Saturday 4th – Sunday 5th March

Saturday 4th March

Today JW, my brother, is let’s say, over 60, and the four of us are off for a one-nighter.

First, a chance to meet up with the Famo in Oakmere Park and for the children to use the play equipment!

A light bite at Café One https://cafe-one-coffee-shop.business.site, such friendly, helpful people who were brilliant in making space for us and serving the birthday cake.

A drive up the M1 to Milton Keynes; I used to work there for about 9 months in 1985; it’s hard to imagine now doing that drive every day. Much of the city is unrecognisable from my time there.

We checked into the Hotel La Tour https://hotel-latour.co.uk a distinctive mirror steel clad 14 floor hotel on the edge of Central Milton Keynes. Check-in seemed to be a lengthy process, you’d think they would be used to it!

We had the same room types – the view from JW & E’s was slightly better than ours:-

Free time to explore – Husband and I wandered over to Campbell Park. Looking back from The Milton Keynes Rose https://miltonkeynesrose.org.uk, an art installation ‘offering a place for celebration, commemoration and contemplation, an open-air circle with markings based on the mathematical beauty of a flower’, towards our hotel.

A trip in the lift to check out Fourteen Skyline Restaurant & Bar on the 14th floor and its views:-

Evening entertainment:-

We had a reservation at Marco’s (Pierre White) New York Italian restaurant https://www.mpwrestaurants.co.uk/our-brands/new-york-italian/milton-keynes. We looked up the route on Google Maps and set off walking in the right direction but, here we go again, we were swayed from our path by walking inside the shopping centre, instead of outside. To cut a long story short, (short walk long!), we couldn’t get out of the shopping centre where we needed to and had to reverse, then circuit the building making a 15 minute walk around 30 minutes!

It’s only when you went to the loo in the restaurant did you realise it is actually housed inside the Holiday Inn!

Back to our hotel for late-night drinks (well 10.00pm) in Fourteen Skyline Restaurant & Bar.

Birthday boy sipping his first Gin Martini cocktail – he liked it – yay!

Sunday 5th March

Breakfast at the top of the hotel and then some free time before the next event. My suggestion was a visit to IKEA, weirdly, that was not a vote winner. However, JW was persuaded to walk around a lake, if he can then spend some time at the Land Rover dealership on the other side!

JW’s birthday gift – an off-road driving session at Experience the Country Milton Keynes, based in Newton Longville https://www.experiencethecountry.co.uk. Lots of things to do there, quad bikes, segways, archery etc. Quite an outfit, they train professional bodies such as the fire service to assist in off-road incidents.

The weekend seemed long – in a good way! Lots of different activities and a really lovely time.

Here are the clever socks I purchased as a little gift weeks before JW’s birthday …. unfortunately, they remained at home on the shelf ‘ready to come’. Doh!