April sunshine in 2011

At the start of April, the MET Office announced that most of the south of England was officially in drought. Watering restrictions (hose pipe bans) were implemented in the south east counties.

It turns out that England has been in a drought since we arrived. Friends in the US ask me how can I stand the weather in England, picturing a constant downpour of rain. It does not rain as much here as it does in Vancouver, Canada where we use to live. The winters are milder than in Santa Fe. Here it snows once or twice and they think an inch of snow is a disaster, whereas in Santa Fe I remember Steve shoveling our roof because there was so much snow we thought it might collapse.

Overall, I like the weather here. We can hike year round. Some times of the year it is muddier than I would like, but walking through the fields after a heavy rainfall is delightful. The main problem with the weather is the inconsistency – you never know what it is going to be like. Last summer we had friends visit in June, which the year before had been sunny and hot, but last year was cold and wet. Another friend visited in July and, thank goodness, we had a few brilliant days, but the rest of the time was overcast and drizzly. No one visited when it was sunny and hot for all of April and September.

It is no wonder I think the weather is good – we have been in a drought the whole time we have been here!

Even in a drought, the ground is moist. In Santa Fe the ground is hard and dry, nearly impossible to dig and loose dirt blows around in the spring winds. In England the dirt is dark and damp and has a rich smell. I used to think I was smelling mold but then I realized it was the smell of the outdoors – earthy, moist. Maybe it is because we are on a small island, surrounded by water, criss-crossed by rivers – water everywhere – that the ground stays constantly moist.

Spring hiking in Boulder

No sooner was the drought announced than it started raining, and raining, and raining. We went back to the US at the end of March and missed the one week of hot, sunny weather here. We arrived back to a month of rain. Today it is pouring and the wind is howling and the MET has announced flood warnings. We live in a house beside a river that flooded in the  July 2007 Cotswold flood. The upside is we have a new kitchen on the lower level because the old one was destroyed by the flood waters; the downside is obvious. (But rentals are scarce here and we figured what are the chances of a 100 year flood happening twice in a decade? Hmm … )

Every day I look at the weather forecast for the week. Seven days of rain, temperatures in the 50s. Occasionally a picture of sun with rain. Then I look at Santa Fe – sun and 70s. Paris – rain (that makes me feel better). And Northern Portugal because we are going there in July – rain. April was a rainy month for much of Europe.

We have friends from Canada arriving next weekend. The forecast is saying rain. May 1 is on Tuesday – please bring us May Flowers!!

Resources

MET Office – UK’s National Weather Service

England is a small and crowded island, with a population of 51 million and a density of 1023 people per square mile.* It is the second most densely populated country in Europe (Malta is first), and it is densest where we are in the south. Everything has to be smaller so that it will all fit. The cars are smaller, the roads are narrower, the houses are smaller, things have less space between them.

The only way that I have come up with to describe the differences is to start with a model of an American small town and then turn it into an English village.

Create a Model of an American Small Town

Get out your lego pieces. Make a grid. Put down rows of houses on straight roads. Each house sits in the middle of its property and has a driveway, a garage, a front yard and a back yard. Main Street in the center of town has the shops. Let’s ignore the hideous box stores and strip malls for now (we have those here too). The town sprawls out and ends, then the countryside begins. If you are lucky there is a National Forest or State Park outside town for hiking, or some good parks in town.

Now, let’s turn this American small town into an English village.

Transform the American Houses to English Cottages

Village Street

The average house size in England is 800 square feet. You get a small kitchen with an under the counter fridge. No laundry room because the washing machine is in the kitchen. Forget the clothes dryer, we hang our clothes on racks that spend a day or two in a hallway or near a sunny window. There will be a dining room if you are lucky, or maybe an eat-in kitchen – or you may have to squeeze a small table into a corner of the living room (which they call a lounge). The bedrooms are smaller than American bedrooms. What they call a “single”, I call a “closet”.

