Whilst not having a long history of going to lovely restaurants (mostly due to not having a very long history of earning enough money to visit said restaurants), I like to think I’ve/we’ve been to a fair few – mostly in the last 5 years of my relationship with Mr B. I’ve been to amazing Michelin starred restaurants, I’ve been to taste filled little shacks on piers and I’ve been to great local gastro-pubs/restaurants but never have I been somewhere that succeeded in surpassing my expectations as beautifully as The Hardwick did.

If you go to one restaurant in Wales, go there. If you go to one restaurant in the UK…well, maybe go to Roganic or L’Enclume! (but it’ll cost a lot more!). For value for money with regards ambience, flavour, service and presentation I’ve not seen the like. I doubt if we go back in a years time (if not sooner) that it’ll be quite such good value for money as they could easily charge more, and will I bet!

They have an amazing array of gins available so I sampled one of their more exotic options…not sure which one (but the bar manager was hugely knowledgeable and helpful in choosing) and Mr B selected a pint of local tipple Rhymney which went down most excellently. We were encouraged to take a seat in the bar and consider the menus before they came to show us to our table. They even did that lovely thing where they come over with a tray and carry your drinks to your table for you – I love little touches like that!

With dinner we had a superb Welsh sparkling wine (this was a holiday filled with sparkling wine – not Champagne) and we managed to go the whole hog and cram in 3 courses, despite having quite diminished appetites since our pre-wedding diets.

I had…

Wye Valley Asparagus, Peas & Local Rainbow Chard with Fried Bruschetta in Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Neals Yard Creamery Perroche Goats Cheese

Roast Rare Breed Middle White Pork Loin, Mashed Sweet Potato and Burnt Onion, Grilled Endive with Local Honey and Capers, Savoy Cabbage & Pancetta

Home made icecream – Treacle, Peanut butter & strawberry jam and honeycomb

Mr B had…

Crispy Breadcrumbed Middle White Pork Belly & Black Pudding with Pickled Fennel and Apple & Mustard Sauce

Pan Fried Cod, Fagioli Piattelle (Italian small white beans) with Chilli, Heritage Tomatoes & Braised Octopus in Red Wine and Seasonal Greens

Warm Churros (Spanish Style Doughnuts) with Chocolate Sauce and Seville Orange Marmalade Ice Cream

By far the star of the meal for me was my main, a little because Mr B was so jealous of me being the one that could eat all of it, because I just hadn’t expected such beautifully perfect cooking and amazing flavours – it has to be eaten to be believed! The burnt onions in the sweet potato mash were truly superb – going to have to try to replicate that one at home.

And one of the best things? The bill for 3 courses for both of us plus one coffee,  beer and a G&T was under £95! Very good value.

I only wish we’d booked the dine and sleep package so we could have just rolled in to bed. I’ve already been dropping hints to Mr B!

Here ends my waxing lyrical about The Hardwick – a place that Mr B and I will be talking about many times – ‘do you remember that…’ and ‘wasn’t that the best butter ever’ kind of conversations. The ones where you share fond memories of a most lovely evening.

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We spent the rest of our time eating copious amounts of food, wandering around the Abergavenny Toy and Vintage Car Fair (we were so lucky it just happened to be on), sitting at the top of the Abergavenny castle moat staring at Sugarloaf mountain and taking lots of baths in our gorgeous slipper bath!

It was just so beautiful, like our own little bubble of sunshine that we wandered around in for the whole time…

We also visited The Hardwick, just up the road from Abergavenny, whilst we were there which was some of the best food I have ever eaten…but that’s for another day!

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I want more!!! If this is how the rest of them will turn out then I can’t wait!

Whilst the wedding being over is sad on the one hand, I’m so excited to get back to making stuff for others and being able to share some of my wedding crafting and just blogging about the wedding and life generally. It’ll be lovely to get back to a little routine and I have A LOT of ideas of things I want to make and do for selling and gifting to friends and family  :)

Secondly, and far more importantly, we met up this weekend with our wedding photographer – Samuel Docker – for an engagement shoot in nearby Oxford (mostly the Botanical Gardens) and I wanted to share a few of the shots with you.

