08/06/2026
We did about two and a half hours to Reading on Wednesday to break the back of a four hour (plus) journey to Chelmsford. Near the Travelodge M4 east, about a 15-minute walk away, is a great food pub Called the Cunning Man. It has a massive thatched roof - currently being replaced - great food and wonderful staff. This is often the case with motorway hotels - if you do bit of research you’ll find that there are some great restaurants within spitting distance.
Then there was Thursday and the dreaded M25. It’s never a great road but this time there was a complete standstill on the northern section, road works, and tube strikes in central London. This meant that the southern anti-clockwise stretch was packed and everything took ages. Ah well, I suppose it could have been raining…oh, hang on…�
Most of us were mystified as to why we had no memory of Chelmsford Theatre - until we realised we’d never been there before! We were greeted by some lovely in-house crew members and the show got rigged really quickly. I’d taken out a 6” driver in one of the PA cabs the week before and replaced it: I even got time to take an RTA of each box to make sure they were the same.
Gavin was on lights again for Llwyd and he did a great job of course. After sound check we found the local pub, the Original Plough, where they served fantastic pub grub and one of the best pints of Stella Artois I’ve ever had. The show went up on time - which is a rarity for us and we had a brilliant show. It was a seeeaout, the room sounded great, and the people were on board from the start. Thanks you so much for showing up, and for chatting to us lonely techies on the way out.
Venue notes - they have two loading docks so you can load/unload two vans at the same time!
