Enjoyable Tinged With Disappointment

When I got up to go Sarah, Manolo and Anais had already left and Luis was asleep. After a twenty minute walk to HMS Raleigh and a relaxed security check it was the W.O & Senior Rates Mess for coffee and bacon rolls.
We were then split into three groups ready for a tour of the base and it’s facilities. When the original invitation to apply for one of the two hundred spaces it was considerably over subscribed so it was disappointing to note that there was a thirty percent ‘no show’.
The tour covered most of the base but there was little in the way of ‘engineering’.

The highlight for me was to see the Fisgard Gates standing as a display. It was me that repaired them in 1994, they were in a bad way having been hit by vehicles but they don’t look to bad twenty-four years later.

Lunch of a chicken curry with a couple of beers before a quick visit to the fire school.
Then it was time to ‘size off’ before the Passing Out Parade and our invitation to March past as a Veterans Contingent

Back to the Mess where we were joined by senior officers who were then subjected a chorus of “it was better in my day”, “can you supply a marching contingent for my/our ....”.

A few beers with friends before heading down to Torpoint, (enough said), and old haunts, The Jubilee, The Wheelers, The Standard and The Legion - it’s true you shouldn’t go back.

Back to Sarah and Manilo’s For a Chinese takeaway before once again collapsing into Anais’s bed.