Dark and exotic, pineapples and monkeys

You know how much I like a good loo, and i’m sharing one today.

A couple of weekends ago we were out for Sunday lunch with MOH’s family at the Dukes Head in Crawley Down, West Sussex. We’d been there before, but it seems to have been redecorated since our last visit, and it looks great.

The food there is great too, on our last visit we all opted for Sunday lunch and it was the type of Sunday lunch that comes with no spare space on your plate so you have to eat your way through some to create space for the vegetables which are served separately. I’d definitely recommend, although it seems when it comes to eating speed I’m much slower than MOH’s family.

Isn’t it dark and moody, but elegant at the same time? Did you see the monkeys on the wallpaper, they can’t fail to amuse.

I think the golden pineapples are a first for The Loo Series, it’s not often the doors are adorned - the other one that springs to mind is the loos with the flip flops - but it’s a completely different style isn’t it? Looking at the photo now, they look like door knockers, but I’m not sure they are. Now that would be odd, and a first for The Loo Series!

I want to take a moment to admire this tiled wall, isn’t it gorgeous. The dark tiles, while grout and tiles placed vertically instead of horizontally - all of these contribute to its overall look. The fact that it’s sparkling helps too.

So another Ladies with character, what do you think?

Assembling our Von Haus Copper Rim Fire Pit

* This item was gifted by Von Haus UK

When this fire pit arrived earlier in May the weather wasn’t so good, and it wasn’t looking as if there’d be any improvement to it any time soon, so it was looking like that a fire pit could be a good addition to our garden for the “summer” ahead. In truth, I’m still convinced about the heatwave that the forecasters are continuing to predict, and I’ve a feeling (which I’m happy to be wrong about) that the summer ahead of us may not live up to summers of recent memories.

But there’s something magical about spending more time outside, equally after a hard days gardening or a hard day relaxing. It’s even better when you don’t have to wrap up like it’s the middle of winter too, or huddle under blankets. And that’s where I hope this fire pit will come into its own, especially if the weather doesn’t deliver - I’ve already got some marshmallows at the ready for toasting, but first we needed to put it together.

On the Von Haus website, it says that “simple assembly” is needed, and that usually worries me. As usually it’s not that simple. So with a jobs that needed jobbing well underway, this was the perfect job to end the weekend. I’d hoped to put those marshmallows to the test, but in the end that wasn’t to be.

Was it easy - and simple - to put together?

Quite simply, yes it was. It needs two people for part of it as it’s quite a large fire pit at just under a metre in diameter and it’s not easy for one short person to hold the rim up on both sides and attach the leg. And he needed supervising to ensure the legs didn’t go on the wrong way round.

But he is methodical, and with the pieces laid out and checked against what we should have (which is always worth doing to avoid a potential headache later on) and the instructions briefly perused we were good to go. The instructions were the visual sort, which remove the need for lots of words and multiple translations, which are both good and bad. Good that it removes the need for over complicated and lengthy instructions, there’s nothing more off putting than a thick instruction booklet is there? But not so good, because I’m one of those people that struggle with the visual instructions, I’m the person that couldn’t do the picture crosswords as a child, because I had no idea what the picture was much of the time.

We assembled the rim and the legs first, and set that aside in an upturned kind of beetle way while we attached the brackets for the grill. That’s easily doable by one person, and very little supervision is needed at this point.

The trickiest bit, but still not hard, was attaching the legs complete with rim to the actual fire pit. It’s not heavy, I’d call it sturdy rather than heavy, but it’s wide. The copper rim is decorative - and looks great - but I suspect is also functional in that you can’t get close to the sides, and so prevents an unwanted singe.

As well as the grill, it also comes with a protective mesh spark guard and a heat resistant poker, all shown in the picture below. From start to finish once we’d started to assemble the fire pit, I’d say it took us just over quarter of an hour, which is much less time than we’d anticipated.

So yes, I’d agree that the assembly was simple. Now all I need is some time to be able to enjoy some evenings watching the embers die down.

* This firepit was gifted by Von Haus UK to review here on my blog, as usual all views and opinions shared here and in my future posts are and will be my own.

Adding some Hotter pastel travel sandals to my holiday wardrobe

* This post contains an item that was gifted

One of my pre-holiday rituals is working out what to pack, that might sound an obvious thing to do, and it is, but bear with me. I have a tendency to overpack, I realise that that might also not be news, but my ploy now is to get out what I want to take, review it, prune it and try again. What I’ve learnt from this approach is that while I still overpack a bit, it’s way less than before, but also it’s a good way, for me for working out the flexibility that the clothes I take will bring.

On the left the bottom white, navy, brown with pink spots and pale blue pile is my shorts.  To the right is my t-shirts and on top are vest tops. It’s far from a capsule wardrobe, I’ll admit but already I can see that I have options, with vest tops, t-shirts and shorts all earning their place in my suitcase. 

Which is good news, as for our upcoming holiday we’re combining a city stay with a walking holiday, and while both will be casual unless it’s super hot then I’m not much of a shorts in the city kind of girl,  I’ve  got some 3/4 length trousers lined up for there, plus a slightly smarter pair for evenings, which will also double up for the walking part of our holiday for evenings, and if we’re unlucky on not so sunny days.

But, as ever, it’s shoes that are my achilles heel (pun not quite intended).  Something comfortable to wear walking around the city, and then again practical for a proper walking holiday in Portugal’s Serra Arrabida on the Setúbal Peninsula, which we’re led to believe is virtually undiscovered.  With walks generally over 10 km each day, the longest walk is 18 km - a circular walk at that on day four,  and terrains that include forest tracks, country lanes, valleys and ridges proper, supportive and comfortable footwear will be needed. 

And that’s often where I struggle.  I have plenty of footwear, and more recently I’ve acquired plenty of flatter options too, but still none that I’d deem appropriate enough for such a trek.  So when Hotter offered me the chance to add their travel sandals to my walking holiday wardrobe and I realised that the pastel colourway was in ‘my colours’, how could I refuse?

When they arrived, my instincts about how well they matched my wardrobe was proved right.  There’s pinks, lilacs and blues as well as the greys, and holding them up against the clothes I’m planning to take shows that.  Trying them on  was the icing on the cake, they’re as comfortable as I’ve come to expect from Hotter shoes, and so I’ve a feeling that any dragging my feet on that long circular walk, won’t be due to my footwear. 

* This shoes were gifted by Hotter Shoes to review, I’ll be sharing how they - and my feet - fared on our upcoming walking holiday, as usual all views and opinions shared here and in my future posts are and will be my own.