I like to spend time around light aircraft. So the Flight Deck Cafe at Turweston Aerodrome is a great way to spend time, having a meal, or just a cup of coffee and cake.
With its big windows you can enjoy your food and watch the aircraft taking off and landing. On warm summer day sit on the balcony and just enjoy the place. The aerodrome is well situated to service the local towns. It can be quite busy, especially at weekends.
The Food
The menu offers a good selection of light bites and brunch plates. We have, over time, tasted a good portion of their meals and never had any complaints. Try an all-day breakfast – that’s great. Burgers, well stacked, are also good. It’s always worth having a look at the specials board.
The Flight Deck always has a selection of tasty looking cakes. Don’t want a meal? Just enjoy a coffee and cake. And, of course, the aeroplanes.
Some of the items on the menu are gluten-free and / or vegetarian. We have always found the staff very helpful with special dietary requirements
Check out the website for the cafe. Or their Facebook Site. Have a look at a couple of our favourites below.
That’s a vegetarian brunch, made by request. Tomatoes, mushrooms, avocado and rosti
A Flight Deck Cafe Hamburger. With bacon and very tasty.
The View
While enjoying your meal, also enjoy the view of aircraft landing, taking off and doing circuits. When the weather is good Turweston airfield can be quite busy.
Aircraft on the apron at turweston. The Cessna Citation jet is one I have rarely seen on my occasional visits.
Watching the aircraft movements from the Flight Deck Cafe. This appears to be a student doing “touch and go”
Seen from the Flight Deck Cafe – taxiing in.
Turweston Aerodrome visit to the Flightdeck Cafe. Photos from the balcony at the cafe.
Turweston Flight Centre with Flight Deck Cafe on the first floor and the runway on the far side.
The photo of the flight centre was taken on a winter breakfast visit to the cafe. Be sure that we’ll be back come spring and summer.
Why not drop in sometime yourself.
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The Flight Deck Cafe – please pin this to your boards.
After a busy and interesting morning walking around the market, it’s time for lunch. Camden Market offers plenty of choice, whether you want to sit in a pub, or retaurant, or, like us, explore the street food. We checked out a few places, but wanted something different. Then we spotted the Yorkshire Burrito stand.
On various visits to the market we have enjoyed many dishes from simple fish and chips to exotic Chinese and Vietnamese dishes. This was something unusual.
Okay, in England we know that they do things differently “up north” :). But what is a Yorkshire Burrito?
Put simply, it’s a good old Sunday roast, in your hand.
Take a large Yorkshire pudding. Add some stuffing and a few spinach leaves. Take your choice of beef, chicken or cauliflower cheese, add it to the Yorkshire pudding along with a splash of gravy and, most importantly, some crispy roast potatoes. Carefully roll it up and seal it in a panini toaster (or something like).
What a different way to do the traditional roast! And very tasty too.
We tend to think of “street food” in terms of exotic foreign dishes, so it’s great to see something very English as a street dish.
Actually, talking to the guys running the stall, it was only their second day. They had sold out early on the first day, and were heading that way very quickly when we visited. Good luck to them – it’s a great idea!
Have a look at their site: A special English hand meal – A Yorkshire Burrito.
Yorkshire Burritos waiting to be finished.
The Menu – Yorkshire Burrito fillings.
Finishing the Yorkshire Burrito – rolling it up. Then it is sealed in a sandwich toaster.
Have you tried a Yorkshire Burrito?
What sort of interesting but unexpected street foods have you discovered in your travels?
A trip to London with overseas visitors is never complete without a visit to Camden Market. We dropped in right at the start of the year, on the 2nd January, to be precise. While I would rather visit the market in the spring and summer days (as we did in May 2018), the winter cold didn’t seem deter the crowds.
Put simply it’s a huge market located next to Camden lock. And it is big. I really can’t think of much you can’t get there. Now I hate shopping (like most guys I know), but I can happily spend a day exploring the labyrinthine passages of the market. And I rarely leave without a bargain. There’s a great selection of street food, from all over the world when you are hungry, so it is worth making your visit a day trip. On this occasion we arrived around mid-day and left well after 5:00. There was still time to see the Christmas lights and Winter Wonderland (it has to be done!!) in London.
The picture above is a street view, pretty much as you arrive in Camden Town. The market is located next to Camden Lock – hard to miss (below).
Have you been to Camden Market? Drop a comment below and let me know your experience.
Business trips are not always the best for catching good photos, though I have had a few good shots on work trips away. Here I had a hotel room with a balcony facing the right way. Though wintry and cool it was not cold enough to stop me catching this sunrise in Leeds.
At the end of October the timing of the sunrise is also great – no effort needed, simply get out of bed and take photos.
The sunrise light is looking great on the autumn colours in some of the vegetation.
Sunrise in Leeds Photo Notes
The power of the phone camera! And a bit of Snapseed. These were all taken using night mode on a Huawei Mate 10 Pro. A little of cropping a tweaking in Snapseed brought them to life.
While the raw images from my TZ100 Or DSLR may arguably produce technically better images, which will make better prints, the Mate 10 delivers great shots, very quickly ready to use online.
When taking a sunrise or sunset shot in cludy weather always looik to the other side of the sky.
The colours in the clouds were subtle.
