I discover the Gardenbarn

After my very successful and unusual foray to Cotesbach I was in the mood for exploring.

Being in the mood for exploring was way, way more fun than being in the mood to buy a random toy for a six year old boy, which is what I set out to do.

When I left Cotesbach I headed towards Rugby, which was where the toys beckoned.  I had only gone about 500 yards up the road when I saw the sign for ‘The Gardenbarn’

Like so:

I decided I was probably on a winning streak, exploratively speaking.  I indicated and pulled the car into the car park to go and have a nosey.

Oh! Oh! Oh! It is a glorious place.

It is indeed a barn.  A huge, enormous, giganticus barn.  It is stuffed to the rafters with things.  Things that I desperately wanted to buy.  In fact, if you could have just levered the entire barn into my house, I’d have been very, very happy.

It is not a garden centre, although it sells garden sculptures and pots.  It is a giant treasure trove of a place, bursting at the gills with desirable things.  Every item has been picked with care and attention, and the whole look and feel of the place made me tingle with excitement.

There is a coffee shop where you can get an array of cakes and biscuits and drinks.  It is in an upstairs room which doubles as an art gallery, showing the work of a different artist every month.  I did not try the tea and buns, but you can bet your bottom dollar I will, very soon.

It is a brilliant place. Just brilliant, and I could not resist picking up a little something. I loved words carved in stone and got this beautiful piece of slate for a tenner:

It is exceedingly heavy, and rather large, and God alone knows what I am going to do with it, but I loves it, so I does.

I really wanted this wooden lounger:

I love the way it is sandwiched together from slices of wood.  It is just perfection to look at, although I expect it would be agony to sit on.

There were only a couple of sadnesses for me.  The first thing was that some of the things I seriously lusted after were just not for sale. They were set dressing. There were sets of wooden pigeon holes, and office drawers:

There were old Victorian wash stands and knackered tricycles:

And fantastic, heavy duty shop scales:

I loved it all.

But none of these things are for sale, which makes me a bit sad.

But also determined, that one day I will have a house full of this kind of thing, and I will be very happy about that.

The other thing, and the reason I didn’t stop for cake, was that it was freezing. Truly, finger numbingly freezing.

The lady assured me that upstairs, with the cakes, it was warm, but I had to get on.

I will definitely be back though.