Besides the seaside

Off to Weston I went last Saturday with my aunt, uncle and the Bratii; as someone who needs caffeine and a leisured breakfast this meant waking up at 6am to leave at around 7am. As it turns out it only took me half-an-hour to get to the their place, but I know they'd been resurfacing the roads so better safe then sorry. I wait and around 8am we all get ready to leave when Bratus Pater gets a call

"Oh, um oh right, we're off now" he says.
"Calling to find out where we are" I joke
"Yes" he replies "the coach was supposed to leave at eight"

Turned out the booker had made a mistake and booked it for 8 and when communicating this fact my uncle treated it as a joke. One speedy trip later and we get to the coach I'm sat with Bratus Major, Bratus Minor getting his own seat due to possible car/coach sickness (he was fine there and back).

Throughout the drive I sympathised strongly with William Shatner, Lucy Lawless etc. when faced with rabid fans - "You know on Lego Star Wars Episode [X] Chapter [Y]..." Wish I'd never sold him the damn things now :-) Did try to introduce the Theory of Relativity to him by asking how fast the cars were going as we passed them he was bemused when I told him that technically they were travelling in reverse.

Crossed over the Severn Bridge and pointed out to both Bratii that this was the same river that passes through Stourport - eliciting a wow from Minor. Asked them if they knew why it was called the Severn "Because there are seven rivers that flow into it?" asked Major, which was an impressive if incorrect answer.

Traffic was really quiet and we hit Weston after about 2 hours, and as is normal for this seaside resort the sea itself was non-existent with the tide coming in around 4pm - an hour before we were leaving; lovely.

The Bratii tried to build some sandcastles with Minor outperforming his brother until I took pity on him and showed him that his brother using small shovel loads out of necessity to fill the bucket was better then being able to shovel in a ton of sand at a time. We three adults kicked a football around getting dangerously close to their castles prompting them to create defences.

"No don't kick it now it's not ready!" exclaimed Major
"What you think real invaders would wait? 'Hey guys let's wait until they get their defences in place before we attack'?" I replied before scaring him by tapping the ball over the top of the castles.

Both I and Bratus Pater took photos of Minor with his castles including a bridge with enough of a gap underneath to wriggle a finger through. Major refused to have his taken with his castle so I caused him to storm off in a sulk by getting his brother to pose with it instead. The two of us then had a good chase with me trying to take his picture and him avoiding it, heck I can sympathise but it was good fun.

Getting hungry we wandered up to the Winter Gardens where I knew they were having a Farmers' Market and picked up on signs telling us of a Book Fair "Book Fair", "Book Fair at the Winter Gardens" etc. Got to the entrance "Book Fair Admission £1"... sod that and we carried on to the Market. Mmm some nice cheese and a piccalilli made with curry powder. [Sigh] and yes me being a right saddo I popped into the nearby Waterstones and picked up the Blood Angels omnibus too.

Heading around to the front we ate at the Winter Garden Cafe, to be honest we should have left after two minutes and may have been better for it except for the Bratii "I'm hungry" whine. Only one member of staff there as we approached and she was trying to give directions to an elderly lady, she was passed off to another member of staff who'd just come back inside, and the gentleman before us was dealt with.

"I'll have the largest pot of tea you've got" he stated and she bustled to sort him out.
"How many cups do you want?"
"Just the one"
"I'll give you a bigger cup then".

At this point the other staff member came in and started a conversation with the guy about something written on his tee-shirt before heading behind the counter to finish the transaction while the other one rung it up. Finally Bratus Pater ordered and I followed and we went outside to wait. Not the best spot though we had some shade, but it's next to the pavement and the main roadway so busy.

Food arrived in spurts Bratus Mater and Minor had a jacket potato with salad and coleslaw, Major had a child's portion of fish and chips, I had a triple decker club sandwich (cheese, tomato relish, and bacon) with chunky chips, salad, and coleslaw while Bratus Pater had the same sans the bacon. We weren't asked if we wanted any condiments and Major was dispatched to locate some. Bloody vinegar bottle had a standard shaped screw remove lid which was in fact a flip-top, but I managed not to drown everything.

So here's the problem - We all had big plates except Major's kid's portion, but he had a pile of the big chips and a fish the size of the plate and this topological challenge was solved by putting the fish on top of the chips; except of course you now can't get to the chips and the fish is a bugger to cut up. It's also well worth noting that of the four of us who had salad and coleslaw four of us left the majority of it behind. The coleslaw was bland with a horrible aftertaste, the salad was beetroot heavy (though I got less fortunately) and earthy and the greenery was stems and frills with no leaves at all - no tomato, no cucumber, no lettuce. Being English of course we didn't complain just left it all and vowed not to return.

Desirous of seeing some water at least we headed up to the harbour and the rocks, passed by the 50% closed beach as they were in the middle of adding sea defences with me joking that I didn't even know the sea was at war with Weston and fielded off yet more Lego Star Wars questions.

