Audis and Thyme

A good day. Woke early to a fine morning in the Cotswolds, with a calming view over a beautifully kept garden to traditional warm-coloured stone buildings beyond. Some of them house an excellent cookery school, where we had lunch. The venue was Thyme at Southrop, cannily chosen by Audi as the base for the launch drive of the new S1, the sporty all-wheel-drive version of the Audi A1.

You'll recognise an S1 when one overtakes you by the four exhaust pipes, a pair of them peeking out on either side from under the rear bumper. The cars were in vibrant shades of red and yellow, and the driving routes were amongst vast golden fields of oil seed rape, so it was a colourful morning.

I drove with Liz, another one of the rare breed of female motoring writers. We stopped for a photoshoot, and the soft honey tang of a rape field was sweet in the air. I was tempted to blip the car and field, but the intricate structure of this beautiful stone barn, with a classic Audi Quattro parked in it as a centrepiece for the launch, was just too irresistible.