Brother sister bouldering

So as you might have guessed from my love of online shopping, drinking cocktails and wearing high heels, I'm not exactly what you'd call a "sporty girl". However, I am always up for having fun or trying something new and so while my brother Aidan's been home for Easter, I agreed to let him show me the ropes of bouldering, which is harness-less wall climbing (so pun intended). It's a hobbie that he's gotten in to while he's been at York so we headed to the Nottingham centre so I could see what all the fuss was about. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it! It isn't the super-skyscraper-height that my dad was expecting it to be; the challenge lies not in your fearlessness of heights but in your ability to hold up your own body weight. The pegs are coded by colour so you can tell the difficulty, but it's pretty obvious by looking at them because the pegs get fewer and further between as you get better at it. I obviously started on the easiest colour but I'd managed 4 different colours of varying difficulty by the time we were done! I liked it though because it's not only a sport of strength but one of the mind too because some them really require you to puzzle solve; to work out how you'll get to the top (some of them you have to kick out of corners, push yourself on to adjacent walls, hanging basically upside down and all sorts). I was pretty impressed by how good Aidan and some of the other climbers there were - they were basically flinging themselves around like monkeys! I was pretty proud of myself too for how many I managed, and you could really feel it working your arm and leg muscles. Of course, there were some I didn't attempt because the shape of the pegs looked like they would break my nails (sorry not sorry), but I did ditch the heels for an afternoon and donned these very fetching climbing shoes instead (which, by the way, were much more uncomfortable than any of my heels).

Then after we'd had enough of climbing and Aidan had finally conquered a particularly difficult one that he'd been trying to complete since he got back, we headed out (in the pouring rain) to get some dinner. I do love that me and Aidan often go on these little brother-sister outings; we've always gotten on so well and are like best friends, thanks to the fact that we're yin and yang (and in spite of the fact that we're so different). One thing we're very much the same on though is food! So our restaurant choice was a fairly easy decision (I mean I obviously sent him 3 options that had already been pre-vetted and approved by me, because that's just how we work) and we ended up at Junkyard. I've been there for drinks before but never for food and I was really impressed! I got the tacos (1 popcorn chicken and 1 beef cheek) and Aidan got the cheeseburger and then we got some buffalo fries to share. I was pretty surprised by the fries because I thought the "buffalo" part would be a sauce so when they arrived looking like normal fries, I was kind of disappointed. But oh my god, they were amazing! They must've just been seasoned or dusted with something instead because they were so good.

Then as a last hoorah before Aidan went back to York, we met mum and dad for some drinks in Bendigo on our way back. And I'm super happy that Aidan has now followed in my footsteps and started ordering cocktails; always going with the strongest (he had a long island iced tea). What a proud day this is.