Opposite the workshop venue near Woodchester

Maggie lives in a house attached to a Cotswold Manor house near Woodchester. I come here every couple of months for a regular workshop with several other people where we spend a day together. I have been doing similar workshops with Maggie for nearly twenty five years now, and still look forward to what happens.

At lunchtime we swap the barn next to Maggies house for her dining room where we share the food we have each brought. As I walked back to the workshop space I snapped some pictures of a birch tree whose bark was peeling back and rustling in the strong wind. Then I spotted this fruit tree which has been beautifully trained in a fan shape over countless years. 

I rather like the way the old barn has been patched with cheap bricks rather than the local Cotswold stone. Originally the manor house and all its many outbuildings would probably have been constructed from stone quarried on its own land, as were most of the local estates.  You can see the eras of patching applied to the stonework of the resulting walls which is of a much poorer quality compared to the stone finish of the manor house itself.