Location: Mercure Leeds Parkway Hotel
The Mercure Leeds Parkway Hotel is my normal choice of accommodation when up in Leeds. It is a very convenient hotel for local businesses, as well as a few local attrractions, and is only two miles from the Leeds Bradford International Airport.
With most of the modern conveniences one would expect from a modern hotel, the Brasserie has always delivered a good meal when I have been there. Certainly the best of the local hotels which I have tried.
Starting with a family wedding in May, the spring and summer have been filled with activities. Now i’m trying to catch up. Here’s part 1.
From home we can be anywhere in London in under 2 hours. It’s a trip we do occasionally just for fun, or sometimes on business. We recently had a visitor stay with us on a first visit to the UK. That was a good excuse to head south and be London tourists. Here’s part one of our visit, where we started with a plan, lost the plan and just enjoyed ourselves. No deliberate visits to iconic landmarks. Just doing a day trip to London.
Like many in the UK, we take this train ride for granted. It’s easy to forget that many countries simply don’t have this luxury. So the trip to London becomes a bit more of an adventure.
Love it or hate it, if you don’t do it often, the London Underground becomes another part of the adventure. Of course, depending on where you are going, the iconic London bus offers a slower but more scenic way to travel. In a hurry? Catch an Uber or a black cab.
Sometimes it can be enjoyable to simply walk. Some of London’s Underground stations and bus stops are quite close together, and a sightseeing walk can be fun. Finding your way around London can be tricky, but I strongly recommend the Citymapper app on a smartphone. Citymapper does give problems at times as a walking guide. Google Maps is a better tool for walking in London.
Marble Arch
We did have a plan. Somehow we lost the plan and we ended up at Marble Arch. Who knows why, but it was a good start.
Marble Arch was originally built at Buckingham Palace, but was relocated to its current location when Buckingham Palace was extended during Queen Victoria’s reign.
From there it’s a short walk to Hyde Park, empty on this Friday, but a good spot to enjoy a cup of coffee, sitting on the grass on a warm spring day.
Hyde Park
Spend time in London and you will see, wherever you go, some part of the history of the city. Hyde Park is no exception. Created by Henry VIII in the 16th century as a hunting park. It was opened to the public in the following century, and remains a public park today. It has frequently been the site of protests and public events.
In modern London, in summer, Hyde Park is known for free, weekday rock concerts. These are generally paid events at the weekends which have to be booked well in advance, such as the Eric Clapton and Friends event which we attended in July.
Many first-time visitors (including me in my first visit) are often very surprised at the green space, like Hyde Park, in London. Visitors from some countries do perceive London as a polluted concrete jungle. Indeed, I know those have never visited the UK, who believe that is a good descrption of the whole country!
Animals in War Monument
On Park Lane at Hyde Park we discovered a monument which I did not know about. The Animals in War Memorial commemorates the animals which have served the armed forces over the centuries.
The modern military is highly mechanised, powered by the internal combustion engine. It’s easy to forget the many animals, including donkeys and horses and others, which took armies to war.
Although a relatively recent site, having been created in the 19th century, Parliament Square sits in the middle of a number of buildings of historic and current importance. There are a few (see the link above) but the most noticeable for the visitor are The Palace of Westminster, or the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. It is a “must” for the foreign visitor.
The queue to get into Westminster Abbey was long, probably partly because we visited on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, so we didn’t try to get in. It’s a good idea to book ahead and get there early if you want to visit the Abbey.
Many of the photos in my London at Night Gallery were taken a few years ago at Parliament square and nearby, around Westminster Bridge. In a way it brings some iconic London features together – many red double decker buses passing by, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
One downside on this trip was the fact that Big Ben is undergoing repairs and is shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheeting, as it will be for a few years.
A look across Parliament square. Sadly Big Ben is covered up
Food Market
A walk across Westminster Bridge and along the River Thames took us to the Southbank centre with its many pubs and restaurants. Our aim was the Southbank Centre Food Market, which we know from previous visits.
The Southbank Centre Food Market features food from all over the world. Take your pick of many different food. Sample a bit of each and have a great meal. We bought a selection of British pies, curries and eastern food, all washed down with fruit juice and craft beer.
On a number of occasions a group of us has bought our selection of food and taken it to nearby Jubilee gardens, under the London Eye, to share and enjoy the meal.
South Bank Food Market – Pimms right next to Korean BBQ
Visiting London
This little visit, up to this point took us to early afternoon. We covered a lot of ground, but London still has much to show off. Our plan collapsed, but we have been there often enough to still take our visitor to some interesting spots.
Watch this space – plenty more of our London jaunt to come.
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Hook Norton Brewery. I did a tour of the brewery with an overseas based friend. A great day out and very interesting. The brewery is an interesting mix of old and new.
So for us it’s a quick drive to the station and a little short of an hour on a 
Marble Arch
In modern London, in summer, Hyde Park is known for free, weekday rock concerts. These are generally paid events at the weekends which have to be booked well in advance, such as the 
Although a relatively recent site, having been created in the 19th century, Parliament Square sits in the middle of a number of buildings of historic and current importance. There are a few (see the link above) but the most noticeable for the visitor are 
A look across Parliament square. Sadly Big Ben is covered up
A walk across Westminster Bridge and along the River Thames took us to the Southbank centre with its many pubs and restaurants. Our aim was the Southbank Centre Food Market, which we know from previous visits.
South Bank Food Market – Pimms right next to Korean BBQ
