Weekend in Alresford

It was the first weekend of summer - finally!! So we headed down to Caroline's Mom's house in Alresford. We left work on Friday afternoon and met up at Waterloo Station to catch the 6:35 train down. Caroline was already down there as she had been off school for a couple of weeks. So after getting our tickets from "Prince", we hopped on the train for the 50 minute journey to Winchester.

The train was packed and I was shocked that there were so many commuters to that part of England. We were lucky to get a fast train but I could not imagine my journey to/from work being a minimum of 50 minutes. Once you get off of the train at Winchester, there are a lot of people who live between a 5-20 minute drive away and of course there's the walk when you get off at Waterloo. That means that some of these people travel 1-2 hours each way! Craziness!!

There were 6 of us on the train and we got a cab when we got off at Winchester. After a 10-15 minute drive, we got to Alresford which is sweet little village just north of Winchester. It's tiny but very quaint and super peaceful.

By the time we got to the house it was about 8 at night. Caroline, bless her, had made this lovely vegan chili as Hannah is a vegan and I'm a veggie. So we sat outside and ate our dinner, had several bottles of wine and lit a fire in the garden - it was fabulous!

I woke up at 6:15 on Saturday, guess I'm used to my Monday -Friday early mornings, and of course everybody else was sound asleep so I went for a walk. Went for about 1/2 hour walk around this cute little stream and ended up in the village. I was hoping that there would be a little coffee shop open as Caroline only had decaf.....but it wasn't even 7am so I was out of luck. I even waited 10 minutes for the Co-op to open so that I could get some fresh orange juice and a newspaper.

Then it was back to the house to sit on the outdoor swing thingy with my juice and paper. Finally somebody woke up at about 8:30 and it started to get gorgeous and sunny. Everybody slowly filtered downstairs and it was time to hang out in the sunshine!

Our friend My was catching the 9:30 train into Winchester as she couldn't come on Friday night. So Caroline and I went to pick her up and get groceries for dinner that night. We stopped in at the Tescos and got tons of groceries before heading back. When we eventually got back to Caroline's, the girls went for a long walk but I stayed in as my knee was acting up bigtime. So instead of a walk, I prepped lunch (for those of you who know me...that's a scary thought but there were no fires and no accidents).

The girls got back from their walk and it was time for drinks - pimms and then wine - bbq and suntanning!! Of course most of us didn't think there was going to be much in the way of suntanning so we didn't take bikinis....so....it was bra time! Fab afternoon with temperatures getting in the high 20's which is great as it's been like February weather for months! After hours of sunning ourselves in the backyard (and some ridiculous photos) we made dinner which was more of a continuation of lunch...Then there were more drinks and girlie talk. I went to bed early as I'd gotten up at stupid o'clock that morning.

Next morning I woke up early again but was lazy and lay in bed until just before 8am. When I got up Hannah was cleaning the kitchen, so I helped out and then we walked up to town. Luckily there was a little cafe open with REAL COFFEE!!!! Yay! After a couple of good cups of java, we went back to the house for breakfast of fresh fruit and more sun. Lunch was more wine and leftovers from the day before.

Nobody really wanted to leave but we knew that there was stuff to do when we got home. So four of us got the 2:45 train home, the other 3 got a later train and Caroline stayed back as that's where she's hanging out until she moves into her new place next month.

It was an amazing weekend - almost on par with going to Kelowna for a weekend. I'd love to go back another time but of course...it would have to be sunny for more bra tanning hahaha!