When I was a little girl my parents had a holiday home in Christchurch, Dorset and we would spend weekends and sometimes longer there each year. I’ve only been there once or twice since they sold the house many years ago, and as we were in the area I wanted to pay the quaint town a visit to remember happy childhood days and see if things had changed. As I recalled to Dave the things that we used to do as a family, I realised a lot of our time (or at least as I remember it) was spent feeding the local wildlife, from squirrels in the Priory grounds to swans on the quay. Sadly, we didn’t see any squirrels, but we did manage to feed some of our lunch to the quacking swans and ducks. We walked around the recently established Monday market and I had to refrain Dave whilst he browsed the £1 tat stall, reminding him of all the junk we’ve just got rid of at home. I did, however, encourage him to buy a homemade apple and raspberry pie for our pudding.

No encouragement was needed when I suggested that we hire a little motor boat for an hour to pootle from the quay up the river. After some price negotiation we stumbled clumsily into the boat and Dave took the helm, taking us past all the rather posh riverside houses with their own private boat moorings. <link>This is the house</link> that I would like to own one day.

View our Christchurch photo gallery for more pics of the houses and our boat trip.