West Sussex Weekend

Monday was our wedding anniversary. We usually go away for a weekend at this time of year...usually to Salzburg for Mozart Week. But we decided (given the way the weather disrupted our Christmas travel plans!) to play it safe and hire a cottage in the UK, where we could relax and take long walks with Alice. So Friday found us driving down to beautiful West Wittering on the Sussex coast. We'd been before and always loved the amazing, wide, clean sandy beach...and it was just as we remembered it. Can you just make out the moon in the photo above? That was taken early on Sunday morning when we walked to see the sunrise on the sand...

the tide was almost fully out (low tide was 6am) and so it was a long way down to the sea...the pictures don't really capture the beauty of the colours in the streaked sky...

that's Paul above...

and you know who that is! I swear that Alice smiled every minute she was on that beach - whether she was racing across the sand, sniffing the seaweed clumps or splashing through the shore. Such different and exciting smells and landscape for her...and us! We went for several walks a day. There is an estuary packed with wading birds around the spit off East Head and also National Trust protected dunes...a nature sanctuary, really...

eventually we tired Alice out...

and went out to play and explore the nearby towns and cities. We chose to eat in the cottage in the evenings, reading, watching DVD's (and snoozing!) but we had two lovely lunches out...

on Saturday at Fat Olives restaurant, which is a converted 17th century fisherman's cottage...now a superb little brasserie... in the small and picturesque town of Emsworth. After lunch, we toured the town - ending as we usually do in a second hand bookshop and leaving with armloads of new bargains!
On Sunday we drove the short distance to the gorgeous Georgian city of Chichester

and had a good lunch at Brasserie Blanc, which is one of famous chef Raymond Blanc's ventures...

this was quite recently opened, light, bright and felt very French...

On Monday, we took a last long early morning walk on that fabulous beach...trying to breathe in as much of the iodine rich, salty air as we could before heading home (we live near the furthest point from the sea in the whole UK!) We didn't hurry back, stopping at Arundel and at the Cowdray Park Estate on our way. In the evening, as it was also my darling Dad's birthday, we picked up my parents and had a lovely double celebration meal at our friend Dave's wonderful restaurant Annie Bailey's . It was great to catch up with Mum & Dad, sitting by a log fire and ending our long weekend in style!

I'll leave you with a picture of Alice as I love to think of her...happy, perfectly happy

I hope that you're having a wonderful week so far...xo