So, this day out materialised when my friend sent me a Tik Tok of a ‘Book Crawl’.
What’s a book crawl you ask? Let me tell you…
You alternate between Cafes and bookshops, in your local town, or somewhere else, and indulge in the best hobby there is!
I worked out a route and itinerary including lots of independent Cafes, Local buisnesses, a second hand bookshop, our favourite independent bookshop and a few notable favourites such as Waterstones.
So, what book did we choose?…
It was actually my friends idea to read the same book and it turned out to be a great idea – each time we stopped and read we could then dicuss afterwards. It was fun to be able to discuss the book as we went and it added another fun element to the crawl.
This book was a beautiful story with loveable characters and so many bookish elements I challenge any fellow bookworm not to find themselves among its pages at least once!
My rating: โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ.5 / 5
This book was a great length, 224 pages which is perfect for a book crawl day. We both got just over halfway!
Although this could get a little pricey (I really need to learn some self control when it comes to Bookshops!!) We did say that we would LOVE to do this again and that next time we could make it a bit less spenny by taking out the book buying element and just get a drink in each cafe.
We also had our local library as one of our reading spots which was perfect as its obviously a great reading environment, and it doesn’t require you to buy anything!
A couple of weeks ago, me and my husband went away for 4 days to Woburn Center Parcs.
We went Friday to Monday and we had a brilliant time.
We haven’t been to Woburn before, only Elveden, so it was cool to see what another Parc was like.
Here’s what we got up to…
Friday
On Friday we arrived after my husband had finished work. When we arrived we got checked in, had a look around our apartment and then went to our dinner reservation at Las Iguanas.
Our dinner was absolutely delicious. This was a great start to the holiday, and it probably ended up being our favourite meal of the weekend.
The Mexican platters were so nice and gave you a little taster of lots of their yummy dishes. My mocktail was also yummy.
Saturday
A lovely start to the morning and we made some adorable squirrel friends. Lovely ๐ค
We picked up our bikes at 10 and had a little cycle around!
We then did some of the fun activities on offer.
The activities we did were the interactive Squash and interactive Shuffleboard. These both really fun but we particularly enjoyed the shuffle.
For lunch we had some yummy nachos and chicken empanadas.
We had dinner at the American resturant Hucks. This was yummy. I enjoyed my chicken caesar salad topped with cajun shrimp. The star of the show was the cheesey garlic bagel bread – absolutely sensational. Still thinking about it tbh.
After dinner we had a bit of chill time before playing Glow in the Dark Table Tennis, which was very fun.
Sunday
We started off Sunday morning with breakfast at The Pancake House.
Breakfast was really yummy and we thoroughly enjoyed it. They didn’t do omelette at The Pancake House last time so this was a nice new addition (unless we’ve remembered wrong anyway!) We both had a savoury omelette and then shared a sweet Dutch Blueberry pancake. All was very nice.
It was lovely and sunny when we left The Pancake House, so we sat on ‘the beach’ and read for a bit.
We also enjoyed a few activities today…
We played football pool, which was very interesting. It was fun but, much harder to aim than regular pool. You use a white football as the ‘white ball’ to kick yout three coloured balls into the net corner ‘pockets’. When you have scored all your goals you then score the final individual colour (Blue in our case) in place of the black ball. Very fun
Dinner was Italian at Amalfi resturant. Very nice. We shared some Calamari and Burrata to start, with some yummy pastas and garlic bread for main.
After dinner we had time to get in another round of interactive shuffle before our interactive darts slot. Both of these were really fun and made a great end to our third day.
Monday
Out final day ๐ฅฒ
We had a bit more of a chilled morning, packing up (as wel leave our apt but can still spend the whole day at the Parc)
We had one last cycle around before giving our bikes back in.
We did the interactive gamebox as our morning activity. This was very energetic and the little mini games were fun and funny to watch each other partake in. I was knackered after this.
For lunch we decided to try out the French resturant Cafe Rouge. We haven’t been here before but we enjoyed posh toasties, French fries and crisp Diet Cokes.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the swimming pool, having lots of fun in the Rapids (brutal) the lazy river (lovely) and the various flumes (terrifying).
For dinner we had some picky bits at the Sports Bar, before heading off home ๐ฅฒ
Another brilliant weekend at Center Parcs. We had SO MUCH fun and tried out lots of new activities, relaxed, enjoyed the sunshine and had some yummy food. Plus, I didn’t fall off my bike this time ๐ yay!
I popped into town and bought myself a few books from my favourite independent bookshop, plus a little extra book themed item, so I thought I would share with you what I picked up!
Let’s take a look!
I love these covers. I have read the first three books in the ‘Dream Harbour’ series, and I am currently reading number four! ‘The Daisy Chain Flower Shop’ is book six, which brings me onto my next purchase…
This is just a picture of the cover because I ordered this one as they didn’t have any more of these in stock, so that will be arriving at the weekend! Woohoo!!
This book comes highly recommended in my local indie bookshop and if you have followed my blog, or know me, you’ll know that me and my husband love Italy! So I love that it is set in Rome.
I won’t lie, the cover attracted me first because I like pink and green and sushi ๐คฃ then I read the blurb and it sounded intriguing and then I realised it was written by the comedian Mark Watson, who is very funny, sold!
Any book that has bookshop in the title piques my interest and this sounded so cute! And its a nice short one. I’ve read a couple of translated fiction books in the last couple of years and always find them quite different to my usual read but also really interesting so I’m looking forward to this.
I got this one to read to the children when I go back to work in September. This book is all about celebrating the magic of reading, and I’m all about that โจ๏ธ
I also, FINALLY, picked up the ‘Book Club’ hat from Primark! I love it and it was only ยฃ4.50 ๐งข
Would it too much to actually wear it to Book Club?!?! Haha ๐
Roseanne Byford 