So, not only did I not realise that THIS weekend was the Queen's Jubilee (thus people I love would have extra days off which they could spend with ME and thus leaving it very late to book anywhere to go away to for a nice weekend), I also got confused and thought the river flotilla and most of the festivities were yesterday and so booked to go away today missing London at its pomp and circumstance best.

Instead I booked for 4 of us to head off out of London for the day, staying in a hotel overnight and then onto one of my favourite places in the world: Southwold.

Yesterday I got googling sure there would be something on somewere we would be near today and sure enough Felixstowe was promising a Gala with beach hut decorating, stalls, live music, face-painting, bouncy castles, circus skills, and much more. it sounded great. None of us had ever been to Felixstowe but with it being a harbour town, its promises of festivities and those very same festivities taking place in the spa gardens by the pavillion- how much more idyllic could anything sound?

Except when we got there we couldn't find the promised gala.

After much searching, interspersed with playing in the arcades, playing chicken with waves, paddling up to my knees in the freezing North Sea and being rained on and frozen by winds we finally found one little A4 sign on a restaurant door telling us the Gala had been moved inside to the leisure centre.

Except not being Felixstowians we had no idea where that was.

So we realised it was time to give up on our Jubilee day out, get in the car and swear to never, ever, ever visit Felixstowe again.

It's not a good sign for a town when the best things I could find were an apron in a shop window and a drawing by a 4 year old child.