Right, so let's kick off this newly repurposed blog with a post about the top 5 things I love about Northampton:

1. Northampton oozes history. That's the main contributing factor to it being a "proper town" in my book. Northampton was once the UK's premier shoe manufacturing centre and the evidence of this is everywhere from the many former factory buildings that have been converted into residential apartments, to the abundance of shoe shops selling (strangely) mostly men's shoes. There's even a museum devoted to shoes and Northampton's long history with them.
2. It has a market square - another contributor to Northampton's "proper town" status. Even if you don't buy your fruits and vegetables from the market every week, the market square provides the town with a social hub, a kind of central meeting space where people naturally congregate and from which the town spreads and evolves. It's also a great place to buy fresh cheap fruits and vegetables!
3. Northampton has some great pubs with real character, many of which serve real ales and have excellent events. Some of my favourites are (in no particular order): 
• The Wig and Pen on St. Giles' Street, which has a large revolving selection of real ales, regular beer and cider festivals, live music and excellent pub food; 
• The Lamplighter on Overstone Road, which has a smaller but still good selection of real ales, a great kind of local/neighbourhood pub atmosphere, live music, beer festivals and a weekly pub quiz; 
• The Picturedrome on Kettering Road, an ex-cinema that now makes an excellent venue for live music and stand-up comedy and they still show movies on a Monday evening with free entry and free popcorn.
• Sazerac on Castilian Street makes fantastic cocktails and although it can get a bit busy at the weekends, it's a great place for people watching with a margarita in your hand. If you're feeling brave try the 'grand chilli', it's like a classic margarita over ice with a fiery dose of chilli.
4. Northampton's quirky independent shopping scene is a real bonus. Not yet overrun by the steady creep of high street chains that take over our towns, Northampton still has a thriving community of independent boutiques and retailers. My favourite places to go for a browse around the shops are: 
• Most Marvellous on Kettering Road, a treasure trove of vintage and hand-made furniture, bric a brac, clothing and art. You can spend a whole day browsing around the collectibles in here, stopping for a cake and coffee in Nanna's Kitchen and then attending one of the regular craft events.
• The Wardrobe in Ridings Arcade is a really cute boutique selling funky retro-styled clothing and accessories at very affordable prices. 
• Dychurch Lifestyle on St Giles' Street has recently moved from its previous home in Dychurch Lane. Having started as a small shoe retailer they have now expanded into selling clothing, accessories and homewares, choosing the best from the collections of the brands they stock and creating a really friendly, knowledgeable ambience.
5. For a foodie like me, Northampton's enormous selection of eateries is like a culinary adventure playground. However with so many new places to try it's difficult to find time to try them all and I've already found a few tried and tested favourites that I return to time and again when I'm entertaining friends:
• Felix Yu on Castilian Street serves the best Chinese food west of Xinjiang. Everything I've tried on the menu here is delicious and authentic (and I grew up in Hong Kong, so I should know!)
• Marmaris on St Giles' Street is not your average kebab shop. The kebabs served here are unrecognisably different to the kind you get in the ubiquitous takeaway kebab shop that I wouldn't even call Marmaris a kebab shop. At Marmaris you can get some of the most tender chargrilled meat, served up with homemade flatbreads and grilled onions in pomegranate juice. Delicious!

OK, so the Milton Keynes blog kind of petered out after a while. I just didn't put in the effort to find enough interesting things to write about. I mean, there are interesting things to do in Milton Keynes, but there aren't very many of them, so in the end we decided to up sticks and move to.... Northampton!

Now, Northampton has a pretty bad rep too, but I actually quite like it. It's a "proper town", by which I mean that it has history, character and a bit of life to it. So after 16 months of living in Northampton and discovering its delights, I thought it was about time I reprised this blog, renamed it and repurposed it as a celebration of all things good about my new home town.

Sport Relief Mile

I hate running. This may come as a bit of a surprise to those who know me as I tend to keep fairly active what with all the dancing and rock climbing 'n' all, but I absolutely loathe running.

