Oh my God, I've had such an amazing weekend.
It was awesome. truly awesome. I surprised my Boyfriend with a night in Devon - Lynton, to be exact. We drove down there on Saturday lunch time and spent all of Saturday afternoon / evening and Sunday doing things around Exmoor and it was brilliant. Not to beat around the bush - I ate shit. I don't mean I stuffed my face from morning to night, but I ate some unhealthy things and it's only now I'm back at home, that I'm trying to recalibrate my focus for next week.
On the way down to Devon we called in on the 'Quince Honey Farm', or as I've been saying 'The Bee Farm'. You learnt all about how the Honey Bees made honey, how it was collected and how it was processed as well as what you could make from the honey / wax. There were an awful lot of hives in different places and whilst it was slightly off putting by hearing the very loud buzzing behind the glass, it was also fascinating to see inside all the hives. I'm not overly keen on honey to be honest, but sampling some of it on a tasting stick - It was actually really nice :-)
Our hotel was amazing. The 'Seawood hotel' and our room looked out onto the Ocean. It was really romantic and so relaxing - especially as I've now left my job so I wasn't thinking about what I needed to do when I got back to the office. As soon as we got to our hotel, we checked in and started exploring straight away. We went on the Lynton and Lynmouth railway (this train that takes you up and down the cliff) and wandered around Lynmouth which was just so idyllic. I even found another painting of bluebells by a local artist which is beautiful and will look amazing in my house. We walked by the river and enjoyed the beautiful Saturday Sunshine.
I actually missed Blogging yesterday, however one of the reasons the hotel was so peaceful is because it had NO phone signal whatsoever - this meant no texts, no phone calls and more importantly... no internet access. It did claim to have WIFI, however this wasn't accessible in our room so in the end, I decided to just wait until I got back home to update my blog and catch up on everything that's been happening on Social media (which is actually nothing, so I really do think I need to stop using it so much... )
We decided on a meal in 'The Vanilla pod', a restaurant in Lynton at the top of the cliff - It was amazing and I had a started of spiced chickpeas and a main course of fish - Pretty awesome and quite healthy. Unfortunately, I washed it down with 2 large glasses of red wine and then decided I wanted chocolate (there's a theme emerging every time I drink!) so went to the local Llondis and bought a medium sized bar of chocolate.
I won't say what else happened on Saturday night, suffice to say - For the first time in ages, I actually didn't feel stressed and it's amazing how much libido you have when you're not worrying about stuff :-) My boyfriend and I sat on some chairs by the window and just talked... it was so nice to have some proper 'us' time and after that we.... *ahem* .... Yes.. I think we both had a smile as we went to sleep on Saturday!
Despite the bed being really comfy and it being incredibly quiet I didn't sleep overly well as I'm just not used to sharing a bed with someone - nevertheless, it was still really nice and comfy and breakfast in the hotel was gorgeous - It should have been anyway, as it was Eggs Benedict. I've not Googled how many fat and calories, I know it will be a lot, so.. yeah... I know. After breakfast, it started raining which was a bit of a pain - however we checked out and started our massive 'National Trust' tour on the Sunday which consisted of Watersmeet, Arlington Court and Dunster Castle.
Thankfully the weather got better towards lunch time and the afternoon so we were able to get on and do things pretty easily. Lunch consisted of a cheese Ploughmans that we bought from Arlington Court - Despite having a big chunk of bread on each of our plates, my boyfriend was trying to stick to his Atkins-esque diet and low carbing it, so he gave me the bread to feed to the finches that were really tame - I think it's the longest we've actually sat down anywhere as we were both trying to get the birds to eat of our hands. We didn't manage it, but they did get very close!
Dunster Castle was as lovely as Arlington Court and we did a lot of walking before admiring the actual Castle. Before we got to the Castle, we stopped off on the way and had an icecream (Yes, I'm deliberately mentioning all of the things I've eaten today as I said... it's not been great) however, it was a lovely icecream and I really enjoyed it. I really did - having beautiful weather, looking out onto the sea and eating an icrecream is a memory I hope I never forget as it was just lovely.
The amount of beautiful antiques inside both Arlington Court and Dunster Castle certainly ignated my passion to buy more antiques for my house - however as I've got another week before I get paid, I am going to try my best to tame my desires for the next 9 days :-)
You'd have thought that after 3 National Trust properties, that would have been enough - but no, on the way back home we saw a brown sign for 'Cleeve Abbey' - An English Heritage property and decided to pay a quick visit in there as well - I love gothic things, gothic architecture is just amazing in my books and I love ruined Abbeys. As we're both National Trust and English Heritage members, it doesn't really cost us anything to do all of them in a day and as we're not usually around the area, we thought 'why not?'
As it was 4:30, there was noone else around and it was really nice to wander around, learn about how the Abbey had been turned into a working farmhouse building and admire the lovely arches. Down the same road was a cider farm and we decided to pay a quick visit in there and buy some cider - After all, why wouldn't you do that when in Somerset? :-) As well as buying a couple of litres of cider, I also bought a small bag of chocolate raisins...
2.5 hours later and we were back home - or should I say, we were in the Sushi restaurant in Reading that we have frequented on more than one occasion. I didn't go 'crazy', but I did have quite a few pieces of sushi.... Now I'm back home, absolutely knackered and my feet / back are hurting quite a lot. We did over 7,000 steps yesterday and over 11,000 steps today!
I ate crap - I don't regret it, I'm not going to lie about it... and I'm not going to apologise. It was such a lovely couple of days and I feel that my relationship with my Boyfriend is really strong at the moment. We've been together a number of years, but things seem to have just 'clicked' and I've never before looked forward to the idea of buying a house, having children, being with someone for the rest of my life... But I really am and I still enjoy and look forward to spending time with him.
However, this isn't a daily thing and I don't want to 'give up'. I don't want to weigh myself at the moment as I have a very strong feeling, I'll see an increased number on the scales and I think that will make me feel quite upset - almost embarrassed? as I've done so well to date. So for the next week, I'm going to do a lot of clean eating. I'm not going to starve myself in pennance for the last couple of days, but I am going to meal plan tomorrow morning and update my blog with the weeks food choices...
So yes... Back on the Wagon.. Size 14 jeans for Christmas... Let's go :-)
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