Home town unicorns

Basildon - although for some reason it comes up on the map as near Reading, is in South Essex.  And the only thing that could possible qualify as a tourist attraction?  Bas Vegas.

Bas Vegas is officially the Festival Leisure Park, and consists of the following amenities:

1X cinema

1X bowling alley

1X "nightclub"

1X chicago rock cafe

4X chain restaurants, including a Nandos and an all you can eat chinese buffet.

The fact that the locals affectionately refer to this as Bas Vegas tells you a lot about the availability of entertainment in that part of Essex! ;)  ALthough it is a very nice cinema - you can get Ben and Jerry's there - and the toilets are mostly clean.  It's also a 45 minute drive from my parent's house, but my friends live in Woodham and it really is the nearest cinema since they built retirement flats where the cinema in Woodham used to be.

  I went there with my friends Emma and Kelly, my high school friends, to see the Golden Compass.  Considering it's so close to Christmas, it was surprisingly easy to park, and the traffic was fine.  I'm scrambling for interesting things to say - we had a great time, actually, and went round Kelly's house afterwards to catch up on whose had baby's/mortgages/decided to jack it all in and do conservation work in Peru since last year, and it was all lovely.  But you don't necessarily need to know that oh, John is a police sargeant now, because you never met him!  Perhaps the best thing to say in this particular blog entry is that basildon is not as nasty as people make out, and that if you manage to avoid Chicagos (unless you actually are a hen party!) you can have a pretty good afternoon in Basvegas.  It was nice.

So if you are stuck in Basildon, the Festival Leisure park is my best recommendation on where to go.  Other than Basildon station, natch.  ;)