Yew trees and snowdrops

Painswick had been on my 'to visit' list for well over a year. I'd been patiently waiting for snowdrop season to come around again before making the trip up into Cotswold heartland. Painswick is a handsome village, beautifully situated in the verdant Cotswold Hills, with renowned walking routes on the doorstep and stunning countryside views. She is the undisputed 'Queen of the Cotswolds'. 

Our main focus on this trip was seeing the famous snowdrop display at Painswick Rococo Garden. An impressive carpet comprised of millions & millions of tiny white blooms cascaded down slopes and spread through the wooded undergrowth of the garden. But unexpectedly, it was the yew trees in the churchyard of St Mary's that emerged as the highlight of our visit.

For a long time, 99 yew trees grew in this churchyard, and according to legend if a hundredth tree was to be planted the devil would destroy it. At the turn of the new millennium every parish in the diocese of Gloucester was presented with a yew tree to plant to mark the occasion. Parish officials faced a dilemma... 

Painswick was chosen to host the blessing of these trees as they were handed out to the various parishes. The 100th tree was planted at the start of the new millennium and, contrary to the often cited legend, is growing well. 

The trees are clipped every September, producing in excess of 2 tonnes of yew clippings. These clippings are actually used in the manufacture of an anti-cancer drug, specialist contractors are employed to process the clippings.

I look forward to a return visit one day, hopefully in late spring when the Cotswold Way is lush and overgrown with wildflowers and the day light stretches late into the evening. 

Kate  x

2018

Yesterday, the eve of the new year, Alex and I went for a walk along the road to see the swollen brook and consider how likely it might be to flood- it is looking alarmingly high! 

What I was not expecting to see was our neighbours farm-gate stall stocked with eggs! I haven't been able to buy their eggs since August. And yet, here in the bleak midwinter on the cusp of a new year, sat a dozen brown speckled eggs for purchase. 

Not much is growing in the hedgerows at the moment, as you'd expect, so I snapped this pic with a piece of broken pottery that I unearthed in our garden when I was planting out bulbs in the autumn. 

You can see the farm fresh eggs I've managed to buy throughout 2017 HERE and HERE. They became a sort of seasonal study as the months went by and the seasons unfurled all their treasures.

Happy and bountiful New Year blessings.

Kate  x

The North Cotswolds

Although we technically live in the Cotswolds, there is much of the area that is not exactly on our immediate doorstep. We are located in the southern part, in the north-west corner of Wiltshire, relatively close to Bath. The Cotswolds AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) is quite large- taking in parts of Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. 

This past weekend we did a day trip to the north, stopping by Cotswold Lavender Farm, the nearby village of Snowshill (where some of Bridget Jones was filmed), Broadway, and Bourton-on-the-Water. 

It was warm and sunny, and being school holidays, quite busy in places. Still, it is nice to be able to do a day out to see these tourist hot spots rather than needing to take longer stretches off work and study, book accommodation and sort the logistics that go with all that. England is wonderful in that respect- lots of places aren't too far away. We feel particularly lucky being in the south west.

Cotswold Lavender was planted in 2000-2001, it is spectacular to see such a vast and pretty crop, and one that has been established in a relatively short amount of time. 

The farm is very close to Snowshill- about a mile and a half- which is quite an iconic Cotswold village. Film buffs will recognise it from one of the opening scenes in Bridget Jones when Bridget goes home to her parents for their 'annual turkey curry buffet'. It was covered in snow and transformed into a proper English Christmas backdrop for filming.

It looked very different this past weekend in high summer, buddleia in bloom, and the annual village fete about to begin.

The National Trust property Snowshill Manor is right in the middle of the village and a must visit in my opinion. Once presented to Catherine Parr by Henry VIII after the dissolution of the monasteries (it belonged to Winchcombe Abbey at the time), the house has had a varied history. A beautiful sixteenth century house, it is absolutely crammed with the impressive and eclectic collection of curiosities of its most noteworthy (twentieth century) owner, Charles Wade. The rooms are filled with wonderful and weird things: keys and locks, clocks, costumes, weaponry, bicycles and more, from all over the world and from all eras. Wade himself didn't live in the actual manor house, choosing to renovate and live with his wife in an outbuilding known as the priest house. This simple lodging consists of just two rooms and very basic accommodation. 