So that's why I signed myself up for the Sport Relief mile along with husband Paul, a work colleague of mine and her boyfriend. Actually we're going to run 3 miles not 1, because I'm a masochist. If you're feeling generous, then please sponsor us or sponsor me! It's all in aid of Comic Relief who do lots of amazing work to help those who are less fortunate than us.

To prepare ourselves for this feat of pure torture, Paul and I went for a run around Willen Lake today. Well, we didn't run all the way and we only went round the North lake, but it was our first time running in about 2 years! Because I was running I didn't have my camera with me, so sorry there are no pretty pictures on this post. I promise I'll go back to Willen some time soon and take some snaps for you all. Until then, get your wallets out and b!**&y well sponsor us!

Along the redways to Campbell Park

The system of redways/cycle paths that cris-crosses the whole of Milton Keynes allows pedestrians and cyclists to move around the town without having to cross many roads and offers a pleasant rural setting to weekend leisure walks although their quiet rural nature and poor lighting can make some paths a bit threatening after dark. To the newcomer to Milton Keynes they can also be a bit of a maze as the signposts point the way to local estates and villages which you may not be familiar with rather than following the incredibly easy to navigate grid system of H (horizontal) and V (vertical) roads. Luckily Milton Keynes Council publishes a handy map that you can pick up for free at various places in the town including the Centre:MK.



Following the redways from Newport Pagnell into the town centre will most likely take you along the edge of the Grand Union Canal, popular with barge owners and with several pubs along its edge from where you can sit with a pint watching the boats go by.



Eventually the canal path leads you to Campbell Park, a strange sort of oasis of green in the middle of the town centre where sheep happily graze whilst trying to ignore the cyclists whizzing past them and from a surprising vantage point in this flattest of towns you can look out over a good chunk of the east side of Milton Keynes.



As you approach the top of the hill it becomes apparent that you really are in the centre of town as the Milton Keynes Gallery and Theatre complex becomes visible behind the fields of sheep and to their left the imposing dome of the XScape centre that houses the local indoor ski slope and skydiving arena.

Hallowe'en

Now for my second post of the day. This'll probably be a short one as it's not so much about something you can do in Milton Keynes, but something you can do wherever you are in the world.

Last weekend we invited a few friends over for dinner and what with it being so close to Hallowe'en, we thought we'd carve a pumpkin to decorate our flat with and cook a seasonal chicken and pumpkin Thai curry. We were quite pleased with the resulting pumpkin, designed by myself and carved with great skill by my husband, Paul.



We were quite surprised to learn that a couple of our dinner guests (who are from Sweden) had never celebrated Hallowe'en and upon doing a bit of research it appears that Hallowe'en is most likely to be of Celtic origin and the traditional practices of dressing up in goulish costume to go 'guising' and carving turnips or swedes into lanterns that originated in Ireland and Scotland have since been adapted by the North Americans to the modern trick or treating and carving of pumpkins into 'jack-o-lanterns'. It is not really celebrated in this form across the rest of Europe, although most European countries celebrate All Saints Day on the 1st of November.

My memories of Hallowe'en from living in Glasgow involved going to costume parties where you would play games like dooking for apples and going guising, which involved getting dressed up in some spooky costume and knocking on your neighbours' doors where you would be invited in and have to perform some sort of party piece before being given sweets, peanuts (or monkey nuts as we used to call them) or money. In England the tradition seems to be very different, usually involving children playing practical jokes and committing acts of vandalism. Children who go trick-or-treating are also not expected to perform a party piece, but will instead knock on doors crying 'trick-or-treat' in order to be rewarded with sweets and money. I think I prefer the Scottish way!

Taipan chinese restaurant

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but well, y'know I've been busy with this and that and just haven't had the time... okay, you got me, I've just been a bit lazy of late so just to make it up to you, here is the first of two posts for today.

