque of the ones I visited. I had lunch there, and conducted my own informal Ardbeg tasting.
The last stop of the day and of my little tour was Kilchoman which I had never even heard of before my trip. It’s the smallest distillery on Islay and just restarted about ten years ago. It’s located on a farm and they grow their own barely right on the grounds as well. Since they are newer they don’t have the age on their whisky yet but they have been winning all kinds of awards already and I really enjoyed all the different varieties we tried. I’ve never seen this in The States but if I do, it could become the scotch I use to bring people around to liking whisky. They have a great setup with their distillery too, farmhouse feel, little cafe, nice tasting area. It was easily my favorite tour just because the place was so small.
I had to change hotels for this last night so I moved over to The Islay Hotel in Port Ellen. It was nicer than the Brigend Hotel but it lacked the charm, I thought. Both Freddie and Stewart had mentioned the Ardview Inn to me as a “crackin’ pub” in town so I thought I’d go see what a truly local pub was like not expecting anyone to be in there on a Sunday afternoon. It was quite rowdy! So I just had a quick drink and rolled out. I later saw a comment on FourSquare that referred to it as “slightly less soul crushing than the White Hart” which really made me want to find the White Hart. I had dinner back at the hotel and called it a night.
Day 72 | August 6
It was quite nice to wake up in a spacious, soft bed by the ocean this morning. To top it off my first whisky visit wasn’t until noon so I had time to drink a ton of coffee and catch up on some work in the morning. Since the entirety of my stay consists of going to distilleries I’m having to be driven around. So, Islay Taxis, and Freddie and Stewart deserve some credit for taking me around the island all weekend.
My schedule was based mostly on availability of tours and tastings so my first stop was at Bruichladdich (Brooke-LAD-ie) for their warehouse tasting experience. I’ve not been a big Bruichladdich drinker previously but I really enjoyed the visit there. I signed up for their warehouse tasting experience where I was expecting a rather run of the mill tasting much like I’d done at other distilleries and wineries. I was pleasantly surprised. They basically took us back to the warehouse, gathered us around three casks and drew drams right off the casks for everyone. They didn’t bother with any of the tasting pretense either, we just sat around and drank the whiskey and chatted. It was a nice approach. I’ll spare you the technical details on scotch except to say… I found Bruichladdich interesting because their Octomore scotch is the most peaty on the island, that is to say their malt gets the highest smoke PPM before distillation. However, this doesn’t come through in the Scotch (to me as much) because of the design of their stills.
The next stop was Laphroaig (right click > add to dictionary) which I think is maybe the one folks are most familiar with. Here I did the tour as well as the tasting. Laphroaig is one of the few (two I think?) distilleries on the island that still has it’s own operating malting floor. Most of the others get their malting done in Port Ellen. The tour and tasting was neat but the really fun thing about Laphroaig is the whole “friends of Laphroaig” thing that they do. Devotees will know that if you buy a bottle and send the certificate in they will deed you a small plot of land on the distillery property. If you turn up they’ll set you up with the GPS coords for your plot, some wellington boots to trudge through the peat to get there and a little flag from your native country. Luckily I chose to do this right as a downpour started… good times.
Two fairly aggressive tastings was about all I had in me for the day (or there weren’t time slots left anywhere… whatever) so after Laphroaig it was back to the hotel to rest, dry out and then have dinner.
Day 71 | August 5
Getting to Islay is actually rather difficult. Especially if you have to be on the ground dialed into things for work at certain times as I do. So today is spent traveling. Early morning flight out of Gatwick up to Glasgow. I have to say, the security at Gatwick is quite fancy. All automated stuff and facial recognition. Despite that it still takes forever because I get hung up because they think my fancy laser cut, steel comb (Thanks Dad) is a knife. Get through that, short flight up to Glasgow and then an eight hour layover. I spend the day in their “lounge” working before my flight to Islay where I think we spent a total of… 15 minutes actual flight time. This is despite the fact that it’s like a five hour drive. Finally land on Islay, meet my driver for the weekend and head to my hotel the Bridgend Hotel. Which is a cute, no frills B&B more than anything. This place and the petrol station down the way are the only things on this part of tehe island. So I’m grateful when the girl at the desk inform me that they had booked me a table for dinner that night unbidden… because no where else to eat. They have Lagavulin for $5 a glass so I have that and their fresh caught Islay seafood platter which was quite good and included… just about everything before heading to sleep.