I am not a fan of domestic travel being described as staycations. I consider a staycation is when you have decided to stay home with cheese sticks, chocolate and order takeaway for the weekend. Anything that involves travelling outside your home is a vacation or travel. So my weekend trip to Lymington, England is firmly in the travel category in my book. (Please comment below if you have very strong feelings either way and we can duel it out!)
Getting There
We just drove to Lymington, which is a port town in Hampshire, England. Its about a 2 hour drive from London but as luck would have it, it started raining really hard on our way there so it took us a little longer – not to mention the numerous wrong turns we took. All in all, we left after work from London and reached Lymington for dinner.
You can use trains to get there but we were wary of having to deal with all the maintenance work going on in the weekends. We were also a little concerned that we would not be able to move around in Lymington without a car or would have to spend quite a bit on local taxis so driving in was the easiest for us.
Where to Stay
We stayed in the most adorable hotel which was a old mill. Unsurprisingly, it was called the Old Mill. How lovely is this?
The rooms were comfortable, had coffee and tea and overlooked the gardens at the back. If you are curious about the book I am reading in this post, check out my March book post.
The building you see above is the common areas of the hotel and pub but also includes some of the rooms. We stayed in room in a separate building and I was a little disappointed its not in the mill itself. However, in hindsight, I do think sleeping somewhere away from the main common areas of the hotel is probably a good idea if you want to get some sleep.
The hotel itself has a bar, a pub and restaurant where breakfast is served as well, rooms and gardens at the back and is the perfect place for a weekend away.
Where to Eat
The first day we had dinner at the pub once we reached and it was very good. It was not the usual tired pub food and managed to satisfy a food snob like me. We also had breakfast included in our stay and had the buffet spread in the morning which is probably my favourite time of day during a holiday like this. Does anything beat chatting with friends over a long lazy breakfast with numerous cups of coffee?
The second day we were there we ended up going to town Lymington and walked around the high street. The Saturday market was on and while walking we say this really nice cafe on the High Street and ended up eating there.
Lymington Yacht Haven
We went exploring on the first day there and ended up going for a long walk ending in Lymington Yacht Haven which is basically a parking lot for yachts. It was such a lovely walk in great weather – sunny but very windy as expected since we were near the coast. So make sure you take a wind jacket.
I always love seeing boats and yachts and even near the water you see so many of them parked around. My videos of this can be seen here.
We saw so many beautiful horses during the walk which ended at the beach.
Of course the water was freezing so we couldn’t go in, but honestly just looking at the beautiful beach under the blue sky has such a calming effect.
New Forest
The next day we went for a short walk in New Forest. It is beautiful. It pretty much looks like what I imagine Canada would be like. I don’t know what these trees are called but they are huge – definitely the tallest trees I have seen. The walk we did was the Blackwater: Tall Trees route but you can choose from so many others depending on what you want to do.
I would recommend a weekend to Lymington especially now since the weather is sure to be much better than what it was when we visited in March. If you do end up going or have been before and have some more things to recommend in the area please comment and tell us. For more information and travel panning check out the website set up by the government for Hampshire.
If you have suggestions for weekend trips from London let me know in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook and of course, Instagram.
– Anisha
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