Before I get started, I just want to apologise for the quality of the photographs, but they were taken on my camera phone, which although good in a light outdoor setting tends to be a bit rubbish indoors!

Last Friday we decided to go out for dinner as we'd just been paid and had been living like monks for the last month due to the crushing poverty, so on the spur of the moment we booked a table at Taipan in the Theatre district. When I say 'Theatre district' what I really mean is the quarter square mile of central Milton Keynes that contains a range of chain restaurants and bars (T.G.I Fridays, Slug and Lettuce and the like) and also happens to have a theatre. It seems to be the favoured weekend drinking location for MK types as there are also a couple of nightclubs there.

We'd been to Taipan before and had been fairly impressed by the food which, having grown up in Hong Kong is not a compliment I bestow very often on a Chinese restaurant, so we thought we'd go back as it's been a while since we last visited.



The décor is pretty minimal for a Chinese restaurant, but I like it. Gone is the usual flock wallpaper to be replaced by white painted walls. Large Chinese banner-shaped artworks adorn the back wall flowing down from the one and a half storey high ceiling and light fittings that look like a modern take on the traditional Chinese paper lantern help to keep the whole restaurant bright and airy.



We ordered Cantonese style roast duck, a chinese mushroom, crispy pork and eel hot pot and a side dish of pak choi with oyster sauce accompanied by plain boiled rice and washed down with Chinese tea. The duck was beautifully cooked being succulent, but not too fatty and full of flavour. The hot pot was really tasty, but not being much of an eel lover, I left most of that for my husband. It's kind of an acquired taste I suppose, but I just find it overly fatty. The one fault I found with the food here is that there's probably a bit too much MSG (monosodium glutamate - a flavour enhancer used in Chinese cooking in place of salt), as by the time we were three-quarters of the way through our meal, I was beginning to get tastebud fatigue. Still, it all makes for a really tasty meal and we even ended up taking some of it home for dinner the next day. I can't wait to go back there to try out their dim sum!

Taipan, Milton Keynes

Salcey Forest

Ever since the age of 8 when I moved to the UK, forests have held a particular fascination for me. You see, there aren't any forests in Hong Kong (unless you count forests of skyscrapers), so when I first discovered them I was amazed at what fantastic playgrounds they are. There's no end to the things you can do in a forest, like climbing trees, building dens, lifting up rocks to look for weird insects... I could go on for hours!



So the choice of where to go wandering today wasn't too difficult. After hearing about Salcey Forest a couple of weeks ago I've just been waiting for a fair weather day to go walkabout in the woods. The weather today couldn't have been better. A clear crisp October morning that began frosty but was soon warmed by the low Autumn sun.



Although not technically in Milton Keynes (it actually falls within Northamptonshire county), it's only about 7 miles North of Newport Pagnell, near the village of Hartwell. The main car park seems to get incredibly busy at the weekends and they charge £2 for the privilege of parking there, so we opted for the horse box car park at the other end of the forest, which is much quieter and free to use, so it's certainly well worth the effort as long as you don't mind the 5 mile round trip to hike to the more interesting parts of the forest.



There are numerous walking trails ranging from 0.75 to 6 miles, a 5 mile cycle trail and a horse trail, most of which offer circular routes beginning and ending at the main car park where there is also a café and children's playground. The picture above shows part of the Elephant Walk, so called because it passes by the Elephant Pond over which this beautiful suspension bridge passes suspended from an arrow that seems to have been caught midflight having been shot out of the pond itself.



The most impressive construction in the forest however, has to be the Treetop Walk. Constructed in 2005 it was a finalist in the 2006 Prime Minister's Better Public Building Award. The walk begins at ground level and follows a gentle incline through the trees to a height of 20 metres above ground from where you can enjoy a view over the treetops to the city of Northampton.



Oh, and I haven't told you the best bit yet... there's absolutely no traffic noise when you're in the heart of the forest, so you can wander around feeling like you really are in the countryside!

For more information on Salcey Forest including maps and directions, visit the Forestry Commission website.