Now you have the typical English cottage, but we are not finished. Stretch it up to three levels. Remember this island is small so the houses must have a small footprint. There are houses on one level (bungalows), but most houses are two, three, even four levels. Make the staircases narrow and steep because you don’t want to waste too much floor space on them. (You have to have healthy knees to live in an English cottage.)

Change the American Town into Villages Scattered Around a Town

Painswick, a village in the Cotswolds

Next we change the layout of the town. In your model divide the town into segments. One segment will be the larger town, the rest will be villages.

Create your first village. Wrap your hands around a group of houses and streets and squeeze them all together into the center. You get a heap of houses surrounded by green space.

The houses are no longer in nice rows – four or five of them may be lined up and attached (a terrace). Sometimes two stick together (semi-detached). Occasionally one falls into its own space (detached). Frequently they jumble together so that you have to go through the garden of one house to get to the house behind. Instead of each house having a good sized front and back yard, some have gardens, some have small courtyards, some have no garden. Hardly any of them end up with a driveway and a garage – waste of space anyway when you can park on the street.

A few houses fall back the way they started – detached house, garage, driveway, front and back gardens. These are the 1980s housing estates built on the edges of English towns and villages. Driving through these areas I feel like I am back in the US (except these houses are much smaller than you find in US neighborhoods).

During this transformation the roads become narrow, usually one lane. Maybe a little wider to let everyone park their cars. Driving on roads in villages is always a challenge – you dodge and weave your way down a street.

Create the rest of your villages and then the town, which is just a slightly larger version of a village. What you end up with is a dense small town, surrounded by countryside and dense villages. Villages back onto farm fields or woods or open common land. No matter where you live in a village, you are close to the countryside.

The Special Ingredient – The Countryside and Public Access to Private Land

And that is what makes all the difference in the English village – the proximity to rural life. Sheep, cows and horses grazing in some fields, crops growing in others. Large areas of protected woodland. Working farms outside the villages.

The countryside is crisscrossed by footpaths. Some of them go along rivers or through protected woodlands, others go through farm fields. We have walked on some footpaths that go right into someone’s garden and out the other side. I am waiting to find a footpath that goes through someone’s house!

England’s “public access to private land” means you can live close to your neighbors but be walking in beautiful countryside in a few minutes. You don’t have to own your piece of the countryside, it is there for us all to use.

My English Village

Our house is in a group of five attached houses. Its footprint is small because the house is on three levels (one and half rooms per level). We are on the edge of a village with farm fields and woodland outside our front door. We put on our hiking boots and head out on the miles of trails. When we get bored with these trails we drive over to the next valley.

Instead of living in a small town like Santa Fe and driving through town to different neighborhoods, I drive through farmlands to the next village. Or to town. I drive to the Waitrose in Stroud for groceries. For the Post Office or to pickup a newspaper I walk up the hill to the center of my village. The best bakery is in Nailsworth. For afternoon tea we go to Minchinhampton. If I need something from a department store like Marks and Spencer, I drive to Cheltenham. Everything is within a 30 minute drive.

The reason that we are living in an English village, instead of an American small town, is the access to the footpaths and walking trails. We used to vacation here for a couple of weeks each year, just to go walking. Now we are lucky enough to go walking year-round. The sun just came out – time to put on our boots and go for a walk!

Notes

We spent 20 years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe is as close to a European small town as you get in the US – it is a few hundred years old with neighborhoods of historic houses, the center of town does not have high-rise buildings but is a collection of historic buildings around a plaza (like the “piazza” in Italy or the “village green” in England), houses are jumbled together and many of the roads are narrow. Our house in Santa Fe was historic and small, probably about the same as the one we are in now, but on one level. And we had a driveway and a garage. We had good access to hiking trails in the Santa Fe National Forest, which was close by, but nothing like the amount and variety of trails that we have here.

* From Wikipedia – England, 395 people per square kilometer (1 square mile = 2.58998811 square kilometres).

