Lymington market rules!

It's another rainy Saturday in July, which has me wistfully thinking back to recent Saturdays that were not so wet - and catching up with some queued blog posts before they are completely out of date.

The week before our friends left for America (and after they had sold their car), we asked them if there was anywhere they wanted to go one last time, and Lymington was that somewhere. I thought that I had blogged about Lymington before but it seems that I haven't. It's a lovely little town on the south coast of Hampshire in the New Forest district. In addition to some nice walks nearby (particularly around the mudflats to the west), a large open air saltwater swimming pool, and a ferry to the Isle of Wight, Lymington has a market on the High Street every Saturday.

We'd been looking for some salad hands for ages and that Saturday, we found some! (Of course, now that we have some (a) they seem to be everywhere and (b) the weather has refused to provide any decent salad weather.) The stall from which we bought our salad hands had loads of lovely carved products and was just one of the local craft and food stalls. The market also features a load of general household goods stalls but rather than (or, perhaps, in addition to) the usual tat that I associate with such things, they tend to be selling really useful stuff at great prices. As well as our beautiful salad hands, we also managed to get half a dozen other odds and sods between us that we had been looking for elsewhere.

My favourite eatery in Lymington, the Vanilla Pod cafe, has sadly closed down, so I can no longer recommend a trip incorporating a fantastic brunch. Nevertheless, there are plenty of nice places to eat and the sandwiches and cakes in the Driftwood Cafe - a small takeaway-only cafe in the cobbled are of the town centre where we got some coffee - looked particularly good. If you are in the area and the sun should ever decide to grace us with its presence again (or, I suppose, the clouds decide to let it), I thoroughly recommend a visit.