The lovely people at UGG contacted me recently to tell me about their Best Days of Summer campaign, and how I could get involved. I chose a sweet pair of simple summer pumps from their website, and took mum for a lovely summery day out in Dartmouth.
My original plan was to surprise mum with a trip from Dartmouth up the river to one of our favourite cafés in Dittisham, but it turned out that it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we had to come up with other ideas.
Luckily, we were already in Dartmouth, so we decided to be tourists in a town we thought we already knew pretty well.
We decided to have lunch at one of our frequent haunts – Café Alf Resco. We’ve been coming here forever, and it’s always brilliant. It has such a cosy atmosphere, and sharing tables is encouraged, which I love. Also, on Sundays they have live music, which is usually some kind of easy jazz.
After filling our tummies with food, tea/coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, we took a walk down to Bayard’s Cove, which is a lovely cobbled street in Dartmouth, with a fort at the end. You get a beautiful view of the mouth of the river, and Kingswear, which is where I grew up (and it’s even nicer on a less cloudy day).
We walked up lots of narrow, winding steps, in between old houses until we reached the footpath to Jawbones Hill – which is probably the best, creepiest name for a hill.
We decided to stay amongst the cute houses and explore that area instead. I love how different each house is, and there were so many beautiful door knockers – from delicate hands, to anchors, to fish.
Up more colourful steps, more hills, and then I made friends with a lovely cat called Rupert. He got in on the outfit photo action in front of this lovely green door.
I thought this was the perfect place to show off my summery outfit. I kept it simple with my new bug print smock dress from ASOS, the lovely shoes gifted by UGG, and when it got a bit chilly, I threw on my fun yellow jumper from Zara.
It’d be rude not to have an ice cream from The Dartmouth Ice Cream Company… they do the best, yummiest ice creams ever, and you can get a dollop of Devon clotted cream on top. I had strawberry, and mum had cream tea flavour.
Dartmouth has a few interesting shops selling vintage and antique bits and bobs. My favourite shop was closed, but we popped into Pennyfarthing for a little snoop around. I nearly bought the bird-shaped clip-on earrings to wear as collar clips, but the hinges were really loose, so I decided to keep my £5.
Next we wandered towards Dartmouth Market, stopping in a charity shop to buy some bright orange wellies, and duck egg blue trousers to make into shorts. I love the thick white paint on the walls of the market square, and yet more cobbles underfoot.
As if we hadn’t eaten enough clotted cream already, we decided to stop for another tasty treat. There’s not much better than a proper, homemade, Devonshire cream tea.
Back down the hills and the steps, back to near where our adventure began.. Finally, we got back on the ferry and headed back across the river, both exhausted from all the walking, eating and smiling.
