First Frosts - From the Lost Blog

I had hoped to get these memories recorded a great deal earlier. Perhaps back before winter actually found us here but we are well in its clutches now and all night and day I can hear the wind rushing at our little attic window and the sound of fat rain drops beating against the roof. 

The world has changed since the autumn. My world has changed. It feels like a lifetime ago, maybe a lingering dream or perhaps somebody else’s life even that we were here on our last road trip as a duo. Pregnancy is an odd limbo, a time when your body isn’t your own anymore. You’re part way to motherhood physically and emotionally and yet you have the freedom to linger and draw out long, luxurious showers, maybe read a book, have a lie in and hop in the car on a spontaneous adventure. It’s a strange time to look back on because it’s  an odd bridge chapter of inbetween; the times before Lyra existed and our life with her now.

We had decided to get away for a few days, for a final little trip just the two of us before the baby due date 3 weeks away. We had no idea that we’d be meeting her precisely a week later. Going away on this trip was one of our better decisions, because now we’re in that awkward early phase of parenthood where it’s hard to act like a couple. We’re still figuring things out and learning how to live with our newborn daughter so we’ve had to put each other away for a spell while we navigate this new path. Having this time together to be romantic, to stroll along the familiar sandstone streets with gelato and sit in our favourite coffee shops and stay up all night in bed talking for hours like we did was so so important. We really appreciated having this chance to enjoy being a couple before we put away this part of our lives, at least for a little while. 

When we arrived in Bath, autumn was barely clinging on. It was a couple of days before All Hallows Eve and Jon’s birthday and part of the purpose of the trip was to celebrate that. Jon isn’t a present kind of person so we try to gift each other experiences rather than material things as we like to believe that memories last longer. I figured this was our last chance to ever stay somewhere really lovely for a long time so I booked us a few nights at ‘The Pig near Bath’. 

I had my graduation meal at the Pig 3 years ago (University really does feel like somebody else’s life already) and it was a truly wonderful memory. It was one of the best dining out experiences I can remember, kitchen garden, restaurant and hotel set in a beautiful old manor house nestled deep in rolling Somerset hills. I had tucked away the idea of one day coming back for a stay but I wouldn’t have thought that when I did, it would be with my husband just before we were about to have a baby. Definitely not milestones I had expected to meet only 3 years after graduating… I had always been sceptical about whether I would have a baby one day because of PTSD associated with my own family, my constant moving about from place to place and also my long term ex-boyfriend had been dead against children so I had long ago put that idea to bed. 

Jon and I have travelled a great deal together over the course of our relationship, well… travelled the UK anyway. My job has taken us from Cornwall up to Glen Coe, the Isle of Wight and the Peak District – our first trip away to Dorset pretty much brought us together when we made some excellent memories at the Old Harry Rocks and spent all day on Studland beach. Normally I would book an extra few days stay at the place we were working so we could make a little holiday out of it and that had been pretty much how we’ve been rolling the last 21 months… Never really going on holiday but always making the most out of being on the road. This was our first intentional holiday and probably our last for a great while. Holidaying to the city where I went to university may seem pointless but for us, we wanted to relieve the pressure of needing to walk a lot and see everything. We wanted a relaxing experience where we could kick back and enjoy just floating around in a hazy, autumnal dream – and that’s exactly what we did. 

When I think back to our few days at the Pig, I think of hazy soft light through the Georgian windows while we sat at the bar sipping mocktails and chatting by the fire. I think of the herd of deer which we could see from our bedroom window, the feel of the monsoon shower on my achy pregnant lady bones and the frost that appeared the morning of Jon’s birthday. 

We don’t get frost much in Cornwall because we’re by the coast and winters are fairy mild here. We also live in the heart of town so Jack Frost does ever pay a visit to the county, we seldom get to see or enjoy it.

We were wide awake at the crack of dawn on Jon’s birthday – it felt like Christmas morning. Breakfast hadn’t even started being served yet so we crept into the kitchen gardens where they grow their produce for the restaurant and enjoyed the sparkling ground and whimsy of the soft, morning light and crispy leaves. It was what felt like the first breath of winter of the year. 

