travelwithpenelopeandparker.com

The Handlebar café we’ve not yet visited but it’s on a favourite Winchester water meadow walk that I miss dearly. In Winchester itself, the newest opening is Inn the Park, brand new and it looks lovely, linked to the Chesil Rectory it’s from good stock! There’s also an excellent little play area in Hursley and hence it’s a particularly well located little van! A little drive away with excellent garden dining and space

only a year ago I googled ‘pandemic’ to work out how bad one was… Hospital is also not the place I’d choose for my first night away from home, and first baby-free night, since January 2020. I went in with more pain than when I gave birth and came home better and without catching covid. I can’t remember much of the detail as by the time I was in hospital First when the consultant took a look and declared she couldn’t deal with it outside theatre… Second when she strode back in purposefully after a blood test towing a drip and a lot of bags of antibiotics because they needed to clear the infection fast…

I can’t imagine being on the same timezone to colleagues again and not rushing to fit things in first thing or last thing. My toddler has an outdoor voice and apart from one trip to a garden centre to see Father C hasn’t been inside with friends (apart from nursery) since March! They’ve gone back to basics for January’s topic and are bringing in the New Year with a bang – wishlists and plans for the year of adventures ahead. If you want to join, pop your post up over the first week of the month and add it to the link up widget found on Adventures of a London Kiwi, SilverSpoon London, Binnys Food and Travel Diaries.

For us work and working with a toddler at home was tough, compounded by being permanently at home in lockdown when home was a grotty building site… So in a year when I’ve achieved very little, with a wipe of hand sanitiser and a wear of a mask, here are the 10 things that I am grateful to celebrate about the 2020 way of life: Buying local and shopping small has become a way of life. Not being in London at all, we’ve switched the Pret-type spend to local spend and it’s a pleasure to shop local and enjoy the local experiences that are so important now. Keeping things fun, I am also grateful for: a kettle tap, Tractor Ted and the Little Farmer, my breadmaker, the slow cooker, picnics (even in the rain), our fire bowl, hosepipes to amuse a toddler, sticker books, a shared love of messy baking, the fact our cars are a new playroom when they’re abandoned for months on the drive!