The collections inside the house, as fascinating as the 22,000 objects are, were not what I was interested in. I really loved the story of how Snowshill came to be Wade's home. Charles Wade was conscripted in WWI and served in northern France. Charles showed great care and attention decorating his accommodation ( he was an orderly room clerk) to imitate the comforts he was used to at home. The hessian from sandbags lined the walls, he coloured in and displayed tactical maps, his trunk was draped with a hand knitted blanket. He spent spare moments drawing and writing poetry. Whilst he was serving in the war he came across a copy of Country Life magazine which featured an advertisement for the sale of Snowshill Manor. Charles dreamed that one day, if he made it home from war, he would buy the property and transform it into his country home. And he did. 

We also wandered the high streets of nearby Broadway and Bourton-on-the-Water. It is obvious summer is in full swing at the moment. It was impossible to pass through a village over the weekend without seeing a strawberry fayre, a summer fete, or a harvest festival. Broadway and Bourton were no exception. And like most English village traditions, these were quite the sight.

Bourton-on-the-Water was in the middle of a rubber duck race when we strolled along the water. All for a good cause though. The money raised from bets for which duck would win went towards the Royal National Lifeboats Institution, responsible for saving lives at sea through their 24 hour search and rescue service. A worthy institution considering the wild seas that surround this island nation. 

Kate  x

June garden

Summer is almost here. There's no mistaking that wet grass scent or the slightly heavier humid air that so distinctly belongs to early summer mornings. The village gets busier as the summer crops inch closer to harvest. Just today I've watched a ride on mower, two oversized John Deere tractors, 2 or 3 smaller tractors, and some sort of intricate looking ploughing(?) contraption thunder past the cottage. For a teeny, tiny village hamlet, the roads are getting quite backed up with farm vehicles and the like.

Everywhere I look signs of summer are making themselves known. Sweet peas, barley, elderflowers, delphinium, and roses. There is so much colour and life.

In my garden I am clipping roses and larkspur. As well as eyeing-off the elderflower blossoms for cordial making. But back to the roses...

This powdery pink beauty is David Austin's The Ancient Mariner. Named after Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, it is a large and impressive rose in all senses of the word. A prolific repeat flowering rose, it can grow up to 5ft tall by 3ft wide. It has a lovely scent- like most DA roses- and its beauty is evident from bright pink bud through to faded fully reflexed blooms. This is a relatively new Austin rose, released in the last couple of years here in the UK, and only now becoming available in the US and Canada. She should flower abundantly until the first frost in November.

The slightly more apricot pink rose is another DA, The Queen of Sweden. She begins as a very peachy-apricot, almost orange bud, opening to that iconic cup shape associated with Austin roses with a faded apricot-blush hue. The mature blooms fade even further, just before they finish and shatter, to an almost pale tea-stained hue. I favour her scent and shape, and I think she has much better 'staying power' when clipped for a vase.

The larkspur has been so welcome for the bees. I've left these tall flowering spires well alone except for the two stems I cut for a little garden posy gift to take to a new friend. It paired so beautifully with the pink of the roses.

 Also left well alone as much as possible has been the robin nest in our garden wall. I have been watching our resident robin pair building and fussing over their nest for a few weeks now, and noticed in the last week Mrs Robin has been diligently sitting on eggs. Today she was flitting around the garden and beyond for an extended amount of time (feeding perhaps?), so I took the opportunity to peer into the nest to count the eggs. I think there are three, it is difficult to see all the way into her delicate and cosy nest because it is in quite a tight nook in the dry-stone wall. My phone camera could just about capture one little speckled egg. The sweetest thing I've seen this week I think.

Hopefully she can manage to hatch her entire clutch! The weather is certainly very nice for her. Seven new tiny ducklings have also appeared on the brook. I spotted them from a window last night, so I rushed outside to the brook, barefoot, to count them. 

Kate  x

Lacock village and abbey

Lacock is renowned for its quintessentially english village streets. It is a Cotswold tourist highlight, but the National Trust owned abbey is the real must see here in my opinion.

We wandered around the village on a drizzly Monday afternoon, so the streets were relatively quiet for June. It is easy to see how Lacock got its reputation as a village that seems to have paused in the 18th Century, the cars being the only indication of modern life.

Spot the dog!

There are a few different places to have lunch, a cream tea, or an ice cream. Of course, the National Trust tea rooms are always a nice place to get a cuppa, sandwich, or something sweet. 

In the abbey grounds there is so much to see. A walled garden, green house, rose garden, orchard, as well as the extensive park. Last week the early summer blooms were at their peak. Allium, delphinium, roses, etc. there was so much colour and life.

I love to see summer grass left to grow with wildflowers dotted through it. There is something so lovely about over grown lawn with a mowed pathway through it. This is the orchard, overlooking the church.

