Checking out Guildford

NB On some of my older blog posts many of the photos have disappeared! Apologies for the lack of (terribly taken) images. 

In the spirit of the honesty and transparency that I'm hoping to create in my little space on the internet I don't mind telling you, my eldest child is being a pain in the arse at the moment. She is a feisty little thing at the best of times which, of course, can be a good thing. I want her to be able to hold her own and stand up for herself. I don't want her to grow up to blindly follow the crowd and just do what her peers tell her. I want her to be able to think for herself and to believe in herself. However, what I don't want is my almost 3 year old screaming "NOOOO" at me in a park full of people, and when I grab her to stop her running off for her to start shouting "AAAARGGH, my arm my arm, you're HURTING ME", despite the fact I'm holding onto the sleeve of her coat and not actually touching any part of her body! So, bearing all this in mind, you can imagine why the thought of taking the kids out at the moment is a bit daunting.

As I wrote in a previous post, I was meant to visit my brother in Richmond a few weeks ago. This all fell through due to toddler illness so we rescheduled to this week. With the eldest being a bit tricky I decided to make life a little easier on myself and change our meeting spot to Guildford. I've never been despite it only being a 45 minute drive, and it's only an hour on the train for my brother. So, Guildford it was. 

This is a strange post in that Guildford isn't necessarily a particularly super child friendly day out, so I'm not saying "if you have kids you should definitely head here". It's also not particularly special or different to a lot of other British town centres. But it is a nice town and we found things to do to occupy us for a few hours. We pottered around the shops - I don't have a Kikki K or Anthropologie locally so it was nice to browse in those. We walked up to the castle and looked at the beautiful tulips - although we didn't go inside. 

We just popped into the Costa in Waterstones for lunch but there was plenty of space and it meant the kids could do some colouring and browse the books on our way out. 

If you're looking for a place to feed or change your baby I've been in worse Baby Rooms that the one in The Friary.

All in all, we had a nice day out with minimal tantrums! Smiles from the boys, bit of sneaky side eye from the toddler!