I’m back from North Wales where I spent a lovely few days with my family. It just goes too quickly though, doesn’t it?
On Thursday afternoon I hopped into my dad’s car, with Alfie, and headed up the motorway to Stoke-on-Trent. My granddad lives there with his two dogs and had kindly agreed to look after Alfie and my parent’s three dogs while we were in Wales. My other granddad, who we were going to be staying with, is allergic to dogs so we sadly couldn’t bring them along.
It was nice to see my granddad in Stoke, albeit briefly. He makes awesome cups of tea and always has some funny stories. He’s also reindeer obsessed and every year he goes to Scotland to spend several weeks helping out with a reindeer sanctuary up there. He used to be a joiner before he retired and is always carving and making crazy creations from reindeer antlers that they’ve naturally dropped.
On his garage he painted a beautiful silhouette of reindeer too.
We then hopped back in the car for the last part of our journey to Llandudno. We left Southampton at 2pm and arrived at 9pm! I was definitely feeling a bit cabin feverish.
Friday morning we had a lovely walk in Conwy.
The weather thankfully was good and we enjoyed a nice coffee sat outside a quaint cafe.
In Conwy they have an interactive Alice and Wonderland trail for children to follow. There are wooden statues of different characters all over the town.
I saw Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and the Rabbit. I’ve previously seen the Red Queen but that’s all I’ve found so far.
We also did a little bit of shopping and I found an amazing sweet shop where I just couldn’t help buying a few chocolates and marzipan fruit.
I had a little mosey in Dorothy Perkins and bought a new top as well…the first non-fitnessitem of clothing I’ve bought in a while!!
My grandparents are keen golfers (and despite my granddad being 82 he’s still a very keen walker and cyclist!) so for dinner they took us to their golf club’s restaurant. I had a delicious gammon steak with fried egg and new potatoes. And for pudding a blueberry Bakewell slice with ice cream. Heavenly!
Before getting injured I’d hoped to be able to run the Conwy parkrun on the Saturday but sadly this wasn’t possible. Every part of me desperately wanted to go but I stuck to my initial decision. I’d rather keep on recovering rather than attempt something foolish and delay it longer. It was tipping down with rain in the morning which was some consolation to not running, but I was still grumpy.
Luckily there was the Convwy Taste Festival going on over the weekend so I could take my mind off things by enjoying stupid amounts of food. The festival was just next to the water and down from the Conwy Castle – only a few minutes drive from my grandparent’s house handily!
Despite the poor weather, the place was packed! You paid £8.50 for access to the large tents, where inside were loads of food and drink merchants selling their wares. And, importantly, letting you try them!!
I tried everything, as you can imagine. From chilli jams to sweet chutneys, from Welsh cakes to shortbread… balsamic vinegars, oils, hand-made marshmallows (the choc mint flavour was incredible), curry sauces, BBQ sauces, dried meats, pasties, pies, bread, waffles (best taster ever – a chunk of waffle dipped in caramel sauce…I considered sneaking back to that one to try it again), yogurts, fudge, sausages, meat and, of course, cakes!
I couldn’t not buy a slice of the rocky road…or the peanut butter millionaire shortbread style cake. And then later a large slice of blondie. It took all the effort in the world to not gobble them all up quickly.
After we had all enjoyed so many different foods we decided to head outside of the main tent to look for lunch (I know, because at this point we were soooo hungry ;-)). There were so many different street food options it was quite overwhelming.
Thai, Mexican, Italian, Indian, Chinese, English (bangers & mash, fish & chips), pulled pork and BBQ, Caribbean, Moroccan, mussels… I literally walked up and down the street for a good ten minutes having no idea what to have. I did really fancy a large skewer of tandoori chicken but seen as how we were out for an Indian that evening I knew I needed to go safe and not have anything spicy or similar to what I’d eat that evening.
In the end I went for a lobster roll and fries. I saw it being made and it looked amazing. And it tasted so good. Not the cheapest street food I’d ever had at £10 (compared to the £3.50 hot dog my dad had!) but it was fully worth it. My mum got a sausage roll from a different place to my dad and for the same price as my dad’s they packed in pretty much an entire pack of sausages!! Helpfully, we were all there to assist her 😉
After a quick warm-up coffee we carried on walking around looking at the other food stalls (a few more tasters…) and some of the craft stalls as well. My day was made when I saw a dinosaur walking about – with a fully functioning roar.
Such a great day. I loved it! We all agreed we definitely wanted to come back next year. It was a lot of fun. I came away with three cakes and a meat pack containing a zebra sausage (!!), a boar burger, pigeon breast, pheasant breast, venison steak, black pudding and a slice of bacon. Amazing.
That evening we went to a local Indian and had lots more food…
I had a mixed Asian BBQ started followed by my favourite, tandoori chicken with onion salad. Yum.
I had a great long weekend with my family and it was sad to leave on the Sunday. It was nice to not be at home looking at my empty house still not moving and still not running *sighs*. I would have loved to have done some running while I was away, in such beautiful scenery (and apparently my granddad was going to bike alongside me) but it wasn’t to be. There’s always next time I suppose!
How was your weekend?
Would you have enjoyed the Taste Festival?
Do you like street food? What would you have chosen?