Sunday 2nd May 2010 - Holiday Sunday

Sammy cooked a lovely breakfast of bacon, sausages, mushrooms, black pudding (not for me...yuk), beans and lots of toast. After a relaxed morning, and persuading Dave to change into some long trousers and waterproof shoes, we wandered slowly to the bus stop. As the next bus wasn't until 5 to 12, over half an hour to wait, we went into Starbucks for a drink. I had a hot chocolate. The cream on the top was lovely but I'm sure it cools the drink down too quickly. The bus into town was £10 for 4 return tickets.

The seafront was cold and windy. Emily was walking and investigating every deck chair on the way, even though they looked identical. There were hardly any kites flying the kite festival. Not sure how they can justify the advertising of “Britain's Biggest Beach Festival”. If we had only come down for that we would have been very disappointed. Emily soon went into her push chair. The current sand sculptures were of Alice and Wonderland and the Mad Hatter, and a dragon. We walked around the harbour and made our way slowly to the Nothe Tavern to have dinner. They had a table providing we could be out by quarter to 2. We chose the carvery and Emily had Scampi and chips. The carvery was lovely. The meat was cut into thick slices. I had gammon and beef. As usual, I struggled to finish it even though I'd been careful not to put too much on my plate. We left there about 2.

We wandered along to Nothe Fort, which was open today so we went in. They have a mouse hunt for kids to search for the mice while they are learning about life at the fort during times of war. They also have an impressive collection of matchstick models there too. Details and pictures here - http://www.nothefort.co.uk/matchstick_fleet.html

We then walked back down to Brewers Quay and stopped for a drink in the Red Lion. They had Jurassic which I have not had before. There was band playing Beetles and other songs. They were good. We would have stayed longer if it was warmer and if we didn't have a bus to catch. The kite festival was still going on with some displays but hardly any other kites. Back at the caravan, we had a lazy evening, getting Emily settled didn't take long, aided by an episode of Ivor the Engine which we all watched. As we had already had such a big dinner we had cheese and biscuits for tea. Afterwards we had 3 games of Scrabble. I won 2 games and Chippy won 1. Chippy cleared all of his tiles twice. We played until about 11.