The abbey itself dates from the 13th Century, and for three centuries belonged to an Augustinian order of nuns before it was bought and transformed into a private home. The cloisters are one of the oldest parts of the building, and the monastic rooms attached to these stunning hallways are largely unchanged since the 13th Century.

The cloisters have been used for backdrops in Harry Potter films as well as the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice. They're beautiful and atmospheric, and so fascinating.

It is quite an imposing building, standing tall and rigid in the landscape. Handsome and grandiose from the outside, it is quite a layered patchwork of styles and eras. One half is even Tudor era, with a classic Tudor layout and inner quadrangle.

Climbing and rambling roses softened the gothic features and added a feminine touch to the abbey facade. The whole structure has a very masculine feel and energy even though it began its life as the spiritual home of nuns.

Inside, the abbey is showing its age. The rooms are grandiose and were once richly furnished. A lot of the contents are beginning to deteriorate, which is such a shame, but the National Trust are doing their utmost to preserve things as much as possible. 

The hand painted wallpaper in one of the rooms of the residential wing is illustrative of how the interior and furnishings of a 13th Century building are inevitably the victims of relentless damp, dust, light and temperature fluctuations. 

Lacock Abbey is famously the birthplace of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot created the oldest still surviving photographic negative in the abbey, his family home. Today visitors can stand at the window that his original negative captured in 1835. 

It is an incredibly diverse building with an equally diverse history to match.

Kate  x

Bibury in bloom

Last Friday we met up with my cousin and her family in Bibury for lunch and a stroll around the village. We had been to Bibury before, but it looked a little different when we were there in the depths of winter compared to last week. You can see the iconic cottages of Arlington Row covered in frost HERE. 

The promise of summer was heavy in the air last week, even with the grey sky threatening us with rain. The cottages were awash with rambling roses, gardens were filled with foxgloves, and the River Coln featured a family of swans.

I did lean down to the water to gauge its temperature... still chilly. I am sure the cygnets didn't mind too much, those fluffy down feathers looked quite cosy.

You can get a sense of how popular this walk is by the number of people strolling past the cottages at any given time. It is one of the most iconic places of rural Britain, touted to be one of the most photographed streets in England. Arlington Row even features inside the British passport.

The foxgloves are currently at their peak, growing prolifically in cottage gardens and wild along roadsides alike. I love them and wish some had appeared in our new garden this spring.

This is Matilda. Matilda looooves flowers. That little purse strung over her shoulder was filled with flowers by the time our stroll ended. Roadside weeds, elderflowers from over-hanging trees, valerian sprouting out of walls, foxgloves on cottage doorsteps, Matilda didn't discriminate. Any attempt to teach her that we don't pick flowers from just anywhere was frankly futile. If only I was as brazen as this little five year old. 

I had such a fun time hanging out with my littlest cousins, and they made me laugh so much. Matilda asked me how old I was ("that's so old" she replied), if I liked Harry Styles, and then invited me for a sleepover in her bunkbeds. At one point three-year old Esme was asked to share her pasta with her big sister, to which she replied, "If she wanted pasta she should have ordered it." We couldn't fault her logic, but a conversation about the virtues of sharing was had anyway.

An afternoon with little kids is sometimes the perfect antidote to all the trauma and suffering in this world.

Kate  x

Wisteria watch

April 21st

The wisteria was slow to show its pale purple beauty in Castle Combe. It felt as though it really blossomed a good month behind London and the east of England. Some vines in the village are still colouring up now, yet to show their full flush. This particular vine is tucked in on the side of a cottage in the village, its backdrop is a mysterious door to I don't know where...

I thought it would be interesting to photograph this vine as it coloured up and bloomed. It was lovely in all stages, and is currently at its peak.

April 28th

The lovely late evening light has been magical, and lent a warm golden glow to the scene. I think I am really going to love British summer time.

May 7th

Here she is in all her beauty! The scent was just as magical as that enveloping golden hour light on our post-dinner walk. After a long stretch of chilly temperatures, it is nice to thaw out, walk of an evening and watch as the earth comes back to life. It never ceases to amaze me, the seasons ebb and flow in such a remarkable but dependable way.

And on the topic of seasons. I just booked our Christmas break. I know! This post is all about spring and blossom and daylight savings, and yet the seasons march on... I don't want to leave our festive season plans until the last minute again this year. Time and Christmas waits for no man.

I hope my premature Christmas talk doesn't scare you too much.

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...