Back to magic

There is slouching towards Bethlehem; and there is hurtling towards France. I am sitting on the Monday early morning Eurostar heading to Paris where I will change trains for the south.

My standard procedure on these early journeys home to the farm is to devour all the newspaper articles I didn’t have time to finish on the weekend. And then dose lightly until I arrive.

But there is no time for indolence this morning. I have so many blog entries to write.  There is Wisconsin, London and Rousham to tell you about.

So. The pictures are sized and sorted, off I go.

We spent the weekend visiting our friends Anne and Ivan at their cottage in the country; in Oxfordshire.  (At this stage of my frantic country hopping I have to specify which one I mean.)

And in deepest darkest Oxfordshire lies a magical estate called Rousham. Stately home, magnificence gardens, thousands of acres of farming land and one tiny village of cottages owned by the estate.

Anne and Ivan have rented one for many years and are still enchanted by the extraordinary peace and quiet of this rural part of the country.  And so were we.

I get a thrill because it’s a chance to spend time in one of my favourite gardens.  The gardens and grounds were landscaped by William Kent in the eighteenth century and hasn’t changed much since.

Well, I’m not sure he would enjoy the exuberance of the kitchen garden; the landscaped grounds are considered, restrained but fascinating.

We didn’t have much time to wander; we just did the 7pm amble about. The grounds are open to the public in the daytime, but the residents (about 10 cottages in all) can wander at will.

And that means taking a picnic basket and having an evening meal in a romantic glade (we spotted the neighbours doing just that) or just mooching about.

We met Rousham’s owner Charles digging up a bag full of Charlotte potatoes for supper in the kitchen garden and stopped to chat. 

And then moved on to explore the dahlias which are at their maddest right now.

I actually enjoyed the flowers in the cutting garden as much as the absurdly long dahlia border in the main kitchen garden.

But did I enjoy the thrill of just being about to wander about a stately home at dusk with dear friends? More than you can imagine.