Adventuring in St. Leonards

Hello lovelies

Have you had a nice day? Eaten some good cake? I'm telling you, if eating cake with friends isn't what Saturdays were invented for I'll eat my hat. With a side of cake. 

Today I travelled by locomotive to St. Leonards-on-Sea, a (funnily enough) seaside town between Bexhill and Hastings, to visit my fabulous friend Alice (the winner of my first blog giveaway and fellow Ideal Home Show fan). 

Fancy map of "1066 Country".

It turned out my hilarious crafting buddy Moll was also visiting Alice today, so I got to hang out with her too :) Hurrah! We walked up lots of hills, rummaged in charity shops, drank litres of tea, ate gooey mountains of cake, and visited an old-skool charity fête complete with a coconut shy. I managed to document most of my day using Tom's camera, or my phone - when I was too full of cake to bend down and get the camera out of my bag. 

The beautiful Alice, modelling the gooiest chocolate cake ever. Yum.
And it was being sold for charity. Therefore, no calories. Win.

This morning, I kicked off my nautical mood with a cuppa in my anchor-emblazoned mug; which was actually a birthday present from Alice. 

Everyone knows breakfast is the most important meal of the day (until second breakfast, anyway. And then elevenses. Then lunch...), especially when one is going on a cross-county adventure; so I had a huuuuuge bowl of many, many cereals to keep my hunger locked up until, well, I saw a big table of cakes. 

I felt like my feet needed a little extra seasidey something today; thank goodness for sailor socks!

Upon arriving in St. Leonards, we walked to a local charity's vintage fête, which was full of child-friendly fundraising games that we hadn't seen since our school days; including a sawdust lucky dip and a hook-the-rubber-duck contest. There was also a guy carrying round a falcon; but we reckoned that was just the way he picked up women. 

There was also an incredibly impressive array of delicious-looking cakes, for a bargainous £1 a slice, so we felt like we had to sample at least one each. It was for charity, after all. 

Alice tried her arm at the china-smashing stall, which we all agreed must have been rigged; seeing as Alice did, erm, not so well, whilst the octogenarian preceding her did more damage than a whole Greek wedding party. 

We burnt off all the cake with a good stomp round all the charity shops, checking out the second hand furniture and rummaging through the shelves of china. I spent most of the time admiring all the amazing architecture St. Leonards has to offer, and was particularly enamoured with these adverts for Edwards merchants:

All that fresh air had caused us to work up some serious appetites, so we headed to Love Café for multiple cups of tea and huge savoury crepes. The food was delicious, cheap, and delivered with a smile; and the tea was delivered in smile-inducing teapots too.

Yes, that is a mosaic of Prince Charles. No, I don't know why.

Even the sugar was pretty

Alice invited us back to her flat to meet the seagull family that lives on the roof of the building next door. We climbed out onto Alice's roof terrace to meet her feathery neighbours, and then something amazing happened. Even more amazing than meeting Flannelette Seagull. 

Clem (Alice's lovely boyfriend) informed us that the last flying Avro Vulcan – XH558 was scheduled to give a display over Hastings that afternoon. And then, we saw it. Watching the plane appear over Hastings, from on top of Alice's roof, was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. 

It was like stumbling into a real-life version of Independence Day. Only without Will Smith (booo). I've made a gif from some of my photos (below) but the plane was quite far away so it's only small. In reality, this thing has a 111 foot wingspan. Insane. 

Close-up picture from Wikipedia

Before I caught the train back home, Alice and I finished off our brilliant afternoon in a local café with a quick cup of coffee and a rather romantic game of Connect 4...

It was a truly awesome (and delicious) day, and I can't wait to go back and visit again! 

Katie xxx