Holiday highlights

Home is beginning to look loved: the house is vacuumed where it shows and the garden is deadheaded and mowed; there is still room for improvement.

There are spiders’ webs everywhere, in every corner of the house and across every path in the garden. I must be upsetting them, constantly walking through as they attempt to repair my previous work. I am followed as I work cutting down our long grass by a young robin who clearly thinks I’m doing it for him. He’s quite happy just a couple of feet from me grabbing insects and seeds, but he doesn’t like me to speak so I have given up trying to engage him in conversation.



Corfe Castle



Dorset was lovely as ever, a few new things to do and lots of revisiting.
A different view of Corfe walking 'home'.

the Red Arrows - really!

View from the pub



Pythouse Kitchen Garden for a coffee

The Red Arrows performing in Bournemouth but flying over the cottage and our Corfe walk – they’re the spec if you blow up the photo!

Corfe from the garden of the Scott Arms in Kingston

Supper with friends at The Grannary





Mapperton



Mapperton, a beautiful private garden and setting for Far From the Madding Crowd which started production work there the day we visited – Youngest very disappointed to discover they were looking for not tall girls with long hair, no modern cuts or dye, no tattoos and natural eyebrows (just like her), but you had to be local…

(If anyone has a suggestion as to why I'm unable to make my posting page type/compose easily I'd be most grateful - this has taken me hours and still doesn't look as I planned, but I've lost the will to persist!) 



Holiday

Things I have thought I should write about while I was away:

The second workshop

The logistics of dealing with ‘independent’ children

How glad I am I’m not a princess – giving birth is hard enough without the world watching

Where to visit on a trip to the Chinon area

How to walk a dog in Hampstead

Supporting your children’s productions

Birthday celebrations

The Ashes

I may come back to some of them, but I can knock off a couple now. The second workshop was much like the first, with three people coming again and two new customers. All seven said they would come again but none want to commit to weekly classes. Need to think about that!

Eldest came home just in time for our trip to France, even managing to wash some clothes needed for the holiday and/or the Edinburgh Fringe. We travelled via the Channel Tunnel staying in Le Mans en route to a little village near Chinon (above). We stayed on a property with three self catering cottages and a shared pool. We would recommend: 



a potter around Tours

Bastille night in Chinon




the gardens of Villandry

Wherever you of course, it is vital that you take Test Match Special with you at all times – we wouldn’t let Husband listen to any of the CDs we’d brought along for our holiday as we needed to know the score…