Saturday 12th January
We woke up to such a surreal view of fields covered in a lifting fog as the sun shines down through the fogged up windows of the cottage. It was magical. It was exactly and perfectly what I imagined the English country side to be like.
Auntie Tessa informed us that just down the road from her old house in Suffolk was where Ed Sheeran's music video for "Castle on the Hill" was filmed (OMG!), so I'm sure you can guess where our first stop was today! We drove down to where a walk through the fields starts and went for a wonderful stroll through the fields (another dream activity) until we reached the sea wall that "Ed" and his friends run along in the video and the old ruins that they are sitting on. Auntie Tessa being the great sport that she is didn't hesitate in helping us to recreate the shots haha.
Side note: I love that there aren't property fences along fields here, there are by-ways and other paths that are public access along and through the fields which makes for really lovely walking routes through the countryside, absolutely love it!
Auntie Tessa then treated us to a delicious lunch of carrot and coriander soup at a super cute cafe tucked into the side of the hill by the marina. It was so cozy and quaint (and warm - it was a freezing day!).
After some sightseeing and history from Tessa of the local area we headed to Orford bakery for coffee and an amazing baked good that I cannot say and have no hope trying to spell, but it was like a sweet sugar coated bun, with a delicate liquorice flavour throughout. Mmmm scrumptious, my mouth is watering thinking about it.
We then headed back to the cottage for a lovely evening of doing doing a jigsaw puzzle with Tessa.
Sunday 13th January
Auntie Tessa took us to a nearby town that's by the seaside for a walk along the beach. It was very cute, lined with beach huts, although the water was a weird coco colour and apparently it always is! It was also a dog beach and there were so many cute cockapoos and maltipoos. The thing I found interesting was the number of people that had multiple dogs that were all identical!
We had another amazing lunch at another little seaside town nearby, that also doubled as an antique store, so we had a scrounge after lunch and found some very interesting things, before heading back to the cottage where we said goodbye to Tessa for a couple of weeks.
Monday 14th - Wednesday 16th January
We spent the next few days chilling out and getting ourselves together after a fairly busy start to the trip. We caught up on washing, went for a walk through the woods, which was so lovely, placed a food order and I (secretly) was getting organised for Sam's birthday.
Our food order arrived in a little Tesco truck at 9:15pm on Wednesday night (which was very exciting!). The delivery man brought our food into the conservatory in little crates where we unpacked the goods and admired our food for the next week. What a world we live in. Amongst the order was the all important Colin the Caterpillar cake for Sam's birthday, which I managed to somehow hide before he saw!
Thursday 17th January
Celebration day! Happy Birthday Sam!
After Facetime calls from family, balloons, birthday card and presents, we made a scrumptious birthday brunch of Richmond sausages and eggs (I've got Sam hooked).
We spent most of the day exploring the woods nearby (Captain's Wood), and playing with the drone. It was great fun just playing with photography and taking a chilled walk (quite literally) through the woods together.
About three quarters of the way in Sam realises that in all the setting up of the drone he had lost his phone case. So we went on a hunt! We retraced our steps (a long way back), and just about when we'd given up, at exactly the same time, we both spotted the phone case laying on the path! What a find. Phone case firmly back in place we continued our exploring and came across a heard of small fawn coloured deer, that were so beautiful! They were so cute! And they just bounded through the forest and at quite a pace in the open areas!
As the sun started to set and the temperature began to drop even further we headed back to the cottage for the evening. We got the fire going and the heating (kind of) working, put on the tunes, cracked out the nibbles, and had a blast making Prawn Pad Thai for dinner.
And then of course it was cake time!
Friday 18th & Saturday 19th January
The next couple of days were spent chilling out doing jigsaws, walking through the woods and enjoying being cozy in the cottage with a log fire while it was freezing outside. We found some marshmallows and founded what can only be described as a marvellous creation, are you ready? Toasted marshmallow sandwiched in-between an Oreo! I know, incredible!
Sunday 20th January
We ran out of bread. So we did what any normal person would do. We walked a two hour return trip to the bakery in the next town over to get said bread.
In all seriousness we set out across the fields to Orford (the next town over, and the closest town with a bakery - or any kind of store for that matter) to get a loaf of bread. It was a glorious day and the walk through the fields was like something from Pride and Prejudice, it was so lovely and something we had both wanted to do! So after an hour we made it to the town, got a delish loaf of bread and of course a bakery treat for our efforts and sat and ate it in the sunshine under Orford Castle, before making the hour walk back.
The thing that we both really loved about this area was how seasonal it was. It felt very connected to the Earth, in terms of things happened at certain times of the year, i.e. certain crops planted and harvested. There are no supermarkets or shops. Theres a bakery for bread, and a butcher for meat (and you have to walk to the next town for it). It felt very grounded, and simple. I loved it.
Monday 21st January
We set our alarms and woke up at 4am (a ridiculous hour I know) and stood outside in -6°C to watch the total lunar eclipse. Wow. It was breathtaking. Absolutely spectacular. Nature is amazing. It was such a special moment and I felt so privileged to have been able to see such a magical event.
We had a lazy morning and then went out and explored "Turnstall Forest" just at the end of the road for the afternoon until the sun went down. It was so pretty, and quite different to our other little woods. It had big, tall, alpine trees, the sort of forests that we were very excited to see. It was also extremely, extremely cold and by the time we got back my hands were in so much pain from the sheer cold! Nothing that a nice warm bath couldn't fix though!
