A day out in Rye

Today we should have been boarding a plane to sunny Mallorca but instead we kept our week's annual leave from work and booked in some staycations instead. Thankfully the weather in England right now is beautiful so we headed off to Rye.

Rye is an ancient market town that is famous for its scallops, antique shops and of

course, the tourist hot spot, Mermaid Street.

It is a stunning place to photograph but because it is so popular it can be challenging to photograph. 

To get me started for the day, I headed to Knoops chocolate which I keep seeing on instagram by cocktailsandotherstories who has a fabulous feed of London hotspots and her adorable pooch, I have been fully influenced. When I returned home I tagged her in my insta story and it turns out she was also there today! 

I opted for the 73% cold chocolate milk which had notes of honey and citrus and it was delicious. 

Fuelled by chocolate for the day, we wandered around stopping to take various photos. I have been to Rye numerous times now but I have never felt like my images were good enough so I am glad we had the camera with us but despite the weather being glorious, I had the battle of photographing in blaring sun and dodging shadows.

I think every time I visit Rye I take the same photo's, it is too pretty not to but today I wanted to challenge myself to try and take images from a different perspective. I have been watching that BBC series on photography and its made me want to explore other types of images rather than the stuff you see all over instagram.

Plus I had a new spiffy dress from Innika Choo that I wanted to show off... I bought it from Ebay and got it for a bargain as they are expensive to buy off the peg and now that I have moved I have far less cash monies than I used to!

It is so lovely to be off working and wandering around in the sunshine. The house move was an exhausting few days so I'm glad we kept this week as holiday. We worked out today that we haven't had any time off since Christmas!

Mermaid street was constantly busy, there were vans parked on the road and a constant flow of pedestrians so we thought we would try and take some photo's of the other end, which I really like!

I love the quirkiness of the streets and the details on the doorways.

I should think if you want to take uninterrupted photos you would need to be here first thing in the morning. I am not a morning person, it was a struggle to get up at 8am to travel down here! It's going to be a shock to the system when I have to go back in to the office.

We were hoping to climb the church tower as I have heard you can do that and there will be awesome views but we were running out of time as we had lunch booked for 1pm which we already had to push back as we were running late.

Rye is about an hour from where I live so I am sure I will return to do that another day.

I do so love this time of year when all of the flowers come in and England looks lush and romantic.

Mermaid Street, so pretty!

I sometimes think it would be fun to live here for a summer, you have camber sands beach just 10 mins drive away and you could spend your days reading books and drinking coffee. Yes, I'm sure people think that would get boring but it sounds great to me!

I would also like to Summer in Devon. And spend Spring in Paris. And Autumn in Rome, or maybe Barcelona...

Once we were done being annoying tourists, we headed back to the station car park and drove to the Globe Inn on the marsh which is five minutes away.

Despite it being Monday the pub was packed! We got a table in the garden and ordered something cold to drink, pink fizz for me and an ale for Mr Poachie.

I love the mad interiors. It's nautical with a touch of bonkers.

This is also the start of my birthday celebrations (I turn 36 on Wednesday) so we had a little 'cheers' and ordered our starters. I went for the scallops and Mr Poachie ordered a pint of prawns. He was hoping, (and to be fair, told by the waiter) that they would be shelled and alas when they were served, they weren't so we spent ten mins faffing about with them.

My scallops were ok, not the best I have had. Usually the food here is great and it's been a pub I would recommend when in Rye but today it seemed a little off.

I had a fish platter for my main and it was a bit lacklustre. Such a shame as I had been looking forward to it.

Hopefully its just a one off, I think Covid has massively impacted the hospitality sector.

After another few cocktails for me (as Mr Poachie was driving), we decided to head home. We toyed with the idea of having a mooch around the antique shops but it was so hot and we have just spent ££££ on house bits recently so left it for today.

We are off to the Cotswolds tomorrow! I always love visiting there, I will apologise for the Cotswold spam on your insta feeds now...

Happy Monday!