A Girly Weekend Away

Now that we are all grown up and don't have break-times and frequent half terms to hang out, it gets rather tricky to keep a good amount of time spent in person with two of my loveliest friends.  We have however come up with a simple and excellent solution to this problem, which has now become something of a regular tradition; a girly weekend away.  Last weekend's central meeting point was Cheltenham, which looked like it had a good balance of nice walks and well stocked cake shops.

We arrived Friday evening and went straight our for much needed pizza and wine, just the thing to stuff uncomplicatedly while we caught up on recent news, discussed various upcoming interests and generally set the world to rights.  Sadly by the time we got to it we were absolutely starving and talking hard, so as ever, I completely forgot to take any pictures!  You'll just have to imagine badly taken blurry photos, too much laughing and slightly alarmed waiters...

Having wandered about after supper marvelling at how mild it was, Saturday made an impressively depressing arrival.  Peering at the pouring rain and freezing cold, we decided we'd spend the day wandering about in town where we could hop between warm cakey tea shops and possibly investigate something cultural and indoors-with-heating-y.  We ambled into town armed with brollies and after a poke in the shops and some lunch, headed to the Wilson Museum for something cultural.

The museum was fab and stuffed with a whole range of interesting things; enough to keep us intrigued but finishing just when our legs started aching and it was perfect tea time.

We left the museum in search of a restorative tea, to discover that the weather had completely changed it's mind and was making a determined attempt to start Autumn.  It was bright, crisp, and a good few degrees colder than when we first arrived.  There was nothing for it but slabs of cake and vats of tea, before heading back to our room for a sleepover style, pyjama wearing, chocolate fuelled supper.

Sunday morning we went to a reservoir just down the road from where we were staying and had a gorgeous and very Autumnal walk through the woods.  Everything smelt damp and woody and leafy; a perfect introduction to the new season.

Our final visit was to the Pump Rooms and though we didn't taste the spa water, we did have a quick poke inside the gorgeous room before finding a perfect picnic spot by the river to munch our sandwiches.

Then suddenly and all too soon it was time to go home, each in separate and opposite directions, back to telephone calls and letters until the next get together....