Chilly Walk in Clevedon

We love Clevedon in North Somerset. It is a special place for us because it's where we tied the knot back in 2009.

We went to Clevedon on Saturday for a Winter walk. It was a very chilly, crisp December day...but unbelievably still. I happened to turn around just as we were about to climb the hill and the Marine Lake on the seafront was so calm it looked like a mirror.

For years we've been visiting Clevedon and turning right out of the car park to walk along the seafront. Lured in that particular direction by the views of the elegant pier, ice creams and the amazing shops in Hill Road.

Today we decided to turn left out of the car park and walked up the hill towards an area called Poets Walk.

It's a bit of a climb, but once at the top you are rewarded with views across to Wales, the Mendips and the Somerset Levels. You also pass a pretty church and graveyard, in fact, it is the church used in the ITV drama Broadchurch.

The area between Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon is a beautiful part of the levels, it is virtually untouched by roads and probably hasn't changed for hundreds of years. Sustrans have been campaigning for a cycle track to be created on the section of the coast between Weston & Clevedon for over twenty years. It would create a much needed link between the two towns and I would love to cycle along that particular stretch.

Now we've discovered this part of Clevedon, I can safely say we will be back for many more walks in the future...

I'm linking up with #countrykids fun over on the Coombe Mill blog

I'm also linking up with the Magic Moments link-up on the Oliver's Madhouse blog

And linking up with the Brilliant Blog Posts link-up on the honestmum.com blog

On your bike!

The United Kingdom has been battered and blown about by gales and flooding for weeks now. As a Brit you get used to the damp and dreary weather, but every now and again the wet weather takes a day off and lets the sunshine have a turn. Saturday was absolutely glorious. Beautiful Winter sunshine, bright blue skies...a perfect day to take our daughter's new bike for a spin on the prom.

She proudly calls it her 'big girl bike', it's an upgrade on the trike she's been pootling around on for about two years. It's got stabilisers (thank goodness) and brakes she can't quite master, which makes for concerned looks from other prom-walkers...but so far we haven't collided with anyone or anything. She has to wear a helmet for the first time, one with Mickey Mouse ears to be precise.

I know the photos look sunny, but believe me it was freezing, so we had a pit stop outside the cafe on the seafront. Hot chocolates all round, we needed the calories!

Despite my daughter's cavalier attitude to braking, we had such a fab time. Once she mastered the steering and strength needed to make a bigger bike move forward, she was off like a rocket!

And, for the first time in ages, we all got some serious exercise. Walking with a toddler or pre-schooler can be a slow process, not just because their legs are little, but because the world is such a fascinating place we have to stop to look at everything, question why this that or the other does X, Y or Z and generally take in life at a (sometimes) slower pace. I like to walk fast, when my daughter was in her pram and then her pushchair, I power-walked everywhere. I didn't have a car, it was better (and cheaper) than gym membership and it was quite possibly the fittest I've been in my life. But once my daughter got too big for her pushchair, we've walked everywhere at her pace. Which is lovely in one way, to slow down to little-legs-speed, but it's not been great for my fitness levels!

So it was such a joy to put her on two wheels and chase about after her on the seafront. It opens up a whole new world to us as a family. We can go further with her on two wheels. Once she is confident and we don't have to walk along beside her making sure she doesn't flatten anyone, we can get on our bikes too. And then we're really off!

Vintage love: bathing costume and heels

I love this photo because it captures a time when people really made an effort with their clothes. You don't see many people wearing heels to the swimming pool and with their hair carefully coiffered - it looks like there's not much chance of that hair-do getting wet! But the main reason I love this photo is because the lady perched on the diving board is my late-Grandmother.

I have always loved looking at my Gran's collection of black and white photos, she always looked so glamorous. And yet you would never believe that she came from a very poor mining family from the Rhondda valley in Wales.

This photo is taken in the Tropicana on the seafront at Weston-super-Mare in 1938, you can see the Grand Atlantic hotel in the background. The Tropicana was a new swimming pool, with an elaborate diving board, which opened on the seafront at Weston in 1937. You can see the diving board in all it's glory here. A trip to Weston was seen as heaven to my Gran and her sister, a break from the grim mining towns of South Wales and a chance to relax and get glammed up.

My Gran had very little money, but she would adapt and alter clothes to add a bit of extra fizz. She also spent ages on her hair and always wore lipstick. As a young woman she had to leave home and move to London to get a job and I think this time in the capital got her interested in fashion. Whenever she returned to see her family in Wales she had the slight air of the film star about her. Although her family gently teased her new glamorous ways - when she returned home wearing a particularly jaunty hat, her Father remarked "where's the carnival?".

This photo is so optimistic because it was taken in peace time between the wars and after much suffering in the Great Depression of the 1920s. A few years later, it was a very different story, my Gran joined the WAAF and rather than following fashions in London, she was dodging bombs and moving around the country to various grim postings in old country houses as part of her war work.

I also love this photo as I am a Weston girl born and bred and I visited the Tropicana as a child in its 1980s reincarnation. It is also an important snapshot of an endangered building. There are plans to demolish this historical art deco construction and many people are very unhappy about it, there is currently and online campaign to save the Tropicana. The site has remained unoccupied since 2000 and it seems such a waste of a perfectly usuable space. I think it would be amazing if it could be restored to its 1937 glory as seen in my Gran's photo.