"You know on Episode..." Major started.
"Oh gods! Can't you do something about him?" I asked his father
"But he can't talk about it at home 'cos we don't know what he's on about"
"Well on Episode 5 how many hearts does Darth Vader have?" continued Major oblivious to this
"I don't know I haven't memorised it I just kill him"

Just to tease I mentioned that the final Episode 3 boss battle with Anakin (which he's just getting to) is the hardest of the lot. You both start with the same amount of health and both armed with light sabers. The armament means you can block his attacks and he can block yours, however blocking attacks forces you backwards and you're standing on a platform of lava.

Ah-hah I'll keep attacking and force him off and he'll lose one health point. Great tactic, but it takes too long and oh look the platforms you're standing on are collapsing and if you fall into the lava it's a restart at full health for the pair of you. Use an unblockable attack and you'll lose twice as much health as he counters because you can't block either. Try to jump over him as he's in the middle of a combo and you can try to hit him, but time it wrong and he'll just turn and block. To be blunt this is the most controller throwing frustration in the whole game except...

...there's an AI bug which will allow you to defeat the boss in about 15 seconds and best of all having a look at GameFAQs nobody else has found it yet (or are keeping quiet about it) and hehehe I'm not going to tell Major because he used cheat codes to unlock the characters. Serves him right he didn't even try to earn enough to buy them just went straight to the 'net for the codes.

Anyway reaching the harbour and yet more bloody construction work obscuring how you got down to the beach so we walked around the upper edge. You can't even swim across the whole harbour area now as they've strung it up with warning signs about the soft mud so all you can do is paddle.

Popped into the RNLI shop where one of the guys tried to interest the Bratii in how it's run, yeah I could have told him that was a lost cause. I bought Major a monocular despite the fact that apparently last time he'd be bought one elsewhere it hadn't even managed to make it back on the coach; Minor got some pirate figures.

Much clambering over the rocks and amazement from me that they haven't cordoned off half of it due to the dreaded Health and Safety. Onwards for an ice-cream and a mental note that they also sold jacket potatoes etc. in a much nicer locale then the Winter Gardens. I decided for a large Honeycomb ice-cream. Now Bratus Pater had a single Strawberry which was a single cone with two scoops for £1.50, my large one was a double cone with about six scoops for £2 and very nice it was too.

Bratus Minor wanted to head out of sight and play on the rocks and went for a sulk when refused permission.

"Joined his brother for a sulk" said his father (no I've no idea why the other one was sulking could be anything)
"Yeah, but [Major's] got the extra years of experience" I replied

We split up heading across the bridge as the tide started to come in with Pater and Minor heading to the harbour beach to build a sandcastle with water filled moat and the rest of us heading for the Crazy Golf. [Sigh] at this point I recall why I don't do this, if the ball isn't sunk after two or three go's Major gets frustrated and takes it out on the ball/the ground/the obstacles. Once he's had his turn he just sits and works out the next hole or stares vacantly into space while whacking the club into the ground or getting in the way of us or other players. Anyway I lost by one shot to Bratus Mater, he lost by 30ish to me; they both missed the free game course, but I rang the bell and got a token valid for anytime this year - woohoo!

Heading out was good timing as the other two were heading our way. Minor "I wanta go to the SeaLine centre" so another split as the three went off and I took Major onto the Grand Pier. We all forsook the land train at £1.40 a ride each and we ended up at the pier by the time it got there anyway.

Feeling lazy the pair of us took the pier train at 40p each got to the end and sat down for a drink. Trying to find the fudge making place we headed through the arcade out the back and then back in where we spotted it on a mezzanine floor above the entrance we first came through - neat signage all displaying 'this way to the teddy-bear thing oh and maybe the fudge thing too if you want'.

Bought some nice fudge as a souvenir for me and me parents and then discovered that Major had never seen the coin fountain games. You know the ones - you drop a 1p/2p/5p/10p into a slot it falls down the wall onto a moving platform where it might knock off some of the coins perched on the edge onto the platform below, which may in turn cause some coins to be pushed off into the winning slot - highly addictive if you're not careful. Otherwise I wasn't impressed oo Time Crisis 3 yep we're up to 4 now they were rather old and the big back protection screens weren't well light shielded and thus difficult to see.

We walked back down the pier, still trying to get Major to pay attention to what's going around him, and then onto the beach to greet the sea before returning to the pick-up point to wait for the others. With the tide coming in it was bringing in the wind,which in turn caught the sand and meant you couldn't sit and face the beach without getting a face-full of sand. The others soon turned up, Minor clutching some green snake toy thing and sweets, which of course caused Major to demand some too and so back they went to get some [sigh].

Back on the coach, though this time I get Minor as Major wanted to listen to Harry Potter on the MP3 player by himself. Headed back the long way avoiding the stupid toll on the Severn Bridge - yes it really does only operate in one direction and was introduced to keep the Welsh out of England and to deter those foolhardy enough to want to venture into Wales... no not really, but it's still stupid.

Major got into a tantrum because the MP3 player kept skipping chapters all by itself a problem solved by locking the control buttons so they couldn't be pressed ;-)

Took just over two hours to get back and I got back to Stourport around 8pm. The fudge was nice, the cheese had melted (fully sealed so into the fridge to solve that) and the back of hands were (and still are) a bit sore and burned and I was knackered and had a really early night - ah good fun :-)