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 - Drive home (Day 8)

The drive home was horrendous. There were no less than 10 accidents, there was queues everywhere and the alternative route was suggested through Reading. We did not opt for this route as we didn’t want to head towards the masses of people travelling to London for HRH’s funeral. I think the total journey took us twice as long as it should have and is not one that I would like to do again. Hopefully next time will be better. I didn’t get to twist Nicole’s arm into another Leon’s as we didn’t quite make it there for lunchtime. Let’s see what the next holiday has to offer. We realised when writing the posts from this holiday that we really didn't do a very good job at taking photos. Watch this space for more photos from our future adventures!

Harry Potter Adventure 2023 - Driving down south (Day 1)

Over the past few years, Nicole has been invited to guest lecture at the University of Reading. This year the lecture was face-to-face for the first time since COVID. This meant that we made it into a mini holiday break. Why not when it is such a long way to drive! We set off as soon as we could on Saturday morning as we were hoping to stop off at Henley for some lunch and a wander before we set off to our AirBnB for the weekend. The drive down felt very long! I don’t know if this was due to setting off earlier, so we didn’t have lunch halfway down, or maybe I am just getting a bit more impatient with long journeys. We made it down with few issues and hit Henley at just the right time for lunch. However, during the last few minutes of the car journey, I spotted a bird I had not seen before and soon became fixated on finding out what the mystery bird was. I didn’t think I would need to bring the binoculars and bird identifier book so had left it at home. I had it in my head it was a big...

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

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Roaming with The Robertsons

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