Valentine of Mine

Eric booked us a romantic getaway for Valentine's weekend at this little 'gastropub' in a small village north of Brighton called Fletching. We took the bus to Ukfield and then hired a taxi from there. The village is tiny. There is one church and one small cafe/general store which basically sells a few loaves of bread, HP sauce, marmalades and sausages. But there are two pubs because a village this size needs two pubs. It doesn't need an actual store but two pubs are necessary.

This is the little B&B we stayed in called the Griffin Inn.

This is one of the dinning rooms where we had our full english in the mornings. I might add that the meals were amazing. The dinners were 'gourmet' and prepared from local ingredients from the gardens and farms with the fish fresh from the sea.

This was one of my favorite parts of our room. I loved the tiny oranges growing and wanted to pick one.

Here is our cozy room. They term the rooms at the Main House "...with slanted floors and quirky corners". They got the slanted part right. Check out the bottom of the door. That gap can tell you these walls/floors would not pass code in todays standards!

And you best mind your head walking in and out of the room. There are a few goose-aches between the two of us before we ALWAYS ducked going in and out of the room.

Our room was titled the "Bluebell Room" termed for the local Bluebell Railway.

It had this lovely deep cast iron bath perfect for a long soak after a cold day.

The inn has lovely picnic grounds which would be perfect in the summertime.

This is the main street going through the town. The little cafe/general store is to the right.

Since the thing to do here is go for a country walk that is what we did.

We picked a path that looked fun enough based on the poor map provided. The inn keeper said just follow the marked path and signs. Oh how simple it sounds.

The walk started off going through the local church grounds.

Make note of the nice clean boots we are wearing. They didn't last long in this state.

The walk started out beautiful. It was overcast but at least it wasn't raining!

Following the path there are many fences dividing property with various gates you have to climb over.They were all different styles and fun to cross!

The path follows what is called the Sussex Millennium Walk. It goes across many hills and through various farmland and pastures.

The path led us to this extremely muddy road. I was wondering if we should follow it or find a different way. What the heck. Why not.

We literally got to travel over the river...

...and through the woods.

As we were crossing a few of the fields I could smell, but not actually see any cows. And as we were walking through these fields I thought to myself, boy these pastures are sure muddy. But then it dawned on us. We weren't walking through a muddy field but a pasture fertilised with freshly spread manure.

It's a good thing we had our 'shit kickers' on!

Later, we came across this freaky display. Perfect for a quiet day out in the country.

But this part was my favorite. Check out this house. It's so English! It looks like it's straight out of a storybook.

I might add here that we had been walking for at least 3 hours by now and were lost. The map - no help at all. The marked paths - weren't actually marked. We made friends with a nice English lady with two uncontrollable horses, the horse-pig below, some sheep, and came to terms with our poo boots all while a light mist of rain fell before us. And as we came upon this house for the second time we realised we had just gone in one big circle. But at least we made some friends.

We found this miniature pony that looked like a cross between a pig and a horse.