Friday, June 03, 2011

New places, new adventures

A couple of weeks ago we had a great weekend going out and about. On Saturday we visited Bluebells Dairy in Spondon. I've been wanting to go there for a while as it keeps popping up in local magaziney things, and we had an afternoon to fill...

It wasn't as big as I was expecting, but still very very good. They have their own dairy herd there (obviously...!) and make their own ice cream. So there's a small farm shop and cafe, a great children's play area (slides galore and even a trampoline) and an area where you can feed goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens and other small farm animals. Brilliant.

On the Sunday we travelled out to Staunton Harold. We've been to the Ferrers Centre there before, which is a great craft centre, but this time we also made it to the reservoir (I can't find a specific website for the reservoir, but there are lots of images on Google which link to walking websites and other similar ones).



The reservoir is a beautiful area, there are a few woodland walks nearby, again an ace play area, and some picnic tables. No cafe, but great for a visit.



The Ferrers Centre is a courtyard which is populated with craft studios and shops. It is very lovely and there's a great range on offer, including a chap who specialises in making Victorian-style mechanical models. There was lots I wanted to buy including some great pottery decorated with seaside scenes (here it is on the maker's website)



....managed to exercise a little more restraint this time! There is also a fab toy shop there which is run by volunteers and parents from one of the local schools, to which all the profits go. It has a slightly eclectic range but that is because it's chosen by about 5 of the volunteers, each of them choosing things they like. Including lots of board games - we came home with 2!!! And they served ice cream from the Bluebell Dairy. Fab.

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