With May in the UK comes two bank holiday weekends (in kiwi terms: Monday’s a day off!) the first one (5 May) we spent moving into our new flat – seems like a lifetime ago! So this second one we really wanted to make sure we got something planned...yet we still typically left it ‘til the last minute! We wanted to go to Wales for the weekend but after looking into transport etc we decided it would be too expensive.
Luckily Sheree contacted us on Thursday to see if we wanted to go to the cheese rolling in Gloucester and she also mentioned that the rugby sevens finals were on at Twickenham on Sunday...Yay 4 Sheree!
And there you have it - a full bank holiday weekend!
Tickets for the sevens online were either £25 or £15 and the boys were keen for good seats so were prepared to pay top dollar, or should I say - pound. Then we found out about £7 tickets on sale at the local Aussie/Kiwi pub – so I told the boys they could suck it up cos that’s one great bargain!!
So Sunday morning we headed off arms laden with bags of munchies (incl kiwi onion dip!) and alcohol decanted into plastic bottles..what can I say -we're all class! The weather forecast wasn’t the best but luckily we didn’t get too soaked and managed to get there with not too much hassle – well compared to the other guys anyway! Niki was pretty excited as it was his first time to a rugby sevens and also was stoked to see the Twickenham stadium – the home of rugby!
Our £7 seats were fantastic and we had a fabulous day with the sun even poking its head out on occasion. We sat behind a fun group of guys, a Pom, a Scot, and 2 Aussies which made for a good day of bantering… wasn’t a good start when the kiwis lost their first game to the English! It didn’t seem fair that all the other “good” teams were playing unknown teams for their first games, but I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles!
Luckily Sheree contacted us on Thursday to see if we wanted to go to the cheese rolling in Gloucester and she also mentioned that the rugby sevens finals were on at Twickenham on Sunday...Yay 4 Sheree!
And there you have it - a full bank holiday weekend!
Tickets for the sevens online were either £25 or £15 and the boys were keen for good seats so were prepared to pay top dollar, or should I say - pound. Then we found out about £7 tickets on sale at the local Aussie/Kiwi pub – so I told the boys they could suck it up cos that’s one great bargain!!
So Sunday morning we headed off arms laden with bags of munchies (incl kiwi onion dip!) and alcohol decanted into plastic bottles..what can I say -we're all class! The weather forecast wasn’t the best but luckily we didn’t get too soaked and managed to get there with not too much hassle – well compared to the other guys anyway! Niki was pretty excited as it was his first time to a rugby sevens and also was stoked to see the Twickenham stadium – the home of rugby!
Our £7 seats were fantastic and we had a fabulous day with the sun even poking its head out on occasion. We sat behind a fun group of guys, a Pom, a Scot, and 2 Aussies which made for a good day of bantering… wasn’t a good start when the kiwis lost their first game to the English! It didn’t seem fair that all the other “good” teams were playing unknown teams for their first games, but I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles!
During the course of the day a few "daring" people "streaked" across the field - all male and all fully clothed (much to my disgust!). It was rather entertaining to watch them try to dodge all the security men in fluoro orange jackets...The fluoros always won! It happened about 5 separate times (and was getting a 'lil boring), until the final one, which was a group of half a dozen fellas dressed as monks...absolutely hilarious!
There were some fantastic costumes on display, my favourites included a skinny guy as Hulk Hogan (down to the red wrestling underpants) and a guy dressed as a woopy cushion…ingenious! We watched New Zealand play against Portugal and later South Africa whom they managed to beat to win the plate. The big winner of the day was Samoa, who won against Fiji to take the cup. Apparently NZ is still leading overall however and has a good chance to take the whole competition out… go black =)
Monday morning we were up at 6am as we had to catch the tube to Marty & Sheree’s – nearly an hour away (Don’t ya love London!). Cheese rolling is an old tradition in Gloucester, a small town. Basically people go to the top of a very steep hill and someone rolls a giant cheese down and the crazy people run, roll, slide after it, and the first to reach the bottom wins the cheese. It was an extremely wet, horrible day, yet hundreds of people turned out to watch. I don’t own any appropriate footwear for mud events so my trusty jandals were the choice for the day and I must say they did me well, even though I got some strange looks! There were about 6 races, 3 downhill and 3 uphill. The uphill races don’t involve cheese…we watched the young boys and young girls races, and these kids are impressive, some tiny ones gave it a go and needed a hand towards the end but it was gorgeous ‘cos the crowd went wild for them. In the first race ambulance staff had to take one guy off on a stretcher in a neck brace, but I reckon he was just being a bit Hollywood!
The woman’s downhill race was the most impressive, with the winner basically taking a huge tumble and rolling so fast, the crowd ooh’d and aah’d as it looked like she must be hurt but then she jumped up with a big grin on her face and sprinted a bit further before sliding over again and rolling over the finish line. Crazy biarch!
On the way home we stopped just outside of Swindon for a lovely pub lunch to warm us up… unfortunately the fire wasn’t going and we had a few shitty mix-ups with our food including Sheree basically being accused of stealing a glass of Pepsi and Toni receiving a hot chocolate that was more like a hot milk… Whereas my dilemma was having to eat a whole extra bowl of fries we had mistakenly ordered (and paid for) so as not to waste them… oh the pain! We arrived home at about 6pm, completely soggy and exhausted… what a brilliant weekend!
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