I’m slowly continuing the documentation of our recent trip, which already seems like too long ago. Once we left London we hired a car and hit the road, driving from London to Penrith via Bristol, Bath, Manchester, Derbyshire and Penrith, then back down again via Oxford. Here are some highlights and cute places we visited along the way.

Bath was a cute town with a real village feel to it. We went to the Roman Baths & did a spot of shopping – do note this cute shop I really loved in Bath called “Found”, which had a particularly familiar feel to it, stocking lots of cute brands and unique bits and pieces. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo, but the shop was really beautiful and the staff were nice too.

In Manchester we stopped off to surprise an old friend of mine who recently moved to the UK indefinitely and now works at an adorable shop called “Hey, Little Cupcake” in the business district of Manchester. The shop/cafe sells coffee, cupcakes and even has a range of adorable prints by local clever peeps. Particularly impressive was the range of “swizzlers” cupcake flavours – one for every day of the week! You can check out their facebook page and wish you were there every time they announce a new flavour, just like I do. Swizzlers always make me think of my dad who used to feed the little swizzler lollies to our dog occasionally, making her eyes go all peppy from the sugar and sherbet. I still laugh thinking about this, in fact he probably still does it and she probably still loves him for it.

We also had lunch at this fine establishment in Manchester, how adorable is their signage! And the food was delicious.

Probably one of the ultimate UK highlights was our visit to Beatrix Potter World, which held so many adorable furry creatures the battery on my camera nearly went flat while there. Of course my faves were the little caped bunnies, not unlike some of my own characters (maybe deep down some distant childhood memory was drawn upon that day).

We also visited a Little Chef restaurant on the way home. If anyone happened to catch the series Big Chef takes on Little Chef on the ABC a few months back, they’ll know why this is exciting. For everyone else, the series involved Heston Blumenthal taking over a road side restaurant chain and trying to bring some life back to the “British Institution” he held very fond childhood memories of. There is a Little Chef restaurant (or two) in nearly every town along the road in the UK (but no speed limit signs ANYWHERE on the highways of the entire country -go figure?) but we did have to hunt a little and detour like crazy to find one which had recieved the Heston makeover! The food was pretty darn good, possibly one of the best pancake meals I ate the entire trip.

And of course we cant forget the whole point of driving around the UK countryside, especially around the lakes district….

….the views!

And the lakes! And I must admit, the company along the way wasn’t bad either. Kx