OUR BEAUTIFUL ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

We had a great service at church with a wonderful sermon by Derek, based on the women who were around Jesus during his lifetime.  Susan had explained the meaning of Mothering Sunday and at the end of the service all the ladies received a bunch of daffodils and also a couple of the men, to take home to their wives.
 
As usual on a Sunday, we set off then to look for some dereliction.  I had noticed a friend had been to the Manton Estate near Marlborough, so we set off to hunt down the cottage he had photographed recently.  On the road to Manton, we stopped to ask a walker if he could help us – he thought we were looking for a pub for lunch, but I told him we had our own picnic.  He said he didn’t know anything about a derelict cottage, but did point us in the right direction, but we never did find it.
 
However, we sat and had our picnic lunch sitting in the sunshine overlooking the Marlborough Downs and it was beautiful.  In fact, we never found any dereliction at all today, so I decided to make a collage of our lovely afternoon instead.
 
The collage includes:
·       Three beautiful thatched cottages at Lockeridge Dene
·       Silbury Hill, (top left) the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe
·       A very large sarsen stone at Avebury (bottom left)
·       A sheep that had just enjoyed having its chin tickled
·       Grey wether stones (middle right), named because they look like sheep
·       The Pewsey White Horse - cut by volunteers from Pewsey Fire Brigade in 1937 to commemorate the Coronation of George VI.
 
All in all a beautiful afternoon and it was a joy to be out in the sunshine – sorry I didn’t find any dereliction to fit in with the DS challenge today – I will try and do better next week!
 
"What is it about the English countryside,
     why is the beauty
          so much more than visual?
Why does it touch one so?"
Dodie Smith