Weekend Re-cap

I've already talked about the most important thing I did on Friday, but its worth mentioning that I also had my hair cut/coloured too :) So I now feel and look like a proper version of me, rather than the bedraggled version of me I had become!

My SIL's car had broken down after driving to Scotland and back so I had to go to Basingstoke to fetch her before heading down to the New Forest to the Hen Weekend. It made it quite a round trip! Fordingbridge is only about 30 minutes from my house, but adding an extra hour on the journey sucked, specially as the traffic starts to build up towards the coast on a Friday afternoon.
We made it down to the barn by about 5pm. This is where we would be staying for the next few days.

It was a great venue in the most idyllic location. It was nestled on the edge of a working farm along with some other smaller holiday cottages. This barn slept up to 18 people!

When we got inside we were told to go and find a room, it was very ANTM as we dashed from room to room trying to decide which looked the best! We ended up in a downstairs room with the en-suite shower room. We definately scored by arriving early.

Whilst we waited for everyone else to arrive, snacks were laid on and I swear I just ate constantly for about 4 hours! We eventually had dinner at 9pm when everyone was there and it was lamb chilli, jacket potatoes and salad. At the meal I noticed a heavily pregnant woman who was just eating a bowl of beef mince. Turns out that she only eats beef, chips and crisps (preferably Wotsits). I'm not being funny, but seriously?! For the sake of her unborn child she couldn't get over her food phobias? Over the rest of the weekend she only ate Wotsits, crisps and when we had a curry she had a plate of popadoms. Anyway, I digress.

After the meal we sat down to watch some films (after getting into my PJ's of course!). We started with Heathers and moved onto Ferris Buellers Day Off. I kept dozing off during both of them, eventually going to bed half way through the second film. I don't think it had helped matters that it was really cold in the barn so all I wanted to go was get into bed!

The following morning I was up at 7am - yup, the joys of not drinking meant I was fresh as a frickin' daisy at 7am! So I got dressed and went running around the farm.... with my camera.

It was seriously mind blowing, I felt so relaxed, so free, so happy. It was such a beautiful day. Here are a stack of shots from my run.

I saw lots of incredible spider webs, all marked out with dew, they were EVERYWHERE!

This dandelion almost looked frosty! It was cold and damp, but wonderfully fresh outside.

And doesn't this grass just look amazing? All those water droplets were just so worthy of a photo in their own right. So pretty.

I also saw quite a bit of wildlife, two swans flying over head which I tried to snap, but I got two blotches in the sky as my camera didn't focus in time. Which was annoying as I'd sprinted to try and get them! I also saw plenty of bunny rabbits and two deer :)

The farm was right next to a stream, it had several crossing points, the first was a suspension bridge that really wobbled around when I sprinted over it. But if I'd continued that way I'd have had to run through a field of cows and I thought that given that I was on my own, that wouldn't have been my best idea! This was the other rickety bridge, I didn't cross this one.



Running around the fields was great, some of the run I was in the fields other times I was on the tracks.
I got back to the barn about 8.40am and felt awesome. Some other people had woken up by this point and were already in the process of making a cooked breakfast - which was welcomed by my cold hungry body!

That day we walked into Fordingbridge for a look around, it was quite a small town, but fairly cute. We went to a park to see some ducks and to play on the slides, swings, etc.

There was horrid little girl at the river who kept chasing the ducks, I was totally willing her to trip and fall in. I couldn't believe her parents didn't care that she was chasing all the ducks. I was most unimpressed.

We walked back to the barn for lunch and I had a marmite sandwich - classic! I was hungry so totally could have eaten more, but there was a takeaway curry planned for the evening, so eating light wasn't the worst thing I could have done! After lunch we went to a pub across the road from the farm, where I proceeded to catch the sun quite alot! I was suprised how much my skin caught, I was wearing factor 25! We posed for some obligatory farm/hay shots when we got back.

After a short excursion to find some cows to tickle and getting my legs caught in a rogue piece of rusty barbed wire in a field, it was time to begin the Krypt-hen-factor. A series of challenges for the hens + bride to be to complete. There was a Hula Hooping challenge, a clay challenge, a picture challenge and a puzzle to complete. It was good fun! After that we were given an envelope with a challenge for the evening. We had to recreate a look each from the 1970's.

I'm not sure how well we did to be honest, I wore a flowery dress, drew a flower on my face, wore wellies and tied some string into my hair (and put a few plaits in). Here's some polaroids of me and my SIL.


Once we were ready we went to collect the takeaway (in our random 1960's-1980's looks). After food, more games were played. I won this badge.


There were more games as the evening progressed, beer pong, I have never..., 'Bride' and Seek, etc. I very much enjoyed Bride and Seek. The first time I hid in the shower and the second time I hid on top of a tumble dryer in a cupboard. By about 1am I was shattered and went to bed. I'm not sure what time the party finished, but the place was a mess when I got up at 8am the following morning. I spent the morning tidying so that when everyone got up it was mostly done. We had some breakfast (this time coco pops, a crossaint and a sausage - random!), and then I did some more tidying and we bailed!

It was a good weekend, but I think the bit I most enjoyed was the run I did on my own on the Saturday morning. I was totally glad to get home by midday on the Sunday to see my husband and my pugs.