Summer in the UK is very cool…..

……….often in more ways than one! On a good day the temperature sits around 25° but sometimes can be about 18 – 19……we actually like that. The really cool thing though, (and we’ve mentioned this heaps of times) is the seasons, and summer is no exception. The intense colours and the rate of growth that everything undertakes never fails to impact upon us.
At the moment the fields are full of wheat ready to be harvested and the other day we went for a walk in a wheat field and the sound of the wind through the wheat was like being in a field full of rattle snakes. We could see where Robert Joyce got his inspiration for his song “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”.
We also visited the Snowshill lavender farm – 50 acres of lavender and the bees and butterflys were having a ball! We have to confess we did inhale!
Meanwhile on our evening walk along the almost dried up source of the Thames, we happened upon some friends that we had mentioned to you previously – the family of swans……now gangly adolescents and full of themselves. Interestingly, when we were in London last Saturday, the Thames didn’t look depleted at all…..how does that work?...…The source is practically non existent at the moment!
Another thing we love is the very cool “old things” that you get to visit…some of them are – like the stone circles, barrows or great earth mounds, damn near prehistoric and nobody knows what they were about they are so old. Even so…who forgot???????
One of the relatively ‘new’ things that we visited recently was Sudley Castle, built between 1000 and 1400, very cool place, a few of Henry VIII’s wives lived or visited there….it had been ‘modernised’ by then!
Have just checked the temperatures in Tuscany and on average they are about 35°…we won’t take our warm coats……but the thing is, by the time we get back to England, mid September, autumn will be upon us and all our vistas will be changing yet again. The seasons are a constant reminder against complacency and we think occasionally of Aesops fabled “The Ant and the Grasshopper”……it’s all about preparing for change.
We have friends arriving this Saturday, then more next week AND THEN we are off on holiday……..miss you and wish you were here xxxxxxx