Don’t you just love a Bank Holiday weekend? I joined the hoards heading west, squeeeezed onto the most crowded train I’ve ever seen and a couple of hours later I was back in my native Somerset for a few days of R&R.
We spent Saturday morning mooching about the garden. Isn’t it looking pretty?
Our neighbour grows amazing veggies and left a selection on the patio first thing. I know someone who would’ve liked to munch on a few of those… meet Arabella, one of the family’s adoptive goats!
Bad luck Arrie, but we did give her some apples from the garden. After a morning at home we decided to head off to the beach at Lyme Regis in Dorset.
There are some really pretty buildings in the town. I LOVED this gorgeous house with its colourful garden and purple front door.
The town is probably best known for its fossils – some of the largest prehistoric critters ever found in the UK came from the cliffs here. As a child we’d bring a hammer and come searching for little ammonites on the beach and you see larger ones dotted all over the place, like this one set into a wall.
The wound rope was from the local gig – these boats are really only found in the South West and teams get together to race during the summer months. Lyme Regis’s gig is called Black Ven, a nearby cliff renowned for the fossils that have been found there.
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should definitely read this great novel, which is set in the town and follows the story of Mary Anning, a local girl who became one of the best-known fossil hunters of the Victorian era. I read it last year and it was lovely to revisit Lyme Regis and see where bits of the book are set.
After a mosey around and a sneaky pint in a beachside pub it was time for supper. We stumbled across the amazing Town Mill Bakery in a back street. It was such a relaxed, understated place and we loved it immediately.
The menu was as simple as can be. Enormous homemade organic pizzas and delicious cakes laid out for diners to help themselves. The interior was great, with long rustic tables, aluminium plates and mugs for drinks hanging from the ceiling.
Of course the drippy silver candelabras, vintage cutlery and industrial flour sacks got my vote!
I did say the pizzas were enormous… this was just one slice!
Check out the amazing puds! We tried the vanilla baked cheesecake and the polenta and apricot cake.
{all Decorator’s Notebook}
And I can tell you, they were pretty delicious! Where have you been this weekend?
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