We had another very lazy morning, up late again. It rained a bit before we went out to Pancake House for lunch. Yes, you can see a pattern to lunchtimes forming here. We ended up doing this last year at Elveden Forest.

After lunch we headed back to the villa to collect our swimming stuff and went to the Sub-Tropical Swimming Paradise. It was just thinking about raining when we arrived at the centre, so that was good timing. There are loads of changing rooms, from single to family size, with 2 doors to each, one on the entry/exit corridor and one on the poolside corridor. After you have changed and leave by the poolside door, there are banks of lockers available for a £1 refundable deposit (just remember to leave some pound coins out when you pack your clothes away). After walking round the corridor around all the changing rooms you get to the showers and foot bath before you get to the pool. Now, I must be a soft southener, the Elveden Sub-Tropical Swimming Paradise was hot, sub-tropical you might even say; Sherwood Forest is futher north and I think the same approach has been taken with the pool, the air temperature wasn’t hot, it wasn’t even warm, it was down right fresh. The pool seemed a lot smaller than Elveden and was a lot cooler, it was a toss up between the air and water temperature. I’m not a great lover of swimming and swimming pools, so this took the edge off of any enthusiasm that I had mustered. We were there for a couple of hours and the kids had a great time.

We ate in Strada again tonight, the kids both had Margherita Pizza from the kids menu this time and followed it with Panacotta again. Jo had Salmone con Lenticchie, roasted fillet of Scottish salmon wrapped in pancetta, served with braised lentils, green beans and a mustard dressing and I had Pollo alla Milanese, sautéed chicken in seasoned breadcrumbs with a tomato, garlic and basil sauce, served with green beans and roasted cubetti potatoes. We came out of Strada and booked for Huckleberry’s tomorrow night and then made a quick getaway as it was just starting to drizzle. We had been expecting rain all day, so didn’t want to get caught out in it if we could help it. I think we had been back at the villa for about 30 minutes before it really hammered down and then it rained heavily all evening and into the night.