I should mention that as a (sort of) reluctant bride I’ve been more than a little nervous about being pleased with how I look in the photos of our wedding – it’s not that I think I’m ugly in photos and I am sure that pretty much nothing will make me feel bad that day as I’ll be so happy that I’m marrying Mr B – it’s just that in photos I never,  ever look like I look in my head…I kind of like being ignorant of the reality and thinking I look better than I do

I thought that having an engagement shoot would help manage my expectations of what the wedding photos would look like, I know I won’t suddenly turn in to Rachel Weisz but I do have somewhat unrealistic dreams, although I was a little unsure about having one as I’ve seen some of the American ones on the wedding blogs I follow and they are CHEESETASTIC – like the kind of thing I imagine some of them put on holiday cards (a concept that I will never, ever be able to compute) and I did not want to be part of one of those!

I shouldn’t have worried though (how ridiculously often is that true?) – what the day ended up being was a great opportunity to meet Sam, calm my/our nerves a little and get a better idea of how to pose so I can be happier with our wedding photos.

We ended up really enjoying having our photo taken but I was still worried that the reality captured in the photos wouldn’t reflect what I thought they’d look like in my head. But Sam’s only managed to make me look better than I think I do in my head I only hope he can work the same magic on our wedding day!

There’s a post on Sam’s blog over here…

Firstly there is traffic, lots of it – having driven for about 5 hours from Palm Springs seeing about 20 cars for the whole way the freeway into Vegas and the roads around the strip were quite overwhelming to be honest. There was just so many people and so many cars and so much STUFF…EVERYWHERE.

What I loved about our California trip was the beauty, the wilderness and the serenity of so many of the places we visited/drove through and, unfortunately, Las Vegas has none of those things – it also didn’t have the charm of San Francisco or the chilled atmosphere of San Diego it was ON – ON all the time!

Saying this, it was something that I’m glad we did, everyone should go to Vegas once but I’m not going to be going back – it was like the antithesis of everything I enjoy! Our hotel, THE hotel at Mandalay Bay, was fantastic though, a true bargain, though beware – you have to pay extra for everything that isn’t actually fitted to a wall or floor so be careful! One of my favouritist things that we did whilst there was lay on the artificial beach for most of the day, taking dips in the wave pool and the (not very) rapid rapids – it was free to hotel guests so a big bonus! It felt nowhere near as hot as I expected but I think that the way we did the trip (moving from the cooler north to the warmer south before going to Nevada) acclimatised us pretty effectively and, even during the day, I wasn’t really that hot – perhaps it being September helped as well?

One other thing that made it most definitely worth our while though was visiting Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant – Gordon Ramsay Steak – at the Paris casino on the Strip. It was AMAZING! Imagine ranks of waiters delivering dish after dish to tables, all dressed like quintessential English gentlemen (the likes of which you never actually see in England), and example steaks on a butchers trolley that they wheel around, dishes with theatre and style but also taste, and a drinks menu on your very own iPad (we did have to give it back). I LOVED it!

The inside of Paris casino

Mr B and I outside Gordon Ramsay Steak

Afterwards we waddled back down the Strip – prepare to do a lot of walking – and took in a little of the sights…

And then it was onwards home – to the wonderful weather of the UK!

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We shared the driving on this part and went through two national parks and a lot of mountains, some of the scenery was so breathtaking that I haven’t even got pictures as were both just loving it! We did get a little lost in some mountain in the middle of nowhere where I had the quickest wee of my life (The Hills Have Eyes just kept on going through my head) but that was all part of the fun!