BBC Radio 4

When we lived in the US I listened to NPR a lot, and even though I still catch some of my favorite programs via Podcast, I have turned into a total BBC Radio 4 junkie. I have a radio in the kitchen and if I am in there, Radio 4 is on. I even time my cooking to listen to The Archers at 7:03 every night (except Saturday).

In the US I listened to NPR when driving but driving here is so intense that only in the last few months have I become relaxed enough to have the radio on.

Listen to BBC Radio Online or by Podcast

Radio Podcasts are not restricted by location as BBC TV is – just go into iTunes and subscribe or go to the Radio 4 website to listen online or download podcasts.

BBC Radio 4: Listen online, download podcasts, read about their shows.

Quiz Shows are an Excuse for Comedy

Many British comedy shows, on TV and Radio, are presented in a quiz show format. My favorite Radio 4 show is Friday Night Comedy – The News Quiz which is a group of comedians talking about the week’s news events. But listen closely, they are on teams and the host Sandi Toksvig is keeping score. No one really cares about the scores but the winner is declared at the end.

My favorite BBC Radio 4 Shows

• Friday Night Comedy – Comedy related to the week’s new events. There are two formats: The News Quiz and The Now Show.
• Just a Minute – Panelists have to talk on a topic without repetition or hesitation. Way more interesting than it sounds.
• Broadcasting House – Sunday morning news show.
• Desert Island Discs – Interviews based on picking music they would want if stranded on a desert island.

BBC iPlayer

One of the many things that I like about living in England is the television. The BBC produces great dramas, comedies and news shows. Every household pays a TV license  (£145.50 per year) which pays for the BBC, so you have public ownership of the part of the media.There are four BBC channels, creatively named One, Two, Three and Four. People tell me that each has a different “flavor” of show, but I have not figured it out yet.

There are other channels that are not part of the BBC – ITV, Channel Four, Channel 5 (not to be confused with BBC Four and BBC Five).

Most of the British TV channels have websites where you can watch the shows if you missed them when they were broadcast. But, you can’t watch them online if you don’t live in the United Kingdom. Unless you use a VPN.

Use a VPN to Watch British TV in the US

The British TV websites check your location by your IP address and block their online programs if you are coming onto the internet from a location outside of the United Kingdom. The same happens if you are in the UK and want to watch US programs online. A message pops up telling you that programs are not available in your area.

There is a simple solution – run a VPN (Virtual Private Network) on your computer. This lets you go onto the Internet through one of their gateways, giving you a IP address from the location you choose and “fooling” the TV websites. This works for any websites that check your location before delivering content.

I use WiTopia Personal VPN Basic for $49.99/year. The software is easy to install. When you want to be online with a different IP location, you start their software and choose the city to login from. I login to Los Angeles to watch the Daily Show online. When in the US I login to London to watch the BBC iPlayer. There are other VPNs available, and some are free, but I have been happy with WiTopia.

The VPN does not affect how your computer works. You go online through your Internet provider and then login to your VPN to change your IP address. Watch the shows on your computer or connect your computer to your TV set with an HDMI cable.

Websites for British TV

• BBC iPlayer – Watch shows online (streaming) or download iPlayer software which lets you download shows to your computer and keep them for a limited time (so you can watch offline).
• Channel 4 OD (On Demand) – They show a lot of US series on this channel but they also produce British series. The real estate show Location, Location, Location is on Channel Four.
• ITV Player – You can watch some of the really crappy British TV on ITV, but they also produced the very popular (and somewhat crappy but still very watchable) Downton Abbey.
• Channel 5 Demand5 – More crappy British TV.

Great Shows to Watch

Most shows are available online for a week or two after they are broadcast in the UK.

• BBC One is currently showing Birdsong, a two part drama based on the book by Sebastian Faulks.
• On BBC Four we are nearing the end of Borgen, a Danish drama (English subtitles) by the people who brought The Killing. You can still watch this online. It is a great political drama. Click the Episode Guide to see the shows available online.
• Channel 4 OD is showing The Fabulous Baker Brothers, an excellent cooking show featuring the owner of our local Hobbs Bakery!

