Weeknote 46

Hiking, London's best pizza, Sports and Classique

It's been a busy couple of weeks making the most of some more favourable weather, finally!

Hiking

Last weekend I joined a friend for a somewhat delayed walk along a disused railway near Harpenden called the Nickey Line, just 25 minutes outside London. We'd a pleasant Spring time stroll along part of the route and then looped back via the vast and pretty spectacular Rothamsted crop research institute. We'd originally planned to cycle the route further, alas there'd been a miscommunication between us in planning to meet and hence not enough bikes for both of us.

Sports and Classique

I'd some rather pricey private tuition in tennis earlier this month, which went ok, but I'm still struggling to hit the ball with much if any accuracy. At least some improvement from past attempts when I didn't even manage to hit the ball!

The World's female cycling professionals came to the streets of London this weekend for Ride London, and I went down there with a friend who'd never seen a race before. The great thing about this race was being able to watch the riders pass several times along The Strand and then 10 minutes later along the Embankment, a short walk away.

London's best pizza

Still in search of the best Neapolitan-style pizza here in London, my friend joined me after watching the cycling to venture out to Streatham's tiny, but atmospheric, Bravi Ragazzi. The wait for our pizzas was long due to a lot of takeaway orders all at once, but worth it. Definitely the best we've found so far, and just 20 minutes by train from my new home.

Not quite tired enough yet with pizza, I joined X and some of her friends in North London for a garden feast of my own making on Bank Holiday Monday. It's the first time I've scaled up the recipe to make three large deep pan pizzas using a healthy mix of plain and wholemeal flour with a mixed pepper and onion/tomato sauce topping. Thankfully, everyone enjoyed it.