Do you remember back in January when I wrote about five things I wanted to do after lockdown?

No me neither to be honest, but one of them was apparently to go to the theatre, (which does sound like something I’d say), and I was reminded of it recently when I was invited to make the theatre dream come true with a trip to London to see The Prince of Egypt at the Dominion Theatre.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to see a proper musical, and needless to say I was excited. I was excited more generally too for going to London and doing fun things like having lunch in a restaurant in Covent Garden that I’d seen in a magazine. I wouldn’t want to live in London, but there is something magical about a day out there. I really felt that last weekend. People travel hundreds and thousands of miles to visit London, and here I am able to pop there for the day on the train. I really am very lucky.

 

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It was particularly magical visiting at Christmas and getting to see all of the Christmas lights and soak up some ‘Christmas in the capital’ vibes with a trip to see The Prince of Egypt.

Here I am, posing for a not at all awkward selfie before the start of the show: View Post

It’s been two weeks now since we got the new puppy and honestly time has warped into this sort of new baby speed, where individual days seem to take weeks to pass but you’re not sure what day it is or when you last ate. What I do know is that it’s three weeks now since we went away for the weekend in a motorhome from Goboony and it’s about time I told you about it.

Our motorhome weekend was designed to be a last hoorah before the puppy arrived, a final slurp at the cup of freedom, before we realised exactly what we’d done to our lives i.e. changed them completely forever.

It was brilliant, as we expected it to be, because we love motorhome holidays – they make me want to sell the house and train the cats to sleep in bunk beds and take to the road. We’ve done two motorhome holidays before, both longer trips and both with loans from Bailey. For the first one we went around the UK ticking off all the counties I’ve never visited before and the second was a tour of Ireland. (Some parts more interesting than others.)

This was only a short break – three nights – but it still felt like an adventure. I was nervous beforehand as the motorhome we’d chosen was seven metres long, but I also knew that once I got behind the wheel I’d feel like a badass bitch and want to become a truck driver. Honestly, driving anything sizable makes me feel so powerful. I especially love it when you get surprised looks from men. ‘A woman? Driving something larger than a Fiat Punto? Whatever is the world coming to?’

What is Goboony?

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In case you don’t follow me on Instagram, we are getting a puppy at the end of the month. It will be Belle’s puppy, so I’m under strict instructions about the use of things like the term ‘pupdate’ in Instagram captions, much to my regret.

Before the puppy arrives and takes over our lives in the best, fluffiest possible way, we’ve been making the most of our freedom by having days out and weekends away and going to IKEA. One such outing recently was an overnight stay in Windsor.

I think I may have been to Windsor once before, but I’ve never been to Windsor Castle, and to be honest if you go to Windsor and don’t go to the castle, have you even been? It would be like going to Cheddar and not eating some cheese. (I think I’ve done this too to be honest.) During our 24 hours in Windsor then I was definitely going to visit the castle, just to prove I existed. I think that’s how it works.

Our accommodation in Windsor

We were put up for the night in Windsor, very generously, by the aptly named Accommodation Windsor.

Accommodation Windsor has a wide range of self catering accommodation throughout the town – 45 properties in fact – ranging from small. serviced apartments through to a 5-bedroom guest house right in the town centre. They’re nearly all walking distance into Windsor, and their vibe is clean, modern home away from home. View Post

In collaboration with Hotels.com, but all views are my own.

What are your holiday plans for 2021? With international travel still complicated and expensive, chances are you’re staying in the UK this year. We certainly won’t be doing anything exotic. No American road trips or cruising the Caribbean for us. We have already had a fabulous few days in Pembrokeshire in May, and we have some time mid-July set aside for a weekend in a hired motorhome, but aside from that we will be keeping things pretty relaxed. Partly this is also because we’re planning on getting a dog this year – puppy training and settling in is going to be taking precedent in 2021.

One thing I would really like to do though, before our lives are taken over by pets, is to take a trip down to Cornwall to see my Dad and family there. We were lucky enough to see each other in January last year, before everything went pear shaped, but that’s still nearly a year and a half ago now – an awfully long time to not see people.

We live in Somerset, so we can just about get to Cornwall in a (very long) day, but we much prefer to make a mini break out of it and find a hotel in Cornwall for a night or two. Let’s be honest, we’ll make a mini break out of literally anything given half the chance. I bloody love a mini break.

Catching up with family is the perfect excuse for a bit of time away though, whether that’s a hotel, camping or airbeds on the floor. They say a change is as good as a rest after all don’t they? (Although I’m not convinced an airbed ever counts as a rest.)

It’s lovely just have a change of scene, to see the sea, to eat in new places – simple pleasures like fish and chips on the beach can be so joyous when we really appreciate them. We’ve all been stuck in our own homes for so long now, any opportunity to regain that sense of freedom, to gain a different perspective, has to be a good thing.