Follow Slow Europe on Facebook – I post when good shows are broadcast.

This Is Not How It Should Be

Eventually media companies will stop blocking online visitors from other countries. It is kind of crazy that we have to do this to get access.

How We Watch TV in The UK

Cable TV is not as available here as it is in the US. Some larger cities have it but most of us use Freeview or subscribe to SKY TV.

• Freeview comes either through your antenna or a satellite and, as the name implies, is free. No monthy fee. You receive all the BBC channels, ITV, Channel 4,Channel 5 and more.
• Sky TV is owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you subscribe to SKY, they put a satellite on your roof and give you an SKY box with a digital recorder (similar to Comcast in the US but not as good as TIVO). Their SKY Atlantic channel gets all the US HBO and Showtime series – but we see them with commericials! The shows arrive here six months to a year after they broadcast in the US.

Just Days After the States

I have seen this in advertisements for US TV shows. For example “Watch House just days after the States”. Most good US TV shows get here eventually but some of the really popular ones arrive almost immediately. In March we will be watching the new season of Mad Men “just days after the states”.

Painswick, Queen of the Cotswolds

We spent much of this year looking at houses for rent. We had not intended to stay longer than a year in the first cottage we rented, but we ended up staying a year and a half because we could not find something that we liked better.

I came to England with a North American sensibility towards housing. It did not matter that I had stayed in many vacation rentals on many vacations. I did not understand housing here – how people live, what you can expect in a house and a location, the types of places available. It took me six months of looking at rental houses to figure it out.

We found a good rental and moved in October. We are in a new village (Painswick), a new valley (Painswick Valley) and a very different type of house (in a converted mill complex beside the river). All this change and we are only 10 miles north of where we lived before. The views are not as good, but the walking trails are better. We are further from Bath, but closer to Cheltenham.

View of Painswick from our favorite walking trail

Renting a house in the Cotswolds is all about compromise. Okay, I barely fit into the shower and I have to walk up two flights of stairs from the front door to the bedroom, but I have a parking space! I live with the constant noise of a waterfall that 100 years ago drove the machinery in the mill, but I am a mile from the nearest busy road (not that I could hear the traffic anyway, over that waterfall). My neighbors are an inch away on both sides, but I have a lovely garden that gets the sun!

We moved from a furnished rental to an unfurnished house. This explains why I have not been writing any blog posts – I have been shopping. We have a household of furniture now, but it is a bit sparse, which is nice and makes it easier to clean. We went for a combination of Ikea (cheap), John Lewis (expensive), antiques (well priced compared to the US), used furniture (good value) and charity shop things (cheap). Our walls are decorated with paintings and interesting framed things loaned by a friend. On these dreary winter days we sit in a living room with thick stone walls, windows on three sides and a gas fireplace. Very comfortable. When the weather clears, we put on our boots and walk out through the fields and woods.

I have a lot more to say about what I learned during this search and will be posting more in the new year.

But for now – Happy New Year!! – can you believe it will be 2012?

Most days we had breakfast at the farmhouse. Some mornings Chris got up early and buzzed out to the nearest bakery for croissants! I made coffee the first morning but it was so bad that Chris was forced to take over and we had good coffee every morning after that. (In my defence, I think I just measured wrong.) Every morning we went somewhere, did something, had a nice lunch sitting outside (except one day when it rained – we ate inside), did something else, then went back to the lovely farmhouse. In the evening we made dinner together. One night we went out for pizza. Considering that we were one foodie (Chris) and two fussey eaters (I am a vegetarian and Steve is sort of but not quite), we all ate very well, and had some very good wine.

We did not consult any restaurant lists or look for recommendations. We planned what we wanted to do each day and when it was around 1pm we stopped and looked at a few restaurant menus, then chose what suited us best. Click on the first photo and walk your way through our week of lunches.