Our breath lingered in the still, crisp air like clouds and the leaves crunched underfoot. It was the end of something and the start of another thing. Autumn to winter, 27 year old to 28 year old, the last moments of coupledom and the anticipation of parenthood.

Breakfast was incredible. Being the millennials that we are, we’ve become quite into lazy breakfasts in town when we’re feeling fancy and starting to get cabin fever. We went all out for his birthday on the unlimited ‘buffet’ and ‘cooked breakfast’ option. I received a raised eye-brow and polite correction from the waitress when I ordered ‘the buffet’ and was gently informed that it was in fact called a ‘breakfast table’. Forever a working class girl I guess?

After a bourgeoise morning sinking into squishy armchairs by burning log fires and soaking up the sort of late autumn whimsy that can only be generated from hip, gentrified hotels on the edge of the Cotswolds we headed out to the fairytale village of Castle Combe. The drive was almost as charming as the place itself and the last time I had set foot there had been my second winter at University in Bath, when I had the car and I began to explore all of the little secrets and wonderful spots that were now accessible to me.

After showing Jon some of my favourite parts of the village and enjoying the wizarding vibe, we headed to Bath to visit the Roman bath museum. I’ve been there more times than I can remember when I lived there since residents of Bath and uni students get free entry but Jon has never visited and since I was too pregnant to be allowed to visit the thermae as we had originally planned, it was the next best thing. Also Jon loves museums and history and there’s no denying that the ruins of the centuries old Roman baths are a must see.

I adore old places, there’s something about touching the stone and feeling its energy, knowing that hands touched that same stone a thousand years before and imagining the multitudes of feet that had trodden on that ground in that time. I can only imagine how exciting it must be when archeologists discover ruins, the secrets waiting to be found and imagining the secrets that are still lingering underground all over the country. Getting into watching ‘The Detectorists’ gave me a whole new appreciation of all the hidden little secrets of this islands soil and being the weepy, hormonal mess that I am these days, my television viewing is restricted to feel good, light hearted content. Goodbye American Horror story. Goodbye Black Mirror.

In the afternoon, I had planned for us to meet some friends in one of Jon’s favourite coffee spots (Society cafe) with a Narwhal cake but this was a complete surprise and Jon had no idea of what we had planned. After we had finished at the Roman Bath museum I had to keep him distracted until Jess and Eivis were ready at the coffee shop with the cake waiting. I took him for Gelato and we strolled around some of my favourite spots, I pretended I wanted to rest on a bench for as long as I could possibly get away with and made him look up weird articles on wikipedia. Anything to provide a distraction. After a while Jon got fed up and was dragging me to get coffee but luckily Jess and Eivis got there just in time to surprise him with the cake. Jon’s a vegetarian and as a rule says he doesn’t eat anything with a face… well boyo, that cute lil Narwhal sure had a face  Is that in breach of your food ethics? Can you still eat potato smileys?

We finished the evening with an incredible meal. I had the most delicious terrine of my life followed by a Pork Tomahawk in a beautiful mustard and cider sauce. It was somewhat hampered by a lack of vegetarian deserts (Jon was fobbed off in the end with his only option of poached pear with a sorbet) but otherwise the entire thing was mouthwatering and luxurious. I’m not one to take my DLSR to the table and take photos (Although I did spy a very ‘blogger-esque’ guest there with her boyfriend who was doing just that) so you’ll have to take my word for it.

As we normally stay in air b’n’b’s whenever we travel for work, it was so nice being able to be fancy, spread out and not tip-toe around somebody else’s home, have unnecessarily long showers and know that somebody else is going to make my bed for me each day. I can count the amount of times I’ve stayed in a proper hotel on my hands so this was such a nice experience to bid goodbye to not just autumn, but our chapter as just a couple. There’s a Pig hotel over at Studland, one of the places where Jon and I first shared some of our first precious memories so it would be great to swing by there sometime to be fancy again. I would highly recommend taking a ‘baby-moon’ as some people call them if you’re expecting a baby as for us, looking back it was an incredibly important time for us to just take a break together and appreciate each other as a couple and share in our excitement and anticipation of the next adventure to come.

And so here we are, 7 weeks later with our bundle of smelly, squishy joy. She’s chatty, determined, sweet and loves to do farts and has so much personality already and we are both head over heels in love with her. But that’s a post for another time