Happy Crabby Birthday to me!

Last year my 40th birthday fell on the day of Britmums Live and we had a wonderful weekend in London to celebrate.  This year couldn’t have been more different and was a little disappointing if I am honest as hubby had to work and the kids didn’t even acknowledge if was my birthday, apart from Abbey that is.

I knew what hubby had bought me as I was with him at the time, some clips for my Pandora bracelet, but a text mid-way through the day to say your present is in the draw if you want to put the charms on, really wasn’t how I wanted my day to go plus he hadn’t booked a table at a restaurant for later in the day either.

Abbey and her boyfriend Paul came over early afternoon so we decided to head off to do something fun and decided on crabbing at Mudeford Quay.  We dug out our bucket and crab lines out of the shed, our new Scrunch Net and set off, stopping to pick up some cat food on the way.

Mudeford Quay was packed and lots of people had the same idea as us and were taking advantage of the nice weather to get some fresh air with the kids, however, the crabs were not biting today.  There were lots of empty buckets lined along the quay, but we found an empty spot, filled our nets with cat food and hoped that the crabs would bite.

We took it in turns to look after Sebastian who was wearing his new Pacapod Toy Feeder Pod which is a very cute, rucksack with added safety reins. He was very keen to try to scoop things out the water with the Scrunch net, which has a telescopic arm for easy transportation, however the arm was nowhere near long enough for crabbing here but it will be perfect for pond dipping.

We kept reeling in our lines for the next 45 minutes but were having no luck at all, so we moved farther along the quay where people were seeming to have a bit more luck and were lucky enough to spot a jelly fish.

Cat food, bacon, pilchards were having no luck with anyone.  I took Sebby off to chat to some of the more successful crabbers however it appeared that any crabs caught had been done so in the morning.  One kind family had several and offered us a crab for our bucket and we kindly accepted, much to Sebby’s delight.

After another half an hour of trying to catch one ourselves we gave up and released our crab back into the water.  Isaac and Eliza managed to find a dead spider crab in amongst the lobster pots and were examining it and pointing out its body parts.  We finally managed to tear them away and set off home, disappointed we hadn’t caught anything but we had fun trying.

I phoned lots of local pub restaurants to see if we could get a table for dinner but as it was Fathers Day they were all full to bursting and unable to accommodate us.  I had the Pizza Express app on my phone from our last visit and was surprised when I tried to book a table that they had room for us, so we got to eat out after all.

I have always like Pizza Express and have reviewed their restaurants before, but this was probably the most disappointing part of the day.  The place was filthy, there was food and melting ice cream under our table from the previous customers and the table just behind us was filled with a bucket of dirty plates and cutlery.

The restaurant was full and seemed to be being run on skeleton staff.  Our drinks arrived fairly quickly but they forgot Hubby’s and trying to get their attention was proving fruitless.  It took 30 minutes just to get the kids starters and by this time they were bored and restless.

We had to wait another 20 minutes for our main courses and they got my order completely wrong and I had a salad full of mushrooms, which I don’t eat.  The kids pizza’s were greasy and full of oil so of course they wouldn’t eat them either and again, no staff seemed to be able to help us.

We let the kids have their dessert as it was included in their meal price but that took another 15 minutes to get to us.  We couldn’t get out of there fast enough once they had finished.  I have complained about the service and food but have yet to receive a response.

All in all it was a very disappointing day, but I do love my Pandora charms from all the kids.