Country pursuits

The warm weather has graced us at long last! Summer may have actually leap frogged spring and arrived early this year. Not that anyone minds. The whole country seems collectively drunk on sunshine and long languid days outdoors sipping Pimms.

We feel especially lucky to have been gifted a bank holiday weekend filled to the brim with uninterrupted sun and temperatures above 23 degrees C! The English summer is punctuated by showers and wholly unfair temperature dips even at the best of times, so this weather is throughly welcome and embraced (pink nose and shoulders attest to that). 

We've been outside almost non-stop. Tea drinking in the garden, Pimms at the village pub, and post-supper walks in the woodland; which are carpeted in frothy wild garlic flowers and that very particular blue hue that belongs entirely to English bluebells. 

It feels like heaven on Earth.

We attended the last day of Badminton Horse Trials yesterday where I was overcome with a sudden urge to curate the perfect country lady wardrobe consisting of all things tweed, forthwith adorning every outfit with pheasant & mallard feathered brooches. The deeper I get into life in rural England the less ridiculous I feel about owning a felt fedora or a third pair of wellington boots.
I have found my bliss in the English countryside, and now I need the wardrobe to match! Or perhaps it's the sunstroke fuelling a sartorial quarter-life crisis. 

However you're enjoying these long and light filled days on the cusp of true British summertime, have a Pimms for me.

Kate  x

April showers

If April showers do indeed bring May flowers, the west country should resemble a flower farm come next month. So far April has been a soggy wash out, which feels doubly unfair seeing as March was punctuated by unseasonably cold temperatures and multiple snowfalls.

Despite a slow start, my garden is finally blooming with life. The daffodils and narcissus are opening their cheery smiling faces. An overgrown forsythia has burst with bright sunshine yellow blossom. The flowering currant is heavy with flowers as well as raindrops. And my tulips are not far behind.

But the mud!!! The mud is never ending. Oh, what i'd give for a lovely boot room to contain wet coats and muddy wellies in...

Even a porch would suffice. Unfortunately for my floors, we step straight from outdoors into the kitchen in our home. With no where dry or covered to remove shoes and coats other than the kitchen, it has been quite a long winter trying to keep the floors clean. I shouldn't moan. I wouldn't swap countryside living for (almost) anything. I adore being able to pull on wellies and seconds later be stomping through the woodland or splashing up the lane to get eggs at the farm gate. 

Mud is simply a close companion to country life. 

I know this very well. 

Now. 

But the first time after we moved here and my new friend asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I stupidly pulled on my active wear and laced up my trainers. I really did think she would be similarly attired. Moments before she arrived at my front door I came to my senses and changed into jeans & wellies. Context is everything. I wasn't going for walks around the leafy suburban streets of the lower north shore in Sydney anymore. No! The paths I now walked were made entirely of mud. A couple of minutes later she knocked on my front door wearing Le Cheameau's and I knew I'd come very close to looking like a clueless townie playing at country pursuits.

Jeans + wool jumper + wellies. 

That's my uniform now. Such is living in the English countryside.

Kate  x

All things summer

Summer is in full swing. Wimbledon is on the telly, the farm shop has a glut of British grown strawberries, and vivid gem-coloured hydrangeas are in bloom everywhere I look.

None quite so vivid as the V&A museum hydrangeas.

A great and vibrant hedge of blooms flanks the central courtyard at the moment. We were there over the weekend, soaking up some sunshine and enjoying the museum collections. It was a warm day, the courtyard water feature was filled with toddlers paddling and splashing about.

I love London. Every time we visit, I get swept up and along with the energy and buzz of the city. I adore the diversity and acceptance. I get such a sense of satisfaction from successfully navigating the tube system, criss crossing the city and popping out into daylight next to iconic and historical landmarks. I appreciate the long history of the city juxtaposed with the modern urban. I love an oversized hotel bed and a late night trip in a black cab. 

But I am always so grateful to get home again, park my car under the towering trees in the village and feel the breeze in my hair. 

Kate  x

A walk around the village on the summer solstice

It was a relatively hot summer solstice on Wednesday. As an Aussie, I can't in all honesty say 32 degrees is very hot, because memories of 40+ degree summer days are burnt (pun very much intended) into my memory. That horrific day a few January's ago, where I walked out of work and into a 45 degree day to catch a non air-conditioned train home, will stay in my memory forever... That was a stifling summer all over Australia. If you're a weather enthusiast, stats can be seen HERE.

Nevertheless, I'll jump on board the Brits-moaning-about-the-weather bandwagon and concede it was quite a warm, sunny spell for England. Still, I wasn't going to let the glorious, albeit sweaty, solstice sunshine keep me indoors. I slipped into a linen sun dress, grabbed my camera and took a late evening wander around the village to capture some photographic memories of my first summer solstice in Britain.