After much debate over the necessity of it, I made a Tesco snack order (and yes I did also top up on bread, the walk was fun once).
Tuesday 22nd January
The weather wasn't as nice today so after a walk through Captain's wood we cozied on up and spent most of the day doing a massive and very hard looking jigsaw puzzle.
We spent the evening looking at some house sits and found one for a bunny sit in Geneva that required bunny experience, but we had seen it had been up for a while so we thought we would try our luck and apply anyway.
Oh and our snack order arrived!! Very exciting night.
Wednesday 23rd January
What a day we had from start to finish.
The UK do this thing for easter called the White Creme Egg Hunt. Basically, there are a number of hidden White chocolate creme eggs, and if you find one, you can win a ridiculous amount of money as well as get to eat the rare egg. In the past it's just been a consumers things, and they would sell the eggs on Ebay for money, so it was a choice do you eat the rare egg or sell it? Well this year Cadbury got involved and have made a whole competition out of it. This year all you need to do if you find a white creme egg (each store company randomly gets a number of them) is to scan the barcode and you go in the draw to win, so you get the chance to win, annnnd you get to eat the egg. Cadbury have also added "virtual white creme eggs" which they have hidden into advertisements for different companies and products. If you find one of these then again you take a photo and upload it to the website and it will tell you if the code is for a white creme egg or not. In the case of the virtual eggs, you go in the draw to win money, and you get sent a white creme egg to eat! Cadbury have a hints page on their website, where they will release one very cryptic clue at a time as to the location of an egg. Well we had looked at this and found a "hidden listing" on booking. com where there is a room in London for 10 pounds completely decorated in Cadbury creme egg stuff, and with creme eggs. Within the room, is a hidden white creme egg and you have the duration of your 24hr stay to try and find it, and if you do, you win. Well you bet we were going to try and get this room. It was meant to become available at 8am this morning, so we got up early set up all our devices and tried our luck. Well it seems the listing didn't work, there seems to have been some sort of glitch, and we later found out that at 1pm someone managed to get the room. So we went from ridiculously excited to fairly disappointed. Thennnn while I was on the phone to Mum and Dad, Sam calls out to tell me that we got the house sit we applied for! We had gone from thinking we wouldn't be going to Switzerland at all this trip, to contemplating a day trip for my birthday, to actually getting to stay in Geneva, while looking after bunnies!!!
The cleaner was coming today so we packed up and headed out into the woods for a walk for a few hours, buzzing from all the excitement! We were going to Switzerland!!
After a hot soup lunch to warm up from being outside we started looking into what we were going to do after leaving Suffolk and decided to head to Scotland for the 5 or so days before flying out to Geneva from Edinburgh.
So once we'd decided we went looking for the best deals on accommodation and it all seemed to flow and fall into place, I found a great looking B&B in Edinburgh for a great price, so we played with dates because the weekend got super expensive, so we booked Wednesday - Friday in Edinburgh, then Sam found an amazing deal on a cute B&B in Inverness for the weekend which we jumped on as it was the last room! And then we knew flights were best to go to Geneva from Edinburgh so we booked another night at the same Edinburgh accommodation, bought our flights, train to Inverness, and while we were at it bought our flights to Montenegro as they had started to increase. What a whirlwind. It all just sort of fell into place and rolled from one thing to the next. It was all very exciting. We noticed though that there was an error in how Easyjet had charged us in one of our flights. It had told us we would be charged in euros, but came out of our account in pounds, which makes a big difference because of the conversion rate, so screenshots were taken to be sorted out tomorrow!
What an exciting day! Our trip was falling into place!!
Thursday 24th January
Today was a relaxing day of puzzles, Facetiming with family and making a tuna bake for dinner. We also called Easyjet in regards to the error in our tickets for how the charged us. We sent an email and were told we'd hear back within 30 days.
Friday 25th January
We finished the puzzle!!
We spent the rest of the day looking at house sits, playing with photography stuff, cleaning up and playing a bit of club penguin for old times sake.
We also had an email back from Easyjet and they had sorted it out and refunded the difference in price!
Saturday 26th January
We started the morning with a bike ride through a different section of woods/ fields close by the house, before Auntie Tessa and Uncle Rob arrived.
Being Australia day, we were all heading over to some friends of Tessa and Robs for dinner and we were bringing the pav. So after a lovely catch up, we jumped in the car to head out and pick up some ingredients.
A few fun filled hours of baking later we have a pav that is ready for decorating! After a second run to the grocery store because between us all we managed to buy single cream, not double cream (which apparently is for whipping - don't ask the lactose intolerant person) we were right to go.
Goodies in hand we started the fair drive to the friends place a few towns over, only to need to stop by the grocery sore again as there was a mayday situation going on with the berries for the pav...they had escaped their container and were now rolling around the floor of the car.
We go there eventually and had a fabulous evening, a delicious meal, and the pav turned out great!
Although the star of the night was probably the adorable Ronnie, he was just gorgeous!
Sunday 27th January
We had a lovely last morning with Tessa and Rob, a scrumptious lunch and then we said goodbye (for now) to our little country house retreat and headed back to Uncle Noel's for the start of our next adventure!
Fanbloodytastic well done guys