If you have family that you haven’t seen for a while then I really hope you get to see them this summer. Fingers crossed for some summer sunshine too.

Okay, I’m going to jump right in and say it, even if it makes me look stupid… PUFFINS – who knew they were so small??

I’d never seen a puffin in real life until we stayed at Point Farm for a few days and took a boat out to Skomer Island, but seriously, in all the pictures I’ve ever seen they look about the size of a penguin? All I can say is that those pictures must be VERY close up, because puffins are actually more like pigeons. Pigeons with big heads and colourful beaks, but pigeons nonetheless.

Also, they live UNDERGROUND?? In actual burrows.

Honestly, my mind was blown. I felt like a right idiot having spent 43 years imagining these penguin type birds, nesting on rocks and beaches, when all the time there they were, using their tiny beaks to burrow underground.

Spoiler: this is not an accurate representation of a puffin:

If you do want the chance to see puffins in real life, which I absolutely recommend, then Point Farm on the Pembrokeshire coast is the ideal base for a holiday as it’s just a 15 minute drive from the campsite to catch the boat over the Skomer Island.

It’s also a really lovely campsite, puffins aside. Point Farm is small, (just like the puffins), so perfect if you like a bit more of a quiet, intimate camping experience without a lot of noise or kerfuffle. Point Farm is an eco site, dog friendly, with great facilities and amazing sunsets. There are just six camping pitches, plus two fully equipped shepherd’s huts if glamping is more your thing.

Glamping is definitely more my thing – I will quite happily go to my grave never putting up another tent – and so we stayed in the very cosy Tawny shepherd’s hut. View Post

How okay is it to go somewhere for a night away just to have more Deliveroo options?

I ask this in a purely rhetorical sense, because I’ve already done it, and it was amazing. It’s one of the downsides of living in an otherwise very lovely part of the country – that when you want a takeaway your choice is limited primarily to pizzas, kebabs, curries and Chinese food. That’s not to say I wouldn’t happily eat all of those things, but sometimes what you really want is just to have some sashimi delivered to your door.

When Your Apartment offered me and Belle a night in one of their serviced apartments in Bristol then, our first thought wasn’t ‘oh how lovely, the chance to enjoy the culture of a big city’, it was ‘yaassss! More Deliveroo options!’

In fairness, we did live in Bristol for about three years, so we have already seen plenty of what Bristol has to offer. It’s a fantastic city – small enough to feel manageable but with a vibrant food and arts scene. When we stayed for my birthday weekend at the end of April it was a little restricted in terms of what was open, but from our apartment in Cotham I was still able to walk down into the city centre and around the harbourside, which is always buzzing with people.

The premise behind Your Apartment is simple – serviced apartments that feel like home. They’re bright, colourful, clean and fully equipped with everything you need to create a home away from home vibe, including all the techy stuff like superfast Wi-Fi and smart TVs. They have apartments all around Bristol as well as in Cardiff and Liverpool, and Your Apartment Clifton Village even has its own exclusive co-working space – ideal for business travel to Bristol.

We stayed on the top floor of Rowan Tree in Cotham, so we had that sloppy ceiling penthouse apartment feel that always makes me feel kind of metropolitan and sophisticated. View Post

As you will know by now, Belle and I love a mini break. Whether it’s a wet and windy December weekend in a vintage VW camper van on the Cornish coast* or a luxury boutique hotel in the Cotswolds, the theme is normally the same – some nice food, outings in the day that I generally enjoy more than Belle, and then snuggly evenings with a film or a murder mystery.

It’s not a bad format really, especially the outings, where I normally get to sneak in something like a model village or obscure wool museum. I imagine some parents of teenagers don’t manage to have quite as relaxed breaks as we do.

Our recent weekend away at Haven’s Littlesea Holiday Park on the Dorset coast did not disappoint. In fact, our caravan, if you can even call it that, was one of the nicest I’ve ever stayed in, and I have stayed in a LOT of caravans. I actually went as far as to double check the booking to see if it was actually a lodge, but no, definitely a caravan. It was a platinum caravan with a sea view, which is top of the range, but even so, very impressive.

The living and dining area was incredibly spacious, and had a proper three piece suite and dining table and chairs rather than the usual bench seating you get in a caravan. The kitchen was well equipped with a full-sized oven and fridge freezer, microwave, dishwasher and even a washing machine, which I’m not sure I’ve seen in a caravan before. I would have liked a cafetiere, but you can’t have anything I suppose.

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When I made my list of 50 things I wanted to do before I was 50, I rather ambitiously included ‘visit every country in Europe’. It was pre-Brexit, and pre-global pandemic, and life seemed somehow much more straightforward, like I’d just be able to pop over to a European city every weekend if I felt like it.

