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Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Goring Hotel to accommodate Royal Wedding guests

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Posted by trev on January 25, 2011 – 10:00 am
Filed under Accommodation

The Goring Hotel in Belgravia has long had significant royal connections, but now it has been chosen as the official hotel for the guests at the Royal Wedding in April.

Several members of the royal family have fallen for this hotel including the late Queen Mother, of whom a bust still stands in the hotel lobby. Now it has been announced that Kate Middleton and Prince William will be using the hotel as the official base for royal guests on the 28th and 29th April.

This is another departing from Prince William’s mother who used the more private Clarence House for herself and guests, and might be another sign that the couple are trying to create their own big day rather than simply re-creating the world famous Charles and Diana wedding.

Importantly, the Goring will be where she spends the last night as Kate Middleton, before she transforms into Princess Catherine on the 29th April.

With tariffs averaging from £345 per room, per night, the hotel might be a little more than most of us would spend a night, but we’re sure the Kate Middleton / Princess Catherine royal effect will ensure the hotel has plenty of interest especially after the wedding.

Looking at the current prices for the Goring after the wedding – the earliest the hotel is bookable is Saturday 30th where you can stay for just £370, although the Sunday is £434.

For Goring Hotel in London bookings, click here.

More Belgravia Resources:
Hotels in Belgravia
Things to see and do in Belgravia
Car hire in London

Winners of National Fish n’ Chip shop awards 2011

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Posted by trev on January 25, 2011 – 9:20 am
Filed under Eating & Drinking

Where can you buy the best fish n chips in Britain? The National Fish n Chip Shop Award winners would be a good starting place (no pun intended) to start.

The voting process included both customer reports and suggestions, alongside a panel of secret judges who between them visited each fish and chip shop at least twice using rigorous criteria to test for overall quality. Below are the overall winners of the national award as taken from the various categories.

First place was awarded to The Atlantic Fast Food, Coatbridge as the overall winner of the 2011 National Fish n’ Chip shop awards meaning the Scots have won the award for the past three years. It’s unlikely you’ll find any deep fried mars bars here (yes, they really do exist!), but you will find excellent quality fish and chips.

This is only the first time the Coatbridge chip shop has won the award and the Italian born owner Giovanni Fionda said “To win this competition as a first time entrant is a dream come true. It’s the best thing to have happened to us in our professional life and has made all the hard work worth it.”

Mr. Fionda was presented with his award by fellow Italian chef TV chef Aldo Zilli at a Riverbank Park Plaza Hotel in London.

Second place was the Finnegan’s Fish Bar in Porthcawl, South Wales, run by Huw and Sarah Jones. The Welsh fish and chip shop is renowned to be as famous for its clientèle as the fish and chips, with regulars including Ruth Jones of ‘Gavin and Stacey’.

Huw said “We are over the moon to win the second spot. There are not many shops in Wales that can say they serve some of the best fish and chips in the UK.”

Third place went to a fish and chip shop in the Midlands, with Great British Eatery
in Birmingham scooping the honour. According to many reports, the city has such impressive fish and chips that the city’s three Michelin starred chefs Glynn Purnell, Luke Tipping and Richard Turner reportedly stop by quite often. We can assume that one of the favourite dishes would be chips, fish and curry sauce.

For more information or to enter the awards, see the National Fish n Chip Shop Award web site.

Luckiest lottery winning places in Britain

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 4:15 pm
Filed under Miscellaneous

If you’re looking for somewhere to take a weekend break, why not try one of the following and don’t forget to buy your lottery ticket as these are in theory the best places in the country to win.

We’re not of course guaranteeing that you’ll come back a multi millionaire, but areas of Essex, Kent or the North East England are statistically more likely to get you some winnings than anywhere else in the United Kingdom according to Yahoo.

llford in Essex is one of the luckiest places to buy your tickets with a whopping £87 million in big prizes won so far by it’s residents. Moving up the east of England, Newcastle-upon-Tyne is second on the list with apparently one in 6,207 of Newcastle residents scooping a large prize.

Medway in Kent came in third making the southern half of the country overall a good place to buy your tickets and moving back to Essex, Illford came in forth place in the league table.

If you really want to increase your chances then the North East of England is definitely the place to go with the aforementioned Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham all coming in the top 10 places to win. For the overall area, a massive £684 million has been paid out in top prizes with 407 jackpot prize winners.

In total since the lottery began back in 1994, there have been 2,500 jackpot winners of the National Lottery.

Of course you could just sit at home and do the National Lottery online

Is this the best hotel view in England?