Palms Springs itself was really, really, really hot but the Hotel California was AMAZING – we had a poolside room with free snacks and drinks including alcohol ( that would never work in the UK!) plus there was a hot tub and the pool had misters around all of it which sprayed this cooling mist on you – it was such dry heat there that it was more than welcome. Several hours of lazing in/by the pool/hot tub followed by dinner arranged by the hotel at a nearby restaurant - Spencers. Bliss! Nothing was too much trouble for them and we felt like royalty for the one night we were there. Palm Springs is so odd, being smack bang in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere but it was well worth the visit – I wouldn’t recommend staying for ages as it would probably get a little too quiet and relaxing.

Onwards to Las Vegas!

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Combine serious heat with the worst traffic jams I’ve ever seen and you get seriously p*ss*d tourists. If I never ever see LA again it’ll be too soon. I think coming from all the beautiful landscapes and little towns that we’d been in (barring San Francisco, which was the most chilled city I’ve ever been to, other than Amsterdam) LA was just way too much – too much noise, too many people and too much stuff. I think the fact that we were navigating with a cartoon map which had about 10% of the streets on it and was the size of my hand might have had something to do with the pain of the journey

So by the time we got to our apartment in Mission Bay we were pretty hot, sweaty and tired…but we weren’t disappointed! The apartment itself wasn’t quite as amazing as we’d hoped but the view was phenomenal – we could watch the boats going out each morning, see them coming home and see right out to sea plus the hot tub out front was most excellently enjoyed with Bloody Mary’s!

The area around our apartment was just gorgeous and, though there weren’t really any bars, restaurants or shops anywhere near us, there’s plenty to do down the end of Mission Beach as everything there is just so beautiful. There’s sea and beach or grass and trees – perfect places to just sit and watch the world go by!

We spent most of our time around the apartment as it was just so quiet and peaceful so didn’t see a lot/any of San Diego proper but the one thing we did do – and I would recommend to anyone/everyone was the zoo. Though it was RIDICULOUSLY hot and you need lots of water and a hat and to rest in the shade pretty regularly, the animals were in such great enclosures and the whole place was hugely interesting – the cable car that you can get from one side of the zoo to the other is great and the air’s nice and cool up there! Plus you can get a bus from one area to another if you’re a little tired/American!

Mission Beach was definitely the most chilled place we visited on the Californian coast – somewhere I would go again in a heart beat! Though maybe next time we’d ACTUALLY see some of San Diego and not relax quite so much!

Onwards to Palm Springs!

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My birthday was lovely, Christmas was relaxing, New Years a raucous blur etc etc etc. Fun was had but nothing got done!

The main issue at the moment is the number of things I seem to need to do and the amount of time that I have to them, my mind is willing but time and body conspire against me and I never get to do any of the things I intend to.

At the moment I am intending to

finish decorating our house (3 rooms down, 4 to go), make a stupendous amount of stuff for our wedding at the beginning of May, lose at least a stone by having only 1200 calories a day and finish some of the numerous quilting/sewing projects that I started last year.

Even typing that has worn me out! But my resolution, above and beyond all the other things I need to get done in the next 4 months is to be generally less rubbish, more proactive and GET THINGS DONE!

That is all.

With its windy turns and beautiful scenery, beach on one side and redwoods on the other this was definitely the most stunning stretch of California coast that we saw. The small stretch that we did through the Andrew Molera and Julia Pfieffer state parks with massive trees, secluded camp grounds and log cabins was equally as gorgeous and somewhere that I want to go back to and explore – a night under the stars out there would be magical I think!

Santa Barbara…what can I say…? It was alright. Decidedly uninspiring despite it’s beauty. It just seemed to have a lot of shops and a big beach – the feel of the place was a little seedy once you moved back from the beach. We stayed in a really reasonable motel called the Agave Inn, about 20 blocks back from the beach (way more than a walk in that heat) but it was clean, had great air con and suited our purpose (sleeping before heading to San Diego) perfectly. Their free breakfast was also a nice addition and kept us going most of the way to LA!

