March roundup

March's roundup includes views from my office, photos taken from the car on all the road trips we've done recently and a few from London.

My Mum - she is more trendy than me!

Forde Abbey and gardens

After going to Beer we decided to head back home and see if we could stop off somewhere else on the way.  I suggested that if we were heading past Axminster that we could go to the River Cottage canteen and  enjoy the buzz that the day before had provided.  It was a totally silly suggestion as it was a Sunday and if that wasn't the reason it would be packed out, the fact that people had travelled to the event the day before and thought the exact same thing as me did.  

Instead we bought a couple of bottles of Stinger (we shared a bottle I work in road safety after all) and two amazingly chunky leek and potato pies and decided to head somewhere for a picnic.

We drove a bit further and then followed some signs to Forde Abbey and gardens in the hope it would provide a nice setting on such a beautiful day.  It was a pretty pricey decision but since we still had the rest of the day we figured we could spend a while there, do some reading and wander around as the photos show.

Around Dorset/Devon

The photos below show what we were up to between River Cottage and wandering around the cottage. Our fish was bought from Lyme Regis which is a nice place though really busy - especially when the sun shines!  The first photo is totally misleading as to the left of me there were hundreds of children running into the sea, people taking a first bite of their ice cream before the seagulls run away with it and general British "it's sunny so I shall wear hardly anything and grin and bear it" gotta love it!  

We didn't stay very long at the beach and after wandering around the shops we took a river walk back to the car.  

  

We had to check out of the studio pretty early the next day and since the clocks had just gone forward the roads were completely empty.  We headed west to a little fishing village called 'Beer'.  I remember going there when I was about ten and really enjoying it so I had to suggest a second look.

Feast

Last night Mark cooked a treat! All from scratch we had chicken goujons and pizza.  While pottering about in Reading after a really earning morning (more on that to come!) we found a very cheap pizza stone which cooked on made the pizza super crispy.  

I don't really know how to photograph food like the amazing David Loftus and Jennifer Causey but I just had to write a proud post for my husbands cooking and believe me if you saw our oven you would wonder how anything gets hot!  Roll on the house move so that we can have a lovely new* oven and not our very aged one.

*Seriously anything newer than 15 years counts as new in my book