Cotswolds - Day 3

Day three of our visit to the Cotswold and it was still grey but, with the hint of sun lurking behind the cloud layer, we set off for the Falconry Centre at Chipping Camden. 

The birds were just amazing and the talk by the expert was enlightening. Birds, it seems, do not fly for fun, only necessity – food and to escape danger. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it. I suppose it’s because we’re earthbound that it looks so thrilling. The sad truth is that half of them die of starvation in the first year of their life.

Their enclosures were large and full of natural plant life and birds were all looking glossy and gorgeous and it was lovely to see again some that were familiar from the time we spent in Africa. The last time I saw a Secretary Bird it was walking alongside the runway at Bulawayo Airport!

The flying displays were thrilling, but everyone  lost their heart to the tiny burrowing owl from South America. Flint didn’t fly much, but he ran brilliantly. :) He’s only a few months old but has already played a stunt-double for a natural history film to be shown in the late autumn. They do close ups in the studio using a blue screen. It’s cheaper, and less dangerous than filming in the wild.

We had lunch in the Arboretum, although contented ourselves with looking at the trees from a distance since the dodgy knee was not feeling up to the trek.

In the afternoon we had a walk around Snowshill Manor which is just opposite our cottage. 

Unfortunately it involved a walk of close to a mile to actually get to the front door which the knee did not appreciate, but it was worth it. 

Charles Wade never lived in the house – he bought it to house the collection of objet d’art and “stuff” that he began when he was seven years old.

He was clearly fascinated by Japan. There are stunning lacquered cabinets stuffed with pretty things, and Samurai armour. There were bicycles of every age, from the ubiquitous penny farthing onwards. Toys, models, sedan chairs and navigational equipment.

There was a dovecote (and doves) and charming gardens. Sadly his costume collection is on loan to Leominster Museum at the moment, although there were a couple of very pretty Regency dresses.

The Cotswolds - Day 2

Rain!

Fortunately it didn’t last and by the time we’d had breakfast it was dry if not exactly sunny and we set off for world-famous garden at Hidcote Manor

It was a little like driving through a cloud – Hidcote is the highest point in the north Cotswolds – and when we pulled over in a rather dark wood to sort out the automatic lights on the new car I spotted a clump of cowslips looking totally out of place. 

You’re meadow plants, guys! 

Hidcote, a garden created by Lawrence Johnston in the 1930s in the Arts and Crafts style, was a total delight. Relaxed, soft planting… well, I’ll let the photographs do the talking. 

Things here, as everywhere, were late, so we missed most of the wisteria which, next week, will be stunning. But the tulips, bluebells and earliest Azaleas were gorgeous. Left with loads of ideas for my own small patch.

From Hidcote we went on to Broadway, the kind of pretty town that would have looked perfectly at home in Midsomer Murders. 

Good shops – I bought a jacket and the dh treated himself to a hat – and we had an excellent lunch at the Swan.

Away in the Cotswolds

I’ve been off the internet for a few days having ventured into deep country where the Hot Spots don’t reach!

The weather was grey but dry and reasonably warm when we set off from Trowbridge for the Snowshill on Monday. It’s only a couple of hours drive and we bypassed Chippenham, Malmsbury and Circencester.

Mostly we travelled through farmland. Arable crops mostly – this is prime farmland – although was a field with rootling pigs. There was a surreal moment when the hedge disappeared and beyond the wire fencing was an airfield littered with huge aircraft – I’m talking 747s - in what is apparently an aircraft scrapyard.

In villages with names like Bourton-on-the-Water, and Stow-on-the-Wold we caught glimpses of lilac, apple blossom and the last throw of the magnolias behind the traditional stone walls that mark out this part of the country. In the countryside the verges were billowing with cow parsley and red campion and the bluebells are so late this year that they were everywhere.

The green was broken up with huge swathes of the eye-gouging yellow of the rape crop in full flower, a colour so powerful that it was reflected off the low misty clouds.

We’d left home late the morning so that we could stop for lunch and took a slight detour into Lower Slaughter (yes, there is an Upper!) and ate at The Slaughters Country Inn, where we shared a “country platter” and discovered that this part of the world is a favourite with Americans on walking holidays.

An hour later we arrived at Snowshill Manor and the cottage we’d rented for the week. I’ll let the photograph do the talking.