Mummy's Coffee Morning

The book rest cafe in Exmouth is a wonderful discovery. From the street the facade is slightly faded and relatively old fashioned, if you were to judge this book by its cover you would probably not be expecting very much. However a quick stroll through the book store downstairs, trying not to be distracted by the huge array of books on offer, leads you to a tiny staircase. There is a space to park the buggy downstairs before ascending the creaky and narrow staircase.  When you reach the top and open the door you will be wonderfully surprised! The book rest cafe opens up into a large space that seems twice as big as the shop downstairs. There are loads of tables packed into the main space and some trendy, squashy sofas in the window, with a lovely view.  Despite the amount of seating available the cafe manages to still feel roomy and uncrowded. I always get the sense of being in a friends cosy farmhouse kitchen when sitting in there and could easily spend hours there....

Oscar is my tiddler. He is 20 months into this world and is a mad ball of continuous motion and energy. With this in mind I still decided it would be a fantastic idea to book us tickets to see my mum, in Devon, by train... For those of you not aware, the journey to Exmouth, from where we live, takes approximately 3hours. Naturally I was completely shitting it when the night before travelling was suddenly upon us and I looked frantically between the huge rucksack, general rucksack and pushchair that I would be lugging around the next morning. I am a notoriously awful packet, I freak out about it for days packing little bits here and there then have a massive packing related panic and end up with way too many knickers (You just never know) and not enough socks. Throw into the mix the random may weather and packing for a tiddler who needs SOME item of clothing changed every two minutes and my lightweight carefree packing quickly turned into the same enormous rucksack I take away with ...