A niece was married over the weekend…not last weekend, the weekend before. We took our happily unmarried selves to the wedding, danced all night, drank an immense amount of wine, had the best wedding meal in the history of weddings, ate all three of the chocolate deserts, and met the glitterati of Cirencester’s Venn diagram where art students and gamers intersect. I enjoyed it immensely.
I love the countryside in fall and winter, bare branches against the sky…and what skies. Colours unknown in summer, banks of dark cloud and opalescent light.
Also hell of cold and rather unpleasant to walk in, I confess. The wind was up, and we didn’t last long out there. The great wood remained unexplored, which no great wood ever should.
Still, we had a surprise, and such a pleasant one. A garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll, something of a heroine of mine. It’s winter, and yet still quite beautiful and full of fragrant things:
I’m not sure quite who at the Stanton House still loves it…an old manor house with its village immediately next door. It’s a curious place, Japanese owned and catering to the Honda manufacturing plant nearby, and also to people like us. This is the house from a distance, now a hotel, the gardens to the left:
The view inside our room — I saw pictures of simple white walls and furniture, but we didn’t get one of those as you can see:
A walk around the pond is complete with broken arches and its forgotten kingdom closed for refurbishment
