Beer festival #1 - Pauntley

Mr Loops and I are great fan of Real Ales and Ciders, and are members of CAMRA so we like to go to a few Beer Festivals each year.  This year Burton will be our honoured guest to several of them, and Pauntley is our first this year!

Excited to start the journey (even though it isn't very far away )

Enjoying the Cotswolds scenery!

We decided to camp overnight at this Beer Festival so this is Burton's first camping trip with us too!  Here he is relaxing in the bedroom part of our tent, preparing for the beers.

Looking down the field at the Village Hall the festival is held at.  Empty at the moment, but by the time it started it was packed full of tents and vans.  Thankfully the weather also perked up later too!

Burton amongst the ales, lagers and ciders!  We were one of the first in there so we had our pick of the booze

Burton was kind enough to buy our first drinks for us

Being so small though he tried each of our drinks rather than having his own glass!

Perusing the list to decide what to quaff next!

Burton and me enjoying our tipples.

Burton and Mr Loops scoring the beers that they've tried.

Starting to look a little squiffy!

And onto Sunday morning, after packing up the tent we headed to our of our local pub/restaurants, The Aviator (at the local airport in Staverton), for a nice big English breakfast.  Burton was feeling pretty worse for wear but after a little coffee and some of my breakfast he fully recovered thankfully!

Sight-seeing in Cheltenham

My friend Spammy and I took Burton shopping and sight-seeing in Cheltenham since we figured that most of his adventures so far have revolved around food and drink!!

Here he is looking rather bemused sat between the Hare and the Minotaur statue on the Promenade which was installed in 1997 and is by the artist Sophie Ryder.

 

Apparently there was some controversy when it was initially added to the Prom because people didn't think it fit with the Regency buildings surrounding it but luckily it stayed and it's quite a tourist attraction now.  Also, some of the materials used in it were I'm told sourced from Mr Loops' parent's local scrap metal yard!

Here Burton is enjoying the spectacle of the Wishing Fish clock.  It moves throughout the hour, with little white eggs coming from the duck and travelling around the clock, but each quarter hour (I believe) it plays the song "I'm forever blowing bubbles" and blows bubbles out of the fishies mouth!

Next time I take Burton to Cheltenham I'll try to get a video of the clock in action, unfortunately we had just missed it on this visit!

After a tiring morning of shopping we went for Sunday lunch at The Swan, and here Burton was using my shawl as a kind of hammock high chair so that he could reach the table!

Adapting to life in Gloucestershire

Well it seems that Burton is definitely integrating well, I came home from the gym a couple of weeks ago to find Burton being introduced to all the doggies in the house for their monthly puppy party!

Clockwise from Burton - Rocky, Odie (on the pillow), Bernard, Ephrem, Slushie, Diefenbaker

 

Since then Burton has definitely made friends with my bunch of miscreants, in fact last week I came upstairs one day to find them building a fort, which eventually turned into a war situation, argh!  Mr Loops and I had to break it up in the end, but I think it was all in fun!

Afternoon tea with the laydeees of Cheltenham!

My old Uni friends (Poo Shoes, Sharon, Lemmy and Spammy - tho technically we didn't meet Spammy until after Uni but she did go to the same one at the same time as us!) and I always get together to celebrate our birthdays.  This year Sharon decided that for her birthday she wanted us all to go for Afternoon Tea to a posho hotel in Cheltenham, and Burton was cordially invited also!

Here is Burton with the birthday girl, Sharon.

Burton was eager to try all the goodies on offer, but thankfully he didn't notice my friend Poo Shoes in the background being silly!

He absolutely loved it and kept going on about how British he felt having afternoon tea

A perfectly Burton sized Victoria Sponge!

And then in the evening he came with us to Spammy's house for a BBQ, we get sun so rarely that we have to take advantage of it when we can!

He insisted on helping with the BBQ but I did have to help him a little 

Baking with Burton!

Mr Loops requested some chocolate cake earlier in the week and Burton kindly offered to help me   He found the mixer pretty heavy to use so I had to give him a hand, but he was very proud of the result, and enjoying noshing on it when it had cooled down!

Sushi!

Traditionally in England we have a Roast dinner on Sundays, roasts are one of my faaaavourite meals!  However Mr Loops isn't such a big fan of roasts and this Sunday he suggested we go to Yo! Sushi as we'd been wanting to go for a while but they were always full :-(

Burton was a little nervous about the idea of sushi, but he agreed to give it a try!

We started him off on some easier foods, Prawn Yakisoba and Popcorn Shrimp Tempura, nom nom.

Next Beef Tataki

And then finally he took the plunge with Salmon Dragon Roll, and he thankfully loved it!  He's not too bad with the chopsticks now either ;-)

Saturday shopping trip!

So we had planned to go camping this weekend but the weather forecast was yucky so we had to cancel :-(  Buuuuut my friend Spammy and I took Burton for some craft shopping in Hobbycraft instead, he also got an impromptu driving lesson on British roads as I'm helping Spammy learn to drive, she's taking her test in just over a week!

Here Burton is trying to help Spammy pick out some fabric to make a sleeping bag for her stuffie tiger, Lennurd!

 

Burton the mischief maker, we turned our backs on him for a few minutes and found him being creative with the papier mache letters!

When I dropped Spammy home, Burton had a little while to get acquainted with her stuffies Arnold the cat, Lennurd the tiger, and my stuffie Mr H (Hugsie), before we headed home.