Southampton 2023 - Journeying down south (Day 1)

This year we once again planned in a holiday to see Nicole’s family down in Southampton at the beginning of September. Somehow we managed again to pick a very hot week and knew from looking at the forecast we would need a lot of suncream and shade.

On our drive down, we made the most of our National Trust memberships by stopping off at Baddesley Clinton. This is a house in Warwickshire which is surrounded by a moat and was used as a place to hide Catholics from priest hunters. The story behind this house is really interesting, and the gardens were lovely to walk through to stretch our legs on the long journey. As we made it there in good time, we popped into the café for lunch where I had a cheese and onion pasty and Nicole had a curried cauliflower pasty, both of which were delicious. As well as the national trust estate and house, St Michael’s church is also just a short walk away and worth a visit.

After our stop, we carried on down to Southampton and made it in good time to unpack and get settled ready for a busy week.

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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...

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...

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...

Roaming with The Robertsons

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