Weekend in North Devon

Hello! How are you all? I seem to have gone AWOL over the last week, whoops. The summer holidays got a bit on top of me - we have been busy doing lots of things, meeting up with friends etc...without a camera in sight!
I did take lots of photos last weekend though, albeit on my iphone rather than with my camera, so I thought I would share those with you to "get me back into" blogging. I went up to North Devon for my friend's birthday weekend. I got a train up early Saturday morning and came back Sunday lunchtime...while Liam stayed at home with the children, bliss!

As I said, the train was - by my standards - early on the Saturday morning, so all I had time for before leaving home was a coffee. I had a Luna bar on the train to keep me going...

I wish I'd eaten more though as we didn't end up eating lunch til gone 2pm!! When I arrived in Barnstaple I went to my friend's house to catch up with everyone. There were 9 of us in total (including my friend and her husband) for the weekend. Once we were all organised, we headed to Tesco to buy lunch and then drove to a beach called Braunton. We parked our cars there before embarking on a walk to Croyde beach, which took us about 1.5 hours. Lots of pretty views, and Go Ahead bars provided by our host to keep us all going...

When we made it to Croyde beach, we spread out our towels and sat down to eat lunch. I was so hungry by this point!! Falafel wrap (this wasn't like normal falafel wraps - it contained sweet potato falafel and mango chutney...really good), fruit and water...

plus a pack of veg crisps...love these!

Once we'd all finished eating we walked down to the sea for a paddle...

Sadly we only had about half an hour by the sea as we figured with 6 girls wanting showers we better make sure we were back at the house with plenty of time to get ready for our evening out!

We still had to walk back to the cars...

With more great views - at this point I was wishing I had brought my camera with me!

Once we got back to Sarah's house, we all took it in turns to shower and get ready. I had a berry cider whilst at the house...

I normally stick to spirits if I'm drinking, and whilst this was quite nice I think it contributed to my stomach ache/bloatedness later in the evening...too many bubbles!!

For dinner, Sarah had reserved us a table at The Bank in Barnstaple. We were seated in a room at the back, with balloons all over the table, so whilst there were a few other diners also in the room, it felt like our own private party!! Unfortunately my phone didn't deal too well with the low lighting, but these are the photos I took. Strawberry daquiri...I ended up having 2 of these...amazing!!

And for dinner, pancakes filled with a creamy mushroom and green bean mix...

This was really tasty, full of different types of mushrooms. It was also really filling - I surprised myself by turning down dessert, despite things like banoffee pie on the menu!!

We went on to a couple of bars after dinner, including a cocktail bar where I decided I was ready for "dessert" of a creamy chocolate mint cocktail...

So good, but it definitely finished me off for the night! I was in a lot of pain with a really bad tummy ache by this point so I stuck to water after this. I still did lots of dancing to "retro 80s music" (Mama Mia, Grease, Macarena, Build Me Up Buttercup etc...it was like being back at uni when that type of music used to play all the time!) when we went on to the nightclub though - at first I had to kind of force myself for my friend's sake, as I was in so much pain, but by the end I was having fun again!

We didn't go home until about 2.30am so I was hoping for a nice lie-in without children. Unfortunately my body clock had other ideas and woke me up at 7.30am. Boo. I read in bed for a few hours before heading downstairs to have breakfast. Cocoa rocks, orange juice and several mugs of tea...

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing at Sarah's house, watching DVDs and waking up properly. I got a train home just after lunch (after teaching Sarah to make omelettes, which we filled with cheese, mushrooms, peppers and onion. Photo didn't come out though) and came home to flowers...

and Liam having finally got round to putting up my graduation photo and his guitar (still need to buy a frame for his grad photo, and he has another guitar that he wants to hang on the wall too), haha, apparently he missed me!! ;-)

Such a nice weekend away - just what I needed to recharge my batteries - but it was nice to be home too. Izzy and Toby had so many things to tell me about what they'd been up to with Liam all weekend, so it sounds like a nice time was had by all! :)

Have you been away anywhere nice recently? Any summer holidays to far off places?? We aren't going abroad this year so have just done little trips. Butlins, the zoo, my weekend away etc. There's plenty to do around where we live - and with the children so young it is probably easiest to stay close by anyway - but it was lovely to sit on a sandy beach in the sunshine for half an hour...if only the weather was more consistently summery here!!