our weekend away

I can hardly believe that it is our 2nd wedding anniversary already! the day is as fresh in my mind as it was 2 years ago, we really enjoyed ourselves.

This year we celebrated our anniversary with a lovely long weekend away at Hanbury Manor, a Marriott Hotel in Ware.

We save up our Tesco clubcard points throughout the year so that we can have a weekend away, this is the 3rd time we have done it and I had really wanted to go to Hanbury manor. Of course, I was terrified the place wouldn't be everything I hoped for - but it was, and more. the building is lovely (if a bit of a mishmash!)


Our room was cosy, its a Marriott hotel so you can expect a typical standard, but this was a little bit different, a bit more sympathetic to the fact it is an old building, with quite a history. It even had its own little entrance hall (sorry Mr.B it had to be mentioned!)
the only sound we could hear at night was the breeze swaying the trees and the crickets singing.


Breakfast was taken in the Oak dining room, which has a lovely large brick balcony which overlooks the balcony - we were able to sit out there on Monday morning, that is quite something on a lovely day to be eating melon and croissants, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice overlooking such an amazing landscape - how the other half live eh?!

the weekend was spent just lazing around, making full use of the spa facilities by swimming a lot and using the steam room (swimming at 10.30pm on Sunday was fun, especially being the only folks in there and being able to mooch back up to our room in our robes!), we took lovely walks in the grounds and found a nice pub to walk to on the Sunday for a yummy roast dinner.

On our Sunday evening stroll we passed one of the function rooms, lights on and doors wide open, a poor little hedgehog had got confused and wandered in.
Mr.B - my hero - whisked a tablecloth from one of the table and scooped the poor mite up and placed him safely outside, I shut the doors so he didn't wander back in!




I think the most fun we had though was on Monday, we discovered a secret pass time whilst walking along the river Lea on Sunday - Cray fishing! Its seems that stretch of the Lea has a swarm of American Signal Crayfish, carrying a plague which is killing our native crayfish. Of course it is illegal to catch crayfish without a licence, but it is also illegal to throw an American Signal Crayfish back into our native waters.
So Mr.B and me whiled away an hour or so before going home dangling bacon on the end of a piece of thread in the water, every now and then one of the greedy buggers would grab hold and was lifted out - about a dozen in total! Tea was yummy that night, although the girls came dangerously close to naming them all! It took me a while to get my head round cooking them - and Mr.B had to put the first couple in!