Whilst in Santa Barbara the one thing that you must do is visit Stearns Wharf – we walked along it but there were plenty of people completely adverse to using their flesh sticks (it’s a 5 minute slow walk) who drove along the pier…hmmm. Anyways, at the end of the pier is a seafood shack – Santa Barbara Shellfish Company –  that must be enjoyed! They have massive tanks of crabs and lobsters. The prices are seriously reasonable and the service very charming. Everything is a little sticky and fishy smelling and we had a sea-gull who was just waiting for us to make one wrong move to have our dinner away from us but the view from this place is second to none!

I had shrimp tacos which were delicious but Mr B’s Squid burger was definitely the star of the night…that and my obligatory Bloody Mary

And that was Santa Barbara…onwards to LA hell…

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At least we got to drive on both bridges though and I think it saved us time in the end but the mood in the car was a little strained for a while there! We did then join the beginning of Route 1 and saw some stunning scenery as the road winds along the Pacific coast (though the drive along the Big Sur stretch was more breathtaking – more on that later).

Monterey Bay had a pretty hard act to follow after the beauty of Sonoma Valley and the pain of getting there but our apartment was really lovely and homely – with a lot of IKEA furnishings! I found it on HomeAway and it was about 4 blocks back from the sea and came with free bikes and aquarium passes.

We managed to find the energy after our drive to walk down to the sea, had a meander down the pier – seriously touristy – and then found an amazing fish shop which had the HUGEST clams I’ve ever bought. That evening we had a seriously cold bottle of Beltane Ranch wine with our own home-made Spaghetti Vongole and nothing has ever tasted so good!

Other than eating as much seafood as humanly possible, here are a few things I could recommend doing whilst you are in Monterey:

1. Visit Carmel by Sea – and take a dip in the ocean from your own private beach. If you drive the ocean road between Monterey and Carmel there are loads of beaches and not a single one of them had more than about 2 people on it. We pulled up by the side of the road and spent a wonderful couple of hours on the beach – though everyone looked at us like we were mental as we sun bathed in our costumes whilst they sat huddled in their hoodies…

2. Ride a bike along the ocean ride – We were really lucky that we got the use of bikes with our apartment and Mr B eventually persuaded me to return to the saddle after a very long time of not riding (about 15 years by my recollection!) when I’d had a couple too many wines. It turns out I cycle much better when slightly tipsy as I’m less concerned for my life/face/knees/other bikes Monterey has some really easy rides and the one along the beach front is pretty flat and well-lit so we even did a little night cycling – I was more than a little chuffed with myself We also rode up to the front of the hotel we had dinner in and checked our bikes instead of a car – slightly childish but funny seeing the concierge wheel my bike around!

3. Visit Cannery Row – whilst it’s more than a little touristy there are some really interesting things to see and Mr B got to see what Steinbeck was chattering about. We had a wander around on our first day in Monterey, then returned for dinner in the Monterey Plaza Hotel’s Schooner’s Coastal Kitchen & Bar (where we checked the bikes) which had all your usual American fare along with a good selection of seafood specials…

4. Visit the Aquarium – We were also fortunate enough to get free aquarium passes with our apartment so got to enjoy the beauty of the Monterey Aquarium for free. At the end of Cannery Row and above the sea, this place is absolutely worth a visit, even if just for their excellent ‘feeling’ exhibits where you can actually hold and touch sea urchins and starfish and lots of other sea creatures – even rays though they were having none of it with me! The jellyfish area was also superb…

5. Take a whale watching trip – We booked this on-line before we went to make sure that we would definitely get to go with Monterey Whale Watching.  We thought it was a gorgeous day but when we got down to the wharf they were pretty concerned that it was going to be too choppy out at sea for us tourists – I think they expected a lot of vomiting! But we were lucky and they decided to head out…

So that was Monterey Bay in all its beachy loveliness…onwards to Santa Barbara via a truly stunning drive – the Big Sur along Route 1!

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