Day Out in Lyme Regis

Today has been a fantastic beach day! It started even before we left the house with a tropical smoothie...

This was just banana, frozen mango, desiccated coconut, milk and a little agave, topped with tropical granola. For some reason I almost always make my smoothies with frozen berries, but this was just as delicious! I loved the texture from the coconut as well, definitely one to be made again!

Mid-morning we headed over to Lyme Regis to meet up with my Dad and his new girlfriend. We got there just in time for lunch, perfect! I started with my favourite summery drink...they had Pimms and lemonade on tap, love!

And then ordered a baguette which sounded like the perfect combo for me - houmous and avocado:

This was really tasty. I've been craving avocado recently as I've had two sitting in my kitchen for over a week that have refused to ripen :( this helped keep me going until they decide to cooperate/I can buy more! I also had a share of the chips we ordered for the table...well, Liam and I ordered them but Dad ate the most! ;)

After lunch, it was time to hit the beach! Izzy had managed to extract a promise from the adults least used to being around children (!) so Dad and Chrissy went in the sea with her...

Izzy - "it's not cold, honest!"

I've cropped this one so you might be able to see Dad's face - guess he was pretty cold too!

Leaving the sea #1 - Izzy made them go in a second time after she'd been for a quick toilet break!!

Liam, Toby and I made the slightly warmer sensible decision to stay on the dry part of the sand!

Toby wouldn't even leave his pushchair...

Even with shoes on, he hated the sand. I suppose, for that reason only, we should be grateful that the beach where we live is mainly stony!

After Izzy had spent enough time in the sea, we wandered along the seafront for a bit until we came across a Fossil Fair...

They had lots of big fossils to look at/buy, and also some smaller stones which reminded me of similar ones that I used to collect when I was little. I even used to get a magazine that would send me tiny unpolished 'rubies' etc in the post! Izzy hasn't got an eye for which stones are more 'proper' than others yet, so she was drawn to the most brightly coloured ones...

and she also got to paint a little plaster ammonite...

Whilst Toby was more in his element on the stony part of the beach, chucking stones at little girls' heads if he'd had the chance in the sea!

When we first moved down to the South West, when I was 10, we used to visit Lyme Regis a lot. I associate it with two main things - fudge (we'll get to that later) and clotted cream on top of ice cream. Back then it was turkish delight flavoured ice cream, today it was coconut...

So delicious - the clotted cream goes all crunchy where it meets the cold ice cream. Not one to eat every day, but an amazing treat!

Everyone else stuck to cones of ice cream without the clotted cream (more fool them!!) and Toby had a tub of vanilla - the least messy option!!

Bit of a trek back to the car park after this, but we tell ourselves it was worth it for the views...

And the fudge that we'd bought on the way back...can't leave Lyme without it!

We were all quite boring in our choices today. Liam, Dad and Chrissy had vanilla, Izzy had clotted cream and I had nut sundae...

This looked more interesting, but was really just clotted cream with nuts around the edges. Still really tasty though!

Apart from the fudge, we didn't buy any "souvenirs" in Lyme, well, apart from Izzy that is...

Haha, not quite sure how she ended up getting bought so many things!! Well, the bookmark was a freebie that Chrissy got in her teaching pack and gave to Izzy, Dad paid for Izzy to do the "fossil" painting, and Liam and I got persuaded into buying her everything else! She is very good at coming up with reasons for why she should get what she wants!!!

We were all well and truly exhausted by the time we got home (quick fried egg sandwiches all round for dinner!) but it was worth it. Liam and I have decided that we must try to visit more local places over the summer...when you live down here you get a bit complacent but there are so many beautiful places that the children would really enjoy visiting.

Have you ever been to Lyme Regis before? Or any other seaside towns along the south coast that you'd recommend? We also used to go fossil hunting a lot in Charmouth when I was younger which was fun, must take the children when they're a bit older!