A visit to Lemon & Jinja: Refill Shop and Café in Romsey paired with a Nature Reserve walk at Fishlake Meadows 🍋🌲☕️🥐
A zero-waste experience at Lemon & Jinja, Romsey
Just outside Romsey town centre, you will find Lemon & Jinja. They are a zero-waste refill store with a café that serves plant-based coffee and yummy baked goods.
🛋️We sat and enjoyed a relaxing coffee in their upstairs area and they also have a downstairs seating area too. They have a cafe dog, so yep allow dogs, we had a HUGE biscoff croissant, cinnamon roll and yep they serve lunches too. Their coffee mugs were very cool with their unique look having been made by the team too.
Based in an industrial estate they are a hidden gem, the interior has been turned into a light, bright green space with lots of cosy corners to enjoy a coffee and catch up with friends and family. The owner Jess, set up in 2018, moved into a shop 2019, and after growing moved into their larger premises where they are today. Jess and her team are very passionate about the zero waste movement, they’re a friendly approachable bunch too so happy to answer any questions you have about the setup and refill side.
✨On that note, they are the largest refill shop in the UK and you can either bring your own container or grab a donated one from them and fill it up. With over 3,000 products, both food and non-food products that are plastic-free, from rice to pasta, from refillable beauty products to sustainable clothing, from herbs and spices to refillable household cleaning liquids there is plenty to explore.
📅They also put on lots of workshops and events throughout the year such as vegan food markets to pottery making, so do check out their in-store noticeboard and social channels for news on these.
🅿️ Lemon & Jinja have free parking to the right of the shop facing it, if there are not any spaces at the time, pop in to chat with a staff member. There is unlimited parking on the weekends.
Romsey’s nature reserve: Fishlake Meadows🥾🐟
Just a few minutes walk from the café and shop, we strolled to Fishlake Meadows. Down a forested path that crossed some streams and out onto a beautiful nature reserve. Luck on our side and the sun shining, it gave us a glimpse of spring on its way with some of the colours of nature starting to come out.
🦆The sound of bird song echoed across the nature reserve and with one or two nature photographers around with their zoom lenses, we could hear and see this was a great spot for birdwatching. We found an info board with a circular route which you can do around part of the reserve, some of it does go along the roads, etc. as some areas are private though. It was pretty wet due to all the rain and as we didn’t have the right footwear we didn’t do a full circular route, but even walking parts of it was nice, lots of open views across the water and nice viewpoints.
Best times to visit:
Visit in winter to see wildfowl, visiting marsh harriers and majestic great white egrets.Spring brings reed and sedge warblers as well as a great variety of migrant birds.
In summer you’ll see dragonflies, fen vegetation and marsh orchids.
VisitRomsey.com
🅿️ The visitor car park is open 8am-6pm and is located at the end of the first left turning after entering Oxlease Meadows. Access is free, of course!
More info on Fishlake Meadows and the walk: www.hiwwt.org.uk/fishlake-meadows