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 3:20 pm
Filed under Accommodation

Living around the Lake District, we get used to hotels having nice views, but perhaps the Cottage in the Wood in Malvern eclipses them all?

I came across this hotel purely by accident while researching a story, but what immediately struck me was the view from the front of the hotel out over mile upon mile of English countryside.

The picture here only hints at this, so your best going to the
360 degree panoramic image (click the “view now” link) and you’ll soon see why I stopped to take a closer look.

There’s not an ugly pylon or smoke stack or really anything in sight – just countryside and more countryside, set out in a patchwork of little fields to the horizon. This is why I think the Cottage in the Wood deserves its own mention as this might be the only place in the country where you’ll see such an unspoilt view.

More details about the Cottage in the Woods hotel.

Of course if you know of a hotel with a better view, add the details to the comments section below (or click the speech bubble if you’re on the front page).

More Malvern Links:
Hotels around Malvern
Things to see and do in Malvern
Self-catering cottages in Malvern

London Olympic Games tickets on sale from March 15th

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 2:01 pm
Filed under Events

The London Olympic Committee have confirmed that tickets for the London Olympics will go on sale from March 15th.

Over 6.6 million tickets for every event will go on sale from the 15th March via the official London 2012 tickets web site although pre-registration for the tickets is currently possible and recommended. The registration will be closed on Tuesday 26th April 2011.

The tickets will not be sold on a first come first served basis, presumably to prevent a complete crash of the web site. Any over-subscribed events will have their tickets allocated via a ballot system.

Paralympic Games tickets will go on sale from Friday 9 September 2011, with more details to appear later.

One important note – since Visa are sponsoring the games, you can only use a Visa card to buy tickets and for any card purchases around the Olympic Games venues (cash is also an option). For those without a Visa card, you’ll need to purchase a Pre-pay Visa card.

More London Links:
Hotel accommodation near the Olympic Stadium
Tourist attractions around the Olympic Stadium

New London “floating airport” proposed in the Thames Estuary

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 1:10 pm
Filed under Transport

London Mayor Boris Johnson has started a consultation process to find a location for a new airport in South East England to reduce the pressure on Heathrow and Gatwick.

According to the consultation documents, Heathrow and Gatwick are now at 99% capacity which is causing a lot of delays and backlogs, even before the recent problems with the snow. There were plans to expand Heathrow with a third runway, but those were scrapped under the current government.

One idea being seriously considered by the Mayor is an airport based in the Thames Estuary with up to four runways effectively floating in the estuary and a new terminal on dry land. This idea has a couple of big advantages over trying to build a land based airport:

1) Building in the estuary gets around the simple lack of room in one of the most crowded areas of the country especially with all the extra infrastructure which would be required around any new airport.

2) The area chosen has connections to the existing Channel Tunnel rail link and and M2 and M25 motorways are also nearby, providing direct rail and road connections to London.

Of course building in the middle of a tidal estuary isn’t the easiest construction job, but the tides might help make the airport more eco-friendly too with turbines installed under the runways generating electricity for the airport.

Ed: One possibility they don’t seem to have considered is whether being water based, would this airport be less likely to suffer from snow problems, just as coastal areas don’t generally get as much snow?

The following image from the Daily Mail gives an idea of how the airport complex might work:

Links to London:
London hotel accommodation
Things to see and do in London

London hotels booking up fast for royal wedding

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 11:40 am
Filed under Accommodation, Events

VisitBritain have reported a 40% increase in hotel bookings in London on the week leading up to the William and Kate wedding on April 29th, with many hotels along the route booking up fast.

The couple will return from the wedding along Parliament Square, Whitehall, Horse Guards Parade and The Mall before arriving back at Buckingham Palace. Although they won’t be in the same open carriage as when William’s parents Charles and Diana were married, it appears plenty are still planning to try to catch a glimpse of the couple.

Three new hotels are planning to open before the royal wedding with around 1000 rooms between them, but considering over 600,000 people came to London for the Charles and Diana wedding, there is a high chance that visitors booking late will find it harder to find a hotel with availability in the city.

