Skip to main content

Southampton 2022 - Travel to Southampton (Day 1)

There isn’t really much to say about the journey down to Southampton. It is incredibly long. My wife’s family are all based in Southampton, so we have discussed making a regular holiday down there to ensure that we can catch up with the family and stay in touch (and use it as an excuse to make a small holiday). As I am a northerner, there are plenty of places to explore, although I will let you know if it ever beats the beauty of the north! To make the most of the journey, we always try and make a stop of at the Norton Canes services on the M6. This is our choice of services as, although it is not quite halfway, it is a nice service station that is not quite as busy as Warwick services. The only downside is that it costs a fortune to get there as it’s on the M6 Toll. The money is worth it though as the drive is a lot less stressful than the other routes around Birmingham.

As we have the animals to sort out in the mornings, we don’t like to rush off as that would mean that we would have to get up extremely early, therefore we aimed to get to the services for lunch time. I had convinced Nicole that this would be a perfect opportunity to try Leon. I tried the aioli chicken box, Nicole opted for the autumn mezze box after much deliberation, and we shared a portion of lattice fries. It was exceptionally good food, and it was a healthier option then a McDonalds. We will definitely be making a journey back there at some point, although I would like to try Chozen Noodles next time as that looks delicious too.

We arrived in Southampton in time for tea. The traffic was quite light, aside from a short section around Oxford, so made for a reasonably pleasant journey. Unfortunately, we can’t advise on a good place to stay as we stayed over with Nicole’s mum. However, if she ever opens her lovely home up on AirBnB we will let you know.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Southampton 2022 - Let's go play mini golf! (Day 6)

Today was another day to catch up with family and friends. First off to meet up with Nicole’s close family friends and to meet Angela’s goddaughter. It has been a long time since I have been around a toddler. It took a bit of guess work to understand what she is trying to tell you, but she had a lot to say and was showing off all her toys! She was a big fan of her animals and diggers (aspiring after her Dad I believe). It was nice to catch up again. Next stop, mini golf with Nicole’s sister. We decided to make a journey over to New Forest Adventure Golf . This was a tricky course. It’s not like other crazy golf where there are obstacles in the way and you just hope for the best. This was more of a simple course that turned out to be quite tricky as it was very easy to knock the ball off course. Yet again, I did not win, but was much more of a victorious loser. At the New Forest Adventure Golf, it is your opportunity to take a quick trip around the New Forest and find out what each ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Southampton 2023 - Ape-ing Around at Moors Valley (Day 3)

  You may have noticed by now that there can tend to be a bit of a theme in our holidays of us at some point doing Go Ape. We have said we would like to have a go at as many of the courses as we can, and also still had some of our gift voucher to spend, therefore decided to tackle Go Ape at Moors Valley Country Park . This is somewhere that Nicole used to go a lot when she was younger as it features a play trail, which is a series of different natural and wildlife themed play equipment spread out through the woods. Although we explored this later on, we started our day off with Go Ape. I would say that this Go Ape Course is probably my favourite so far. They seem to have done a lot of work on it since Nicole last completed it (although admittedly this was probably at least 15 years ago!). They have a different safety system in place than the other Go Ape courses we have done, which involves you being connected to the course at all times once you are on a section rather than havin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Southampton 2023 - A walk back in time

  When we last went down to Southampton, we visited Longleat Safari Park and, on the way back, we drove past Stonehenge . I said this was somewhere I wanted to visit, therefore we made sure to factor it in this time. We booked online for a fairly early time to visit, and made our way on the hour or so’s journey there. A tip for anyone who visits places like this often, we decided to join the National Trust as you can get entry for free with your National Trust membership despite it being an English Heritage site, which saves you over £40 (as long as you make your membership worth the money over the rest of the year). Once we arrived and queued to get in, we opted to go straight into the exhibition to find out more about the stones and their history, before going up to the stones themselves. There is an option of a bus to take you up Stonehenge, but we decided to walk. The walk is about a 4km round trip, but does allow you to see some of the Salisbury countryside. When we were walki...
Post a Comment
Read more