Keyhaven

We just spent an awesome weekend away with Ben and Michelle in the tiny little coastal town of Keyhaven. Every so often it’s lovely to get out of London for a while, so a weekend away was just what the doctor ordered!

We stayed in a little cottage affectionately known as “Mulberry Cottage, but as we didn’t get there until late-ish on the Friday night, we had some trouble finding the place in the dark. We pulled up alongside a pub, and Michelle wound down her window to ask for directions.

“Excuse me”, she said to the locals, “can you tell me how to get to Mulberry Cottage?”
“You mean Aubury Cottage?” replied our local friend.
“No, Mulberry Cottage.”
“Aubury?”
“Mulberry.”
“Aubury?”
“No, Mulberry.”

As you can guess, by this time we had realised that our friend had no idea where Mulberry Cottage was. So, he called in some help from the bartender (who was significantly less drunk).

“Hey Larry, do you know of a Mulberry Cottage?”
“Aubury?”
“No, Mulberry”
“Aubury?”
“No… MULBERRY!” (Deja-vu sinking in here)
“Mulberry… ? Gimmie that (grabs the directions, with photo of the cottage)… This is old doctor Alan’s place! Mulberry cottage, indeed! He’s just given it a fancy name to rent it out at a higher… just ignore that! It’s down this road, last house on your left!”

Sure enough, Larry was right – finally we arrived at our delightful, very Durham like accomodation, which was indeed named “Mulberry Cottage” (though to the credit of the locals, we had to turn at “Aubury Gate” to get there). We met the caretakers (who accused us of being “DFL’s” – Down From London’s), grabbed the key, and quickly settled in for the night.

Saturday saw us have a late start – what better than a nice long sleep-in to kick off a weekend away? Eventually after rising and breakfast, we headed out for the biggest walk ever. We must have hiked like 15 miles or so! Admittedly the scenery was lovely, and we got to meet some of the locals, including a a horse that Kristy affectionately named “Nibbles”, and a stray cow grazing by the seaside – but all that exercise (and thinking about all that steak on the cow) made me super hungry.

Finally we reached the Chequers Inn where we enjoyed a delicious pub lunch – definitely worth the walk. The journey home afterwards was also delightful, but I had to pee for most of the way so I wasn’t taking in too much of the scenery.

We started a game of Cities and Knights on Saturday night – accompanied, of course, by some tasty beverages – but decided to abandon the end of the game to get some food, before the local pub closed. It didn’t matter though, I clearly would have won anyway.

Sunday was another late start, after which we made our way to New Forest for a wonder around. We met lots of local puppies and horses, and it made me wish I had our little rascals – Tom and Zoe – there with me, as they would have had an absolute ball wreaking havoc in all the leaves. But, since they weren’t there, Ben did his best to take their place!

We stopped for lunch on our way back to London in one of the local towns. All seemed normal until we were accosted by some horses walking down the street. They strolled past the car to the amusement of tourists (us), and as if that wasn’t strange enough, a lady – who we presume was either a local, or a crazy – said to BaM, “They got into my garden last week, the little monkeys!”. What on earth?!

Still, one the horses made their merry way along the street, the rest of our afternoon went fairly normally. The only downer was our drive back into London, where we got hit with the terrible traffic that’s associated with driving back to the city on a Sunday afternoon.

All in all it was a brilliant weekend, one that I really hope we can repeat again soon!