I also didn’t really appreciate quite how many countries there actually are in Europe. How many do you reckon? 30 or so maybe?

Nope.

There are 44 countries in Europe currently recognised by the UN, according to a quick Google, although more if you include states? It’s a bit confusing. It’s a lot basically. A lot of mini breaks.

Some of them I’ve been to already, which is great, I can get some ticks in the boxes, but others I hadn’t even really considered, like Monaco. Monaco is the second smallest country in the world, second only to the Vatican City, so I suppose it’s not surprising that it went under my radar a bit. I know it vaguely from the Grand Prix, the gambling and the tax haven status, but I can’t say I’d given it a great deal of thought otherwise.

Still, I’ll have to visit if I’m going to complete the challenge, so I decided to find out a bit more about what Monaco is all about and what a holiday in Monaco might look like.

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On my bedroom wall, right opposite my bed, I have a big picture of the Amalfi Coast. It’s full of these amazing azure blues and warm pink tones and I absolutely love it. I’ve never been to Italy before, unless you count landing in Turin airport and driving straight to the French Alps, which frankly I don’t, but I dream of a romantic road trip along the Italian coast. Just imagine it, it would be bliss wouldn’t it? And the beauty is that there are so many Italian road trip destinations to chose from, there’s something to suit everyone.

Who wouldn’t if they were waking up to this picture every day?

I think there’s also a part of me that wants to go with either Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon, sampling the best restaurants along the way and listening to their impressions as I sip my Chianti and gaze at the sea.

At the moment, when I’m not even allowed to leave the house, it feels like a bit of a tease, but then I think it’s important to have things to look forward to isn’t it? I mean sure, work has nose dived and I won’t be able to afford an Italian road trip even when I am allowed on the roads, but then I’m sure I read somewhere once that people get as much enjoyment from planning a holiday as from actually going on one, so I’m going to go with that.

I never thought I would actually miss driving, but I definitely have over the last few weeks – I’ve missed that feeling of being able to go anywhere you want, watching the world whizz by. To help me get excited about my fantasy road trip, Sandown Mercedes asked me to stare longingly at pictures on Pinterest for hours and hours* and compile a list of my dream Italian road trip destinations. And, after I go, I can then make my own photo prints to hang on the wall!

(*Okay so they didn’t use these words exactly, but I took it as implied.) View Post

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A few months ago in my book group we read Wild by Cheryl Strayed. It’s about a woman, (played by Reese Witherspoon in the film, who is my ultimate girl crush), who goes on a full on trek along the Pacific Crest Trail as a reaction to a series of stressful events in her life. She’s completely unprepared and it’s an incredible journey for her, both physically and emotionally. Along the way though she learns all sorts of lessons about forgiveness, peace and herself. The idea is that the challenge and the enforced relationship with nature make her connect back with herself.

Now I have to say that I wasn’t a massive fan of the book, BUT it did get me hankering for the outdoors. I can totally see that a hike like that would give you the space and time to reflect on your life, what you’ve done, where you’ve been and what you want your life to look like in the future. If, like Cheryl Strayed, you find yourself yearning for that kind of experience, then a hiking holiday could be just what you need.

If you’re looking for fresh air and adventure for your next holiday then hiking in the USA is a top choice. There is so much diversity of landscape in the USA, with so many different holiday hiking destinations to choose from. From national parks to rivers, mountains to deserts, it really does have something to suit all tastes.

To inspire your next USA hiking holiday, I’ve picked out a few of the best holiday destinations for hikers in the US. If you have any others you’d like to add, please do leave a comment and let me know. If you like the idea of hiking but also enjoy a little bit of luxury, you could always splash out on something like airport transfers by booking travel with Limo Find. View Post

There are a lot of things Belle doesn’t like – courgettes, food that’s been near courgettes, balloons, fireworks, other people – but when she likes something, she really likes it. Two things she likes happened on the same day last week when we went for a night away at Solent Hotel and Spa in Fareham, near Southampton.

The first was a back massage. You might be surprised that Belle likes a back massage given that being touched or too close to people is one of the issues that comes with her sensory processing disorder, but actually having that kind of firm pressure contact can have a very positive effect on her. She likes tight hugs (from me) and she sleeps every night with a weighted blanket, so I guess it’s a similar sensation.

A back massage where you only have to wander down from your hotel room in what might well be the comfiest robe known to mankind, (she begged me to buy it to take it home), is even better as there’s no need to even go outside. (‘Outside’ is on Belle’s ‘do not like’ list.)

The Solent Hotel and Spa has the classic pool, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi set up, as well as a separate area for treatment rooms, plus a gym. I’ve never really understood people who go on holiday and go to the gym, but each to their own I guess. Everything was very clean and although the hotel seemed busy, I never saw more than about half a dozen people in the pool area at any one time, so you had that lovely relaxed, exclusive feel.

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