Adventures in The Big Smoke

That is London to me and you! We travelled down to London on Wed night – well we only travelled to Hemel hempstead where we stayed the night in a hotel and then headed down to London at 7.30am on Thurs morning.

Now a note about this hotel. We found plenty of hotels on the internet that advertised themselves as being “pet-friendly” but quite often when we phoned to book we were told it was an old policy and they don’t actually take pets at all. Bah. Or if the hotel did take pets they all charged £10-£30 per pet extra. Double Bah.

We managed to find a hotel which was quite cheap, and only charged £15 per pet extra. This worked out even better as the hotel clerk forgot to charge us the extra for the dogs when we checked out. And no, of course we didn’t say anything to her…. hahaha! No shame.

Yeah, so the Cheshire Dog Display Team were invited to London to do a working dog display in Regents Place. Not Regents Park, where you would imagine it would be – but Regents Place. Right in the middle of all the corporate buildings, restaurants etc… How random! There was meant to be 1000′s of people there, but there wasn’t that many at all! Mainly just office workers out on their lunch breaks etc.

Theo demonstrating how to scale a 6 foot fence

Little Holly pup did really well. She had to pretend to be a sniffer dog in training, and we had to get her really focused on her tennis ball and run and find it. Chester did a more advanced version of this, where we had to hide the tennis ball out of his sight in the arena, then he had to run and sniff it out!

Trendy outfits?!

The big 12 foot fire run was also in use as the finale to the show. Of course, the 1st time Chester refused to go over it, which gave the crowds a good laugh! We had a little practice with him in the break, so he was able to go over it no problem in the 2nd show.

Since we were in London, I decided I NEEDED to visit The Hummingbird Bakery. I took off, leaving the others to pack all the equipment away (!) and got the tube by myself woohoo!! I was a bit scared, but my love for cupcakes buoyed me on! I got to Liverpool Street Station no problem, but of course I couldn’t remember what street the Hummingbird Bakery was on…

Cue going into about 20 shops/cafes asking for directions, and no-one knew where it was. Very few people had even heard of it! I thought it was meant to be world famous?! Luckily my trusty friend Bec was on hand, to look up the street name of the shop for me. I then rang Gary and got him to look up a map on his phone and direct me.

I finally found it down a little alley-way (Frying Pan Alley – how funny!) with barely any other shops around it. Phew. It must have taken me at least 30 mins rushing about to get there. Oh, I was still wearing my very attractive dog display outfit so I’m sure I looked a sight. But then again, it was London so there were probably crazier people than me?!

The rest of the team had been packed up for ages and had been waiting for me to return with these cupcakes. I did feel a bit guilty – but then again, I had a red velvet with my name on it, so I got over it! The cupcakes disappeared so quickly I almost forgot to take a picture. Otherwise you wouldn’t have believed my story, would you?!

Here are the 3 of the cupcakes: red velvet, vanilla & chocolate.

Me with Holly & Chester

My red velvet was pretty good although a little dry – but maybe that is to be expected as they were sitting in the shop all day? They are definitely my favourite flavour though. I had a vanilla one on the way home in the car and I was not impressed at all. It just tasted really synthetic and yuk. Oh and a little bit stale as well. So I’m not sure it was really worth all the hassle to get there lol..!