If only we had ‘smellablog’ then you’d know exactly how smelly the french Brie cheese we purchased from the Christmas market stall in Brewery square was. Despite double bagging it, It stank out Maices fridge for a week, it stank out the car on our journey to The Mumbles, Wales and now it’s stinking out the fridge here at Yr Hafdy, our holiday home for the next week…..!!! Of course I did offer to keep it in my fridge but knowing myself so well, I knew I’d not be able to resist the temptation of opening it and eating before we went!
This year we decided on Wales as our Christmas vacation. The previous years we’d been to Devon where the weather always seemed to be rather inclement so we thought we’d try somewhere completely different so plumped for Wales! Wet Wales that is, according to everyone we’ve spoken to! We’d kept our eye on the weather forecast for the past few weeks and there was always rain involved. Ah well, nothing we can do about the weather except dress appropriately and fortunately we, that is Maice, myself and Sir Winston all have the appropriate clothing, which is waterproof and warm.
As per usual, weeks before our trip we’d regrouped over a few cappuccino’s and made a list…a food list, a drinks list and a ‘to-do’ list. To take advantage of the 25% discount on six bottles of wine we set off to Sainsbury’s (other supermarkets are available of course) and purchased 12 bottles of wine, Prosecco and champagne, not imagining for an instance that just the two of us could possibly consume so much within one week! Also, just to be on the ‘safe side’ Maice stored them all at her place, you know, just in case I became ‘thirsty’ during the week and found myself opening a bottle or two! The food shop we did the day before we were leaving which, as we anticipated, was hectic, so armed with our shopping list we returned to Sainsbury’s to do battle with a) the trolleys and b) the other shoppers. We had a list and this year we’d made a pact……we were going to challenge ourselves by sticking to said list. We didn’t want any rogue items finding their way into the trolley. We know full well from experience that we always take far too much food with us so we made a food plan, like we do every year, and we were going to stick to it. I was totally flummoxed however when an ‘inedible’ faux leather skirt made its way into the trolley, placed there by Maice. I scoured the shopping list and NO, it wasn’t on there! Honestly, some people just can’t stick to the plan! So having already gone ‘off-piste’ we carried on our journey through the supermarket, up and down the aisles until we emerged an hour and a half later, I kid you not, with our shopping, the majority of which thankfully was on the list. Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. Just when we thought it was safe to go home we realised we had Pearls gifted food voucher to spend in M&S so we headed into Weymouth to go purchase more food! Before we entered M&S however we felt it necessary to regroup at a new coffee shop in town, which came highly recommended by Sam, Maice’s colleague and a few others. It’s called Cafe Jazz and although rather bijou and quaint inside, the service was great, the cappuccinos were artisan and the cheese scone and cinnamon bun were delicious. We definitely needed a pick-me up before our trip into the bijou M&S food hall with its narrow aisles. As one can imagine, it was very busy in there but we did well and only managed to overspend by £2.30. We descended out of the chaos with more cheese, accompaniments for cheese and some brandy cream. I am pleased to report that on this occasion, no items of clothing found their way into the food trolley!
Having dropped Milly off at Purrfect cattery that morning for her weeks holiday it was time to head off to the Mumbles. Maice was collecting me at 11:00am but was running late so arrived at 11:30am and then spent the next fifteen minutes repacking the car to accommodate my stuff. Winston of course was in his usual position purchased high on top of all the coats, in his bed, on the back seat. I would like to say that we set off straight away but early that morning, not only had I popped in to The Horse with the Red Umbrella to collect a home-made puttanesca sauce, made by the lovely Franca, I’d also popped over to Lidl to purchase fresh bread and a couple of croissants for the journey. Maice had also popped to the Costa Coffee drive thru before coming to pick me up so we decided to drink our coffee and eat our croissants in the car outside my place. Goodness knows what the neighbours must have thought when they walked past the parked car and saw us two eating and drinking in the front seats, with a dog perched high up in the back seat. But hey, that’s Christmas for you!
At 11.55am we started our journey. Maice was driving and I was navigating and in charge of the road atlas and the phone map-app. It was going to take us three hours to get there however Maice had been reliably informed that there would be delays getting into Wales so we added on another hour. It was such a windy day that the car was being buffeted from side to side and soon became a real white-knuckle ride for Maice who found herself gripping onto the steering wheel to make sure we stayed within our lane. Just before we arrived in Wales three things occurred …a) we hit the queue just before the Prince of Wales bridge, the other bridge was closed due to the high winds b) it started to rain, no surprise there then and c) whilst sitting in the ‘one hour queue we saw three double rainbows, which according to Maice were three pockets of joy. And, according to Sally traffic on BBC Radio 2 we were one of 4 million cars on the road today. Amazing!
Emerging from the queue we stopped off at the services as by now we were all needing the loo. At just before 5.00pm we arrived at Yr Hafdy, five and a half hours after we’d set off. Sir Winston had been such a good boy all the way, even when he was nearly dethroned from his perch due to a hard braking incident! We unloaded the car, switched on all the electric heaters due to it being a tad chilly, chose our bedrooms…Maice as usual ending up with the double bedded room, me relegated to the twin bedded room, unpacked our bags, set up the bar, put the pizza in the oven, rearranged the lounge, cracked open a bottle of Prosecco and raised a toast to Day 1 of our holiday! We’d made it. We were looking forward to a chilled evening and a good nights sleep as tomorrow morning we had to be up early to participate in an hour and a quarter ashtanga yoga session on Zoom! Why we agree to such things is beyond me…….!
On that note, it’s Nos da from the three of us..
M&A and Sir Winston xxx
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