Maddie and I have been living with the build for over seven months now, and while the house is now more than habitable – and even approaching becoming a home again, the whole thing has been really exhausting. So last weekend, we took ourselves off for a weekend away at Lymington on the South Coast. We’ve been there before, staying in a pub called the Bosun’s Chair – largely because of the pies they serve for dinner!

So we did our bit to live up to the idea of the mad English and headed down to the beach. Not too sunny and very bracing, but incredibly refreshing, relaxing, peaceful, and absolutely lovely to spend some quality time together away from the pressure of the house.

So we had a night in the pub watching a not-at-all tense game of rugby against the French, eating pie and drinking beer. Then after a hearty and thoroughly deserved (no honest) breakfast, we headed off to the nearby Exbury Gardens. They are probably much more colourful later in the year when things start to bloom, but a day strolling  about beautiful woodland away from the crowds did the two of us the world of good.

And there were some splashes of colour around – lucky I discovered a close-up mode on the camera.