The English Countryside

My cousin Hamish had just arrived over and we decided the best thing to do was to get straight out of London and down to visit Bevan at his patch in the country. So we took a train from London and he met us there in his fancy car which groans like a dying pheasant whenever you use the brakes and slips out of gear when you take your foot off the accelerator. It only took us an hour to get there so we had time for a personalised farm tour to absorb some of the marvels of English farming, including:

- 'The Avenue', which is a glorified farm lane. Having it tar sealed is an advantage but you have to behave yourself on it and there is not turning allowed on The Avenue for fear of ripping up the seal. The photo above looks down The Avenue towards the main family home where the 'old man' lives - this is a fair description, he is 102.

- the grain shed, Bevan's flash new tractor that he gets to drive and all the other machinery

- copious amouts of delicious wild blackberries

- fields (not paddocks) of harvested and unharvested grain

- fields that stank like shit (literally, thanks to the human waste style fertiliser used)

- no fences, lots of hedges and trees, and only a handful of sheep

- sacred verges of cocksfoot that are not allowed to be driven on or grazed (they get paid subsidies for this)

- millions of extremely hard pieces of flint which wear out standard tips on a crumbler within a day

- badger holes

- meeting the staff including the manager, the game-keeper and the chief tractor driver

- strips of maize and artichokes to provide cover for the game - see photo below



- pheasants, and partridges, lovingly cared for until rich Englishmen come and blow them out of the sky at £30 a pop.



- a buried crypt of an old church and old graveyard. This was about 50m from Bevan's door and he'd been waiting for visitors so he didn't have to go up alone.



- and of course, Bevan's pad



After the tour we drove to Salisbury for lunch and then on to a reasonably famous pile of big rocks where we paid our fee so we could walk around and get soaked by the rain, but it was worth it.



On Sunday the weather cleared so we went for a walk before heading to Winchester for a wander around and a visit to the magnificent and massive Winchester Cathedral. Very impressive. Probably shouldn't have taken any photos inside the Cathedral, but everyone else was so I did too.





After this it was back on the train to London for Hamish and which saw us safely home after a great weekend. Thanks Bevan.