What a lovely few days we have had in Devon, staying with my sister Lucy.  We left Friday evening, after a day working from home.  Which began with what is now a firm favourite.  Need I say more?

Lara made us a stunning lunch of chicken baked with goats cheese, roasted peppers, mushrooms sautéed in garlic butter and steamed broccoli, yellow and green beans (beans from the garden 🙂 )

Saturday started in a most delicious manner with muesli, grape nuts and a dollop of the River Cottage Vanilla yogurt.  Hellooooo Hugh !  Not as healthy as a sugar free natural yogurt but my goodness this was amazing.

Fortified we set out for Bridport which is a delightful and surprisingly (to me at least) town.  They hold a market on the High Street on a Saturday

there was a brass band playing which added to the charm.

I really enjoyed looking around Bridport.  The architecture is lovely.

There is a large industrial area near the High Street which is full of vintage/antique/bric a brac shops, housed in some lovely old warehouses which are being bulldozed away to be replaced by new housing.

Some of the buildings are lovelier than the others but I regularly despair at local planning decisions.  Where are all these lovely businesses to be located.? And more importantly for the local economy, where will these people be able to sell their interesting, authentic and infinitely superior to mass produced alternatives?  Not only will these local people lose their jobs, the thousands of visitors to Bridport each year, attracted by this wonderful area, will go elsewhere so the whole town will be worse off.

My main soap box topic though is summed up perfectly in this article, which accompanied a superb photographic exhibition we visited , held in the Bridport Arts Centre.  My pet topic, as many of you know, is outrage at how for the sake of profit,  small farms have been replaced by agri-business which plunders and destroys our land, poisons us with all the chemicals they use to control pests and to try to restore fertility to the nutrient depleted soil.  Then those manufacturing companies who then further reduce the nutritional value of our food by altering the natural structure of our food, padding it out with another arsenal of artificial chemicals.

The photos were large black and white images, taken in the 70’s.  They were very simple and the stunning thing about them was their ordinariness.  It was fascinating to us, to see people working on the land, in mines, in heavy industry or just sitting on a train in the 1970’s.  All accompanied with a very powerful message.  We thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition.

Trevor had kindly taken the children out to play in a large adventure playground at West Bay and we all met up at The Stable, renowned for its fantastic pizzas.

I had a pizza with potato, spinach and blue cheese.  Wow, it was excellent.

Back at the ranch our evening kicked off with a Hendricks and cucumber.  I have never had either Hendricks or gin and cucumber before and it was most enjoyable.  So any of you gin aficionados out there, try it.  Gin and tonic with cucumber is very refreshing.

We had a delicious supper.  From Hugh F-Ws family cookbook, Trevor cooked the lentil and bacon soup which was delicious.

Followed by a superb salad we made communally.  In to this lovely mix of roasted peppers, artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, avocado, sugar snap peas, olives and feta cheese was stirred some quinoa.  Fabulous.

After a fun evening playing Mah Jong with Lucy and my cousin Miranda, a lovely day drew to a peaceful end.

Sunday – first stop was one of my favourite places to sit and eat : the Town Mill Bakery in Lyme Regis.  We were lucky enough to have a table outside where we enjoyed the warm sunshine.  I had granary toast and a boiled egg with a cappuchino.  It was all perfect, as it always is.

The Town Mill area of Lyme Regis has been renovated in recent years .

This is a delightful area, with buildings perched above streams flowing out to the sea.  The streams flow out to sea that is, not the buildings 🙂 .

In some cases, the stream completely flows underneath!

These lovely old building now house a brewery, pottery, cheese shop and ice-cream parlour, restaurants and an exhibition venue.  We enjoyed the photographic exhibition and I have been inspired to have some of my photos produced on aluminium.

What a splendid morning and the sun was good to us.

It is a very long and steep hill from the town back to my sister’s.  We ambled slowly along the streams

enjoying looking at the pretty buildings

Some of which are painted more startlingly than others!

We finally reached the top of the hill – Golden Cap is in the distance.

After catching our breath, we headed over to Grandpa Ian’s for a BBQ.  It is always a pleasure to potter round their garden, admiring Helen’s design and planning so they have flowers constantly and Ian’s hard work in creating such a delightful garden.

Sunshine came for a BBQ too

We wouldn’t describe these 3 as tongue-tied – leg tied maybe?

Burgers were on the menu, followed by a Magnum or Snickers

It was just warm enough to sit outside.

See you soon Helen and Grandpa Ian

In the evening we went to Lyme Regis for “Candles on the Cobb” which we enjoyed initially from the gardens.

It was delightful.  5,000 candles were lit by a very large team of volunteers and we listened to beautiful music and took in the beauty of the moment before wandering down to the beach.

Monday morning started with muesli, grape nuts, natural yogurt, raspberries and blueberries.

My sister Lucy has often knitted.  I confess we used to tease her rather unkindly when we were younger but now I find myself very envious of her skills with a ball of yarn and 2 needles.  I would like to spend more time making things and being able to draw and sew are on my list of things to do.  After this weekend, so too is knitting.  I used to knit many years ago but have probably not tried knitting anything for about 30 years!  My little niece Olivia is delighted with her new hand knitted jumper which has not been taken off since this photo was taken.

As we were having such a lazy day at home, Lucy showed me how to knit.  She has all the knitting needles that used to belong to our Mother and Grandmother.

After a little lesson I was off.   Mummy taught us all to knit when we were children and apart from casting on which I struggled with (thank you for being so patient Lucy), I remembered what to do quite quickly.  I really enjoyed using something Mummy and Nana used to use.  I need a hobby to keep my hands occupied and out of the fridge in the evenings so this could be it 🙂 .

We decided to have a lazy lunch.

There is wonderful take away place on Lyme Regis High Street called The Whole Hog.

They sell roast meats, with accompaniments such as stuffing, apple sauce, crackling and gravy.  Get there early though because when it’s gone it’s gone!

We managed to park outside, bought our lunch and whizzed home where we all tucked in to a roast meat bap for lunch.  It was absolutely delicious and I highly recommend it if you are in Lyme Regis.

It was such a lovely weekend.  We ate lots of healthy food but I did eat too many crisps and popcorn too but as weekends away go, it was not a disaster on the food front.  It was brilliant on the enjoyment front.  Thank you Lucy, Trevor, Harry and Olivia for our wonderful weekend.