What a lovely day

After a tiring and rattly bus trip to Brighton with the Girl yesterday (we went to ransack the Lego shop with birthday monies) we fancied something a bit different today. 

So we ventured over hill and dale and the Ashdown Forest and found ourselves in Otford for the Sevenoaks EG branch exhibition.  After finding a particularly wiggly (but beautiful) cross-country route I have now been dubbed "Chief Nagivator" and no, that is not a spelling mistake.  Ha ha, people.  I have a feeling I'm going to be stuck with this one...

Anyway, we knew we were there when the Husband started playing "spot the old lady" as we turned into the car park.  As penance for being rude I didn't let him go in and get a cup of tea and cake, he had to stay outside and play on the swings with the Girl.  Anyway, I enjoyed the exhibition and bumped into lots of people I knew.  A very friendly bunch, the Sevenoaks lot, and not "old ladies" at all!

Then, because some of us needed a cup of tea, we wiggled our way further into the Kent countryside to Ightham Mote - which we've been wanting to visit for ages, but because it's a wiggly journey we needed more of a reason - so thank you Sevenoaks Guild!

And I think we're going to be back.  There were so many fab patterns in the house.  I did the embarrassing Mum thing and went round taking photos of fireplaces and bits of furniture:

And I took far too many photos of apple blooth:

And then finally we had to return to the Woo (aka the Whippet) who we'd left home alone.  But at least we didn't leave him in a prison, like this Grade I listed prison at Ightham:

He was still cross, and had managed to steal the oven gloves AGAIN even though we thought we'd left them out of reach.

And to round off the afternoon I had one of my favourite new drinks involving these ingredients:

which mixed with some fizzy water make this drink of purest green

I invented this because I was drinking fizzy beer to wash down these

And the combination of beer and naughty chilli crackers is not good for the waistline.  I've replaced the beer, but I can't break the chilli cracker habit just yet.  They're just too good.