June has been all about roses in the village. In just about every direction you look, you will see a rose. Climber, rambler, shrub, David Austin, they're blooming and beautiful.

This vivid pink rose is such a vibrant burst of colour on an otherwise uniform honey-stone coloured canvas. That is the Norman church tower of St Andrew's, Castle Combe. Often when I'm outside in the garden, and the breeze is blowing in the right direction I can hear it chime out at 3 minutes past the hour. I'm not sure if it's late, or my clock is running fast. It is a lovely sound no matter, a constant reminder of this rural village idyll I've somehow found myself living amongst.

This farm building at Upper Castle Combe was bathed in the most golden light. It is currently dripping with summer roses. It seemed so apt that on the summer solstice, it was in full flush and aglow with golden hour light. A fertile and abundant representation of the summer season.

I was sticky by the end of my walk, but frankly it was so nice to be able to be outside in the late evening air in just a sun dress and sandals, even if it did mean a cool shower for the third time that day. 

I know the passing of the solstice signals a slow slide back towards shorter days, but there is still so much summer to enjoy. The brambles are just emerging in the hedgerows, apple trees are beginning to fruit, the trout in the brook are fattening, and the fields are abuzz with the predictable seasonal rhythm of farm machinery as it frenetically slashes, harvests, bales and ploughs the countryside before the inevitable rains return .

Kate  x

The law of attraction

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that simply imagining your wants and desires will bring them to fruition in reality.

But weirdly, in a round about sort of way, I think I might have imagined us into this very village we now call home. Or, I might be clutching at straws.

Last year on my birthday, January 12th, Alex took me to dinner at Jamie's Italian and told me his boss wanted him to take on the task of expanding the UK office of the company, and how would I feel about moving to England for a few years. My gut reaction was 50% "I've been waiting my whole life to live in England" and 50% "No! I have just signed up to do my masters degree, moving will make completing it messy and difficult, and I want to just buy a cottage in the Southern Highlands and never have to move again. We've moved enough!"

So, for about a month I said an emphatic, No! But it niggled at me. I was saying no to something I had spent a long time wanting to experience, I just hadn't been brave enough to make happen under my own steam.

A couple of weeks later, sometime in late January, I mindlessly posted this image on my tumblr. Then promptly forgot about it. I had no idea what the image was of, where it might be capturing, or really that it was even somewhere I'd ever want to live. I just liked the image.

Helena Bernald Photography

A gorgeous scene, isn't it?

I was scrolling through my tumblr archive the other week and I was stopped in my tracks when I saw this image. It is in fact the village we now live in. I recognised this view instantly. It is the view we get each and every time we drive into our village. 

Strange, huh?

Here is a photograph of the village, taken by me at golden hour a month or so ago. A different perspective, but equally gorgeous.

We are quite at home with village life. We love wandering along the street to our two local pubs, going for walks in the surrounding woodland, foraging spring greens from the roadsides and undergrowth, and photographing picture postcard perfect scenes, all the while pinching ourselves. 

The law of attraction at work, or just plain coincidence?

I guess that depends on who you ask.

Kate  x

Now, I wonder if that questionable dream I had the other night about me and the Harrison Ford lookalike on a submarine will become reality too? Not sure I'd actually cope very well on a submarine...

The Cotswolds blanketed in frost

The frosts have been heavy and widespread recently, but that didn't stop us getting out to new parts of The Cotswolds on the weekend. This time? Bibury to play the tourist at Arlington Row, then on to Burford to warm up in a cafe and poke about browsing the high street. 

Like most Cotswold stone villages, Bibury has its history entwined with the wool industry. The river Coln (and the stream from the Arlington mill) babbles past the most picturesque cottages, all higgledy piggledy and as quaint as they come! 

The cottages of Arlington Row (above and below) were built in 1380 as a wool store and then later converted to weavers cottages in the 17th Century. 

They looked like a magical fairytale land with the frost covering them. 

The swamp-like land adjacent to the cottages is called Rack Isle, it separates the cottages from the mill. It has now been turned over to wildlife preservation. It is seasonally flooded to provide natural habitat for water birds and meadow plants. The name 'Rack Isle' harks back to its industrial past as it was the land used for hanging the wool to dry. If you look hard enough, you might be able to spot some wooly sheep in that patch of lovely midwinter sunshine on the hill behind the cottages.

Although Bibury was frost encrusted, there are signs of spring beginning to emerge. I almost walked straight past these snowdrops pushing through the frozen earth at the doorstep of one of the cottages. I am glad they caught my eye though. I have been eagerly anticipating snowdrops blooming in England. They're a different cultivar to the snowdrops we have back home in Australia. These particular ones are slow to open and keep that perfect elongated 'drop' shape as they defy the frosts and freezing temperatures. They look slightly forlorn, but I find them really enchanting.

I wish I had some on my doorstep.

Kate  x