The Sparks went to Washington...: Our night at Tylney Hall

We tootled off down to Farnborough on Thursday. Stephen was taking part in a meeting with Greg whom we'd met during our California tour. We had arranged to go out for dinner with him that evening, so we booked into Tylney Hall. It was the first time I had been - I usually only get to book the place for everyone else! They knew I was coming too, so they upgraded us to a suite. It was very swish indeed and had the most fantastic views over the park. The hotel and grounds were beautiful. I really felt I should be swishing down the stairs in a Jane Austen style Empire waisted dress.

The only (very) slight disadvantages were the price of the drinks and the sauna like atmosphere of our bathroom! The bathroom radiator was fully on and the knob for adjusting it had been removed. Once you had drawn a bath and added steam to the mix you could only last about 5 minutes without the urge to pass out!

The drinks were kinda pricey - we were 32 quid for 2 glasses of wine and 2 G&T's. And these were UK G&T's...in other words they wet the bottom of the glass with gin and then add gallons of tonic. We've become entirely accustomed to US style "G&T tops"... this was a severe culture shock! We had a really superb stay though. The beautiful surroundings more than made up for the minuteness of the measures!!

We had a really fun dinner with Greg....and saw a lot of the English countryside! We dropped him off at his hotel, drove 30 minutes to our hotel, checked in, got changed, had a swift look round, got back in the car, drove the shorter route (20 minutes) back to collect Greg, drove 20 minutes to he restaurant, had a nice Indian meal in Hartney Witney, drove 20 minutes back to Greg's hotel, then 20 minutes back to ours. There are some really beautiful villages in that area - and we got to see plenty of them!

Crossing the road coming out of the restaurant could have been hairy! In our party of 3 we had one American and two newly-repatriated ex-US dwellers....every one of us looked the wrong way as we launched ourselves into the road!!