The Best of Britannia 2013

We have had quite a marvellous day! In short we visited The Best of Britannia 2013 in Farringdon, London and met up once again with some of our friends who joined us at The British Family Fayre and plenty more new friends besides.

Lucan was beyond excited at going on a train (I know simple things with 3 year olds) and then when we changed onto another train it was all just too much, that was just getting there! We met the lovely Anthony, one of the shows organisers and started out to immerse ourselves in the four whole floors of British goodies.

We decided to start on the top floor of the show as Lucan was determined to climb every stair in the place. Up there we met up with one of our old friends ‘Hey Joe’. We had a lovely chat and were pleased that they seemed to be really enjoying themselves. Their display looked beautiful against the industrial Victorian interiors. We moved on to a newer friend, Elizabeth Beckett, whose gorgeous peppermint foot cream has done wonders for Mr B’s rather cheesy feet recently. She too seemed to be enjoying the very chilled out atmosphere and her set up too really resonated with the space. Another new friend for the day was Ellie from EcoKitty, a lovely lady who is mad for all things about cats. She has created a recycled cardboard playhouse for cats and hand makes all sorts of super catnip toys to go with them. As we have neglected the lovely Patch recently we felt that this would be a treat for her and we weren’t wrong, she’s hardly been out of it since we got home!

Down a floor and we bumped into Sarah from Yull Shoes who was there enjoying a day out and then into Helen Gordon, another friend from The BFF. She had some gorgeous new pyjamas which just called to us for Lucan with dragons and knights all over them. Needless to say he was thrilled when he unwrapped them at home and is sleeping snugly in them this evening. On to Vickers Bicycles, one really for Mr B, who I literally had to drag away before he started flashing the cash on their stunning two wheeled contraptions.

Down again and by this time Lucan had given up and gone to sleep, which was just as well as there was lots to see (and buy) on floor number 1. I was particularly drawn to a stand with beautiful and very classy women’s clothes. The owner of the stand Libby London (go on Google them you won’t be disappointed) was lovely and encouraged me to try on a black jumper dress which was a steal and so was the next purchase of the day. We moved across the room to see Susannah Hall Tailors. Susannah is another friend who we have tweeted endlessly with but have never met so it was great to catch up and see more of her wares as her auction item was brilliantly received at the fayre. We also had a good chat with Rob from Comins Tea House about how things were going and got some great feedback about the BFF – apparently people have been travelling from all over the UK to go and visit them because of their attendance at our event .

One more floor and this was the one for Lucan with two Morgan’s and the favourite of the day a bright orange Ginetta. He was allowed in the two Morgan’s but sadly not the Ginetta, much to his frustration. Petrol head clearly is an understatement as far as our son is concerned. To help him deal with the pain of being separated from the orange car we went to the Romney Marsh Wool stand where he chose a really cute lamb made from their own sheep skin as his first British soft toy of the year. This was promptly named ‘Nanny’ and the bond was made.

We returned home tired but having had a truly British day out and pleased as punch with our new purchases. Who said shopping British was hard? 😉

The next not to be missed date on the British manufacturing calender has to be the British Family Fayre in 2014 (www.britishfamilyfayre.co.uk)… see you there!

– Emily