My birthday was in the middle of last month. This year for my birthday, the bloke and I decided to go to Lymington. We had a treasure trail walk to complete, and we expected the New Forest to be fairly quiet on a Wednesday, which it was. We were lucky to have decent weather with sunshine (and some cloud), and the rain stayed away. We had a little over two hours to enjoy here while we walked around to solve the clues to the treasure walk.
The first stop of the day was to Toby Carvery in Basingstoke, a restaurant chain that is famous for its carvery meals, and we had breakfast. I had toast, bacon, tomato, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, potato (mixed with onion and bacon), and a giant onion breakfast Yorkshire pudding. This was delicious, and I really liked the potato and Yorkshire pudding. This was a great start to the day.
We drove down to the New Forest afetrwards. Despite living in the same county as the New Forest, we rarely ever visit it. We should visit it more as it's not that far as it is a wonderful place to visit. I guess we are caught up in our busy lives.
We walked past the Sea Water Baths, which I did not know existed. These were founded in the 18th century for health benefits, similar to the spas at Bath and Harrogate in England. They were not open when we walked past. Lymington was also famous for its salt production in the middle ages.
We continued to walk down the side of the harbour. There are a lot of boats here, and I really wish I owned one of them.
We walked around the edge of town and saw some beautiful houses and gardens.
The High Street and the church in Lymington are attractive, but it's a pity about the scaffolding on the church.
Lymington's High Street also has a gold postbox. These were painted gold for Olympic gold medal winners in 2012.
We also popped into a small ice cream shop in order to get an ice cream. The ice cream was alright, but it was not as creamy as I would have liked, even though it was advertised as 'gelato', which I think of as a creamier version of ice cream.
With our ice creams, we walked down the most picturesque cobble-stoned street near the middle of town and near the harbour before heading back to the car and driving back to Basingstoke for the afternoon. Plenty of photographs of these streets can be seen below.
We left Lymington and headed back home to Basingstoke. Our first stop in Basingstoke was to visit the Parlour Tearooms, which I have written about before. I had my birthday cupcake here. The tearooms were quiet as it was the middle of the day on a Wednesday. It was nice to be out without worrying about the crowds.
Overall, this was a relaxing day and it went by much too quickly.
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