Day 20: Cotswolds

This morning, Easter Sunday,  Pene got us organised to go on an excursion to Coughton Court, a Tudor Manor House in Warwickshire. Coughton Court has a Catholic history and includes a priest hole and a chapel. 

It's about 45 minutes drive from here. Mark was driving and we made good time.

Unfortunately, we arrived to find a traffic jam and confusion. Recent rain had flooded the fields they usually use for parking. Eventually someone decided to close the house to visitors and direct the traffic in one gate, around the drive and out the other gate.






We did, therefore, get to drive past the Manor House

 and the chapel.













We then formulated Plan B, and Mark drove back the way we had come, through Binton, Welford-on-Avon,

Welford-on-Avon

Welford-on-Avon

Long Marston

Long Marston,




















to Hidcote, Gloucestershire, another National Trust Property in the Cotswolds. The Manor at Hidcote was not open, but the main attraction for us was the garden.














Created by the American horticulturalist, Lawrence Johnson, the garden was designed around the innovative notion of 'rooms' and cleverly incorporates plants from all around the world, including Australia.

It has a small but attractive collection of plants for sale.

The buildings are mellow and harmonious.


























The entrance to the garden is through the ground floor of the house, where there was a set of tennis rackets that might have been used by Eddie's Tennis Marker 2xGGrandfather!






There are solid, scultured hedges,

















old, elegant trees,




,


a Lime Arbor (not yet in bloom),





a tiny stream,












and elegant passageways.






The bluebells were out,





















but the trees still bare enough for their sculptural shapes to be evident.
















Appropriately for an Arts and Crafts garden, even the work spaces were elegant.














Best of all, for me, were the lovely long views down the avenue separating the series of 'rooms'.

Less ordered, but equally beautiful, is this old stable (now containing a used-book shop) with an extraordinary, old, heavy plant growing over it. It must look wonderful when in bloom.

There is also a glass-house where we found this Myrtaceae Australia, - a variety of this fairly widespread species that I hadn't seen. There was also Bottlebrush and Grevillea.

We had a very pleasant lunch at the cafe at Hidcote. I tried the local icecream - which was excellent.




We drove home via Chipping Campden. Although few shops were open, there was no shortage of visitors.  Mark found parking and we could admire the lovely Cotswold buildings and window-shop.

Mark took us home through back roads and lanes. The land was open, with many fallow fields, oil seed rape and plenty of sheep.





We stopped at Pauline's Veg roadside stall by a farm at Stanway to get fresh vegetables for Pene and Mark,








travelling past the Methodist Church

in Winchcombe








and open fields to home where we settled down to watch Darkest Hour. I was anxious to organise my messy suitcase in preparation for my departure tomorrow morning, but I became engrossed and couldn't drag myself away. It is a gripping film - and just about the best possible circumstances in which to watch it.

This post is long. I have culled my photos, but it was such an interesting and visual day, I have included as much as I can.

I'm so grateful for, and blessed y the hospitality and companionship.