Hotels around the route on 28th & 29th April:

Staying in Westminster, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (28th April 2011)

Staying in Westminster, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (29th April 2011)

Staying in Westminster, 2 people in a double room for 2 nights (28th and 29th April 2011)

Staying in Waterloo, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (28th April 2011)

Staying in Waterloo, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (29th April 2011)

Staying in Waterloo, 2 people in a double room for 2 nights (28th and 29th April 2011)

Staying in the Strand, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (28th April 2011)

Staying in the Strand, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (29th April 2011)

Staying in the Strand, 2 people in a double room for 2 nights (28th and 29th April 2011)

Staying in Mayfair, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (28th April 2011)

Staying in Mayfair, 2 people in a double room for 1 night (29th April 2011)

Staying in Mayfair, 2 people in a double room for 2 nights (28th and 29th April 2011)

For other searches, just go to www.ukhotel.com/london

Earthquake hits remote village of Glenuig in Scotland

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 11:18 am
Filed under Events

It seems we’ve had more than the usual number of earthquakes in the north of Britain recently, with a 3.5 magnitude quake hitting the remote and very picturesque village of Glenuig in Western Scotland.

The earthquake hit at around 6.02am this morning (24th January) when residents in the area reported waking to a rumbling and slight shaking of the ground. The only damage reported so far was from Steve MacFarlane, director of the Glenuig Inn, who said there was now a crack in the hotel car park.

Residents in nearby Fort William and as far away as Skye, Mull, Inverness and Oban also heard the quake which experts say can travel 120km on average. 3.5 on the Richter Scale is on-par with the earthquake in Coniston, English Lake District, which hit on 21st December and the 3.6 which hit Ripon, North Yorkshire on January 3.

Map of Glenuig earthquake – Jan 24th 2011.

Where to have brunch in London

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 10:02 am
Filed under Eating & Drinking

The idea of “brunch” in the way you might see on US sitcom’s has never quite come to the UK, but some restaurants and cafes in London are starting to address this.

“Brunch” means many things to many people, but in essence it’s best described as a late breakfast and possibly the American version of the “full English”, but usually with a lot more coffee or OJ (orange juice to you and me). Generally to be brunch it has to be served after 10am and before mid-day.

Traditionally in most parts of Britain, if you head out to a cafe for breakfast you’d probably expect bacon, eggs, hash browns, black pudding and maybe fried bread…although why anyone would eat the latter is beyond me!

So American brunch is similar, but ingredients more often include waffles with bacon and melted cheese, French toast, pancakes, muffins and eggs benedict – or eggs in 100 other ways if you’re in New York. It may take a little time however for waffles covered in maple syrup to catch on over here.

So where can you enjoy some of the best brunches (or whatever the plural of brunch is), around London? The best way to answer that is pop over to the Timeout web site under the London Brunch section, where some poor souls were forced to spend every morning sitting around eating some of the highest quality breakfasts in the land.

A little tip – if you want an alternative twist on the brunch, try the restaurant called “Number Twelve” on that list where you can have “boiled eggs with asparagus soldiers, soft-poached duck egg with pancetta or boudin and wild mushrooms”.

Happy brunching…

Cumbria is now leader in rural high speed Internet

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Posted by trev on January 24, 2011 – 9:10 am
Filed under Miscellaneous

Broadband Internet provision to rural areas of the country is always seen as far too expensive to be commercially viable, but as one village in Cumbria has shown, this might not always be true.

Great Asby is a little village in the Eden district of North Cumbria and a little west of the English Lake District. Like all the villages in Cumbria and similar rural areas around the country, is very unlikely to get any reasonable speed of broadband Internet from BT or Virgin cable (the two main broadband providers).

We have fibre: This was until an enterprising local in Great Asby realised that the local school had been provided with fibre optic broadband paid for by the tax payer. After talking to the school, he spliced the connection and with a little work, created a wireless network using transmitters in the transmitters in the church tower and a dead tree. Suddenly the people in Great Adby were able to get high speed Internet.

One of the usual expenses with this kindof network is laying the cables, since you need to get a connection from the school to a central box and out to the transmitters. Commercial companies would charge £1000s for this, but paying local farmers turned out to cost a fraction of that amount thus as long as 70% of the people in the village paid for this, community broadband was perfectly viable.

Broadband conference: Considering the size of Great Asby, you wouldn’t imagine it would become a central hub for organising broadband around the country. That’s just what happened recently when 130 people came from over 100 villages around Britain all eager to see if this community fibre broadband would work in their villages.

Plans detailed in this conference included included how the village of Melmerby was looking at a microwave based Internet connection, and others were investigating Wi-Fi mesh networks which have proven very effective in California.

There’s more information on the Broadband in Cumbria web site.

More Cumbria connections:
Hotels in Cumbria & the Lake District
Visitor attractions in Cumbria and the Lake District
Self-catering in Cumbria and the Lake District