Friday 31st May

This trip proved quite challenging before we had even set off, as our dining venue for Sunday had asked us to give our menu choices in advance. Now it might be thought this would be a quite straight forward task, it did involve finding the Sunday menu on the pub's website and then correctly picking items from it.

Brian had given an early warning that there was a separate menu for Sundays. This advice however was ignored by some and their menu selctions did not appear on the Sunday menu.

It fell upon the Dungroamin quality control department to carefully check each submission, reject non-compliant versions and then to comfirm when a compliant submission had been received.

It must be acknowlegded though, that out of the five submissions, two were correct first time.

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OK, not of interest to everybody, but a stopping off point for Dungroamin Management on the way down. The Ipswich tidal barrier.

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The Balkerne Gate was the eating establishment next to our Premier Inn (Colchester A12). It was named after a famous hole in the wall - see later.

Our Friday meal had been booked at the Balkerne Gate for 6:30pm. We started to assemble ready for our meal and were pleasantly surprised to see that Geraint had arrived on time. So eleven of us took our seats to await some service. Jerry and Geraint ordered starters as a result of which, most of us had to wait ages for any food.

We had informed the waitress that Geraint would like gluten-free food, and she was very concerned when he said he would have something that was not gluten-free. She must have asked him three times if he was sure that would be OK. Turned out she had worked as a para-medic, so knew what the consequences could be.

For a place that did not seem particularly well organised, it was a pleasant surprise when the bill was settled first time.