North East - Day 1

Off up to visit friends L & P in the wilds of Tyne and Wear.  As a student I had lots of mates from this neck of the woods, but after 40-odd years I was concerned I might find it difficult to follow the local dialect, so I engaged in some revision, courtesy of Michael and Buggerall Money.

After a fairly uneventful trip and brunch at Wetherby Services we arrived at our destination and base for the next four days - the Premier Inn Whitley Bay.  After making the booking on-line I had phoned and requested a sea-facing room, which we were pleased to find we had:

Some time was spent recovering from the journey and then we ventured out to orientate ourselves.  

For our evening meal we selected the highly-rated (by TripAdvisor) Shampan.  On  (presumably otherwise fairly quiet) Thursday and Sunday nights they offer a fixed-price banquet, but we chose to go off-piste and Amanda's Tandoori Chicken and my Bengal Tikka Murgh hit the spot (though my search continues for an Indian restaurant that serves, by default, sufficient rice for the amount of curry in a typical main dish).

Well satisfied (that is to say, 'stuffed') we rolled out and headed back to our hotel, where L picked us up and whisked us up the road to The Kittiwake, where P (on the left in the T shirt) was one of the two question-masters for the regular Thursday-evening pub quiz (our first):

How did we do? Well - we didn't come last, or even second from last, which was probably as much as we could hope for, given that we had named ourselves "The Rank Outsiders"...  At least I was spared total ignominy by knowing which element has the atomic number 3 - but then, as the 2IC commented "you wrote half a thesis on it, so you should know the answer!"

An enjoyable evening with a good mix of locals, and then back to L&P's for more drinks, nibbles and much catching up.