I find myself about 300 miles from Ordinary Decent HQ for work. Welcome to Sheffield.

Living out of a Premier Inn on “Ultimate WiFi” (maxing out at a whopping 3 Mbps), I’m in Sheffield for two weeks seeing post mortem CT scanning (PM-CT) in action.

The journey was fraught and involved three trains on a route that should’ve taken one, with several trains-worth of customers crammed into four carriages, but I made it in a mere five hours and forty-five minutes. I was previously looking forward to a comfortable ride as I got a first-class upgrade for £20, but that was negated by being completely penned in by disgruntled punters. The whole exercise was a shambles and makes you wonder where £180 is being spent. Surely diesel isn’t more expensive than jet fuel? How can our train system consistently fail on every measure when other countries have exquisitely run and functional public transportation. I’d say they won’t be able to top it on the return journey, but I don’t want to chance my luck.

Kommune

Part of working out of a hotel means finding somewhere to eat each night. If I was thinking a tad more clearly, I would have booked an apartment so that I could’ve cooked if necessary. As fun as it can be, eating out every night can get a little bit old and I never feel great after living on whatever I can get within budget. Thankfully there’s plenty of choice in Sheffield.

Opposite my hotel was Kommune, a food hall housing multiple small food vendors providing Japanese food, Korean food, pizzas and more. I’ve already been twice which tells you something. I was skeptical of the sushi as nothing really lives up to sitting in a restaurant in Tokyo, but Edo Sushi in Kommune was fantastic. The sushi had been prepared beautifully, and the fish was perfectly tender, with an almost “melt in your mouth” quality. The Korean fried chicken I had the following night was also delicious, although my bar for that is quite high as I make a mean Korean fried chicken sauce.

There is no shortage of excellent cafés either.

Tamper Coffee

Tamper Coffee (Sellers Wheel) is New Zealand-style coffee shop. Yes, you heard me. I don’t think that’s a common utterance, but it translates roughly to a nice industrial-chique space with perfect coffee and great food. I had already shovelled breakfast into myself at the Premier Inn and what I would have ideally liked was to ensconce myself in a corner to get some work done, but I feel guilty when I do that in an independent shop. What I ended up doing was ordering coffee and a Creme Egg blondie at about 9 o’clock in the morning. It was delicious, but about the earliest I’ve gotten stuck into dessert.

The Hangar

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my membership of the Climbing Hangar at Plymouth also worked for the Sheffield branch. It was a little bit of a trek out into the industrial end of the city, but I made it for a short session. The layout was quite different from Plymouth TCH, and I found the routes a little less varied and fun. There were no real caves and the gym was completely packed so it was hard to walk around without almost bumping into someone. I managed to complete a few more challenging routes for my current level, then made my way back into the city for some pizza. I hadn’t entirely planned it that way, but torrential rain forced my hand and I ran into the closest restaurant.

Back to watching Tokyo Vice pixel art edition, thanks to Premier Inn Ultimate WiFi. I’d hate to see their idea of Penultimate WiFi…