Chichester today

Today we went to Chichester in West Sussex, mainly to get out of the way of some tiling going on in our home, a good excuse!

We had lunch in St Martin's Tearooms, a lovely old place with real fires and bags of character in a very old fashioned kind of way. Everything is Organic, try their 100% fruit ice cream with any amazing cake, mmmmmm wonderful.

For all you Jack Will's fan they have opened one in the most beautiful building, I guess they are doing well to afford those kinds of buildings as shops!

The Coln Art Gallery is a nice shop to visit, full of all sorts on nice books/cards/paints/and unusual items. sorry but I don't think the web site does the shop any favours.

Lots of beautiful old wobbly buildings to look at. I love old Sussex roofs, look up you'll be amazed at what you see. Love the blue paint colour of the windows in the hairdressers shop.

Nice unusual clothes in a small shop called Saffron.

Oil and vinegar is such a great shop with helpful staff, some of the packaging is just lovely. Check out the fettuccine wrapped in brown paper with string and a red seal, what nice gift to give to someone who appreciates cooking.

I love it when you go into a good Deli for nice real bread (thank you Raymond Blanc for going ballistic at a loaf of factory processed bread on the Chris Evans Radio 2 show on Friday, you made my morning, very funny.) Hornet Provisions supplied us with a great loaf of bread and also had the most fantastic bowl of colourful dried chilli's, they looked excellent.

We are not bread-aholic's but when you find nice bread  you have to buy it. So Orchard Tea Rooms thank you very much, see the picture above with little green window frames. Which brings me neatly to two other places worth a visit for a snack or two. Are you seeing an obsession going on here?

Amelie and friends has not been open long and is a wonderful place to eat in or take away. My son Sam pointed out this place to me. He is a graphic designer and loved the branding they have had done from one of his favourite graphic companies, I Love Dust. Thanks Sam and more about him on Monday's blog. Notice that they even have meringues in the window placed perfectly for picture taking!

Swallow Bakery gets a mention from me as it has a very good web site and owns one of those lovely silver bullet trailers, used as pop up cafe's, which I love. I have to confess to never having been inside the shop, mainly because pink shops just don't do it for me, and cup cakes make me feel ill! Sorry about that.

Lastly a walk inside and around the grounds of the Cathedral is worth a visit Philip Jackson has a sculpture outside of the Cathedral, more about him in a future blog, so very talented, he sculpts amazing hands!

Just found this trailer, I have to go and see this it looks really good. Out on 24th February.