Our Schedule

Friday – Morning coffee and croissant in Condom, lunch in Condom in a restaurant near the church.
Saturday – Lunch in Montreal near Seviac Roman Villa.
Sunday – Lunch in Vic Fezensac between searches for Roman Towers.
Monday – Lunch on a rainy day in Eauze.
Tuesday – Mid-morning coffee and lunch at the market in Fleurance. Pizza for dinner in Condom.
Wednesday – Our last day was hot so we stayed close to home. Lunch on the patio. Dinner on the patio.

How fast a week goes! And we did a lot more than just eat.

We spent the week at Au Chicot, a beautiful farmhouse in the countryside near Condom. The house is beautiful and spacious. The views are stunning. The location is very good – just 10 mins drive into Condom (we loved this town) and close to many other interesting towns and sites. Highly recommended.

Compare Travel Insurance

Fragrance Free Please

British Airways are considering pumping fragrance into the cabins on their planes to replicate the experience customers have when walking into expensive department stores. I sneeze and then get a headache when I walk through the perfume section of expensive department stores and I don’t want to spend 10 hours on a flight having that same experience. British Airways already use scents in their Executive Lounge in Heathrow and want to put this fragrance on the planes as part of their “Make Flying Special” marketing campaign.

Instead why don’t we “Make Flying Special” with better air circulation and air filters? There is no need to add potentially harmful chemicals to the air we breathe when flying.

Fragrances are a long way from natural flower essences. They are created in a lab and use a variety of chemicals to project the scent and make it last. Manufactures do not have to list the chemicals used and very little testing has been done to determine their affects on people. I have listed articles below with more information about fragrances.

Many people are affected by these chemical fragrances. Symptoms range from the ones that I get (sneezing, headache, metalic taste in my mouth) to asthma attacks or feeling very ill or losing the ability to think clearly (brain fog). A recent study indicates that many Americans are sensitive to fragrances: “… 30.5% of the general population reported scented products on others irritating, 19% reported adverse health effects from air fresheners, and 10.9% reported irritation by scented laundry products vented outside”. (Study by Caress SM, Steinemann AC, link is below.)

Everyone who knows Steve and I know how we struggle with this. We keep our home fragrance-free. We ask anyone visiting to not wear perfume or scented hair products. When possible we travel with our own sheets and pillow cases to avoid breathing in that “fresh, clean smell” – which is just a bunch of chemicals mixed with laundry soap.

When flying I pay extra on British Airways to book seats ahead of time so that we are sitting in a row of two – so we won’t have someone possibly wearing perfume sitting beside us. I guess I can save that money now because the cabin will be wearing perfume!

I fly British Airways several times a year, between the US and England and within Europe. I am pleading with you British Airways – don’t do this – for the health of the airline staff and passengers. We do not need fragrances on airplanes and many of us don’t want it.

How to Tell British Airways That You Don’t Want This

Please help me talk British Airways out of doing this!

• Tweet them @British_Airways . I have tweeted about this. You could retweet me – @PaulineK .
• Post on the British Airways Executive Club page on Facebook. I have a post about this issue there and you could add a comment.
• Email them from the British Airways website (click the Email Us tab)
• Post a comment on this blog post.
• Post a comment on articles listed below.

Articles About British Airways Introducing Scents

• Smell the BA not the BO, British Airways to Introduce Signature Scent on Flights, Jaunted, August 24 2011
• Fragrance of flight planned to improve cabin experience, The Independent, August 25 2011
• Airomatherapy, BA jets to smell like posh Stores, The Sun, August 23 2011

Articles About Fragrances

• Why Go Fragrance Free? , Cleaner Indoor Air Campaign – Pamphlet about the health affects of the chemicals used to create fragrances and why we are better off avoiding them.
• Hazards are hiding in fragranced consumer products by Dr. Anne Steinemann, February 10 2011 – Article about the toxic chemicals in fragrances.
• Prevalence of fragrance sensitivity in the American population, Caress SM, Steinemann AC., March 2009 – Research that found than many Americans are sensitive to the chemicals in fragrances. “… 30.5% of the general population reported scented products on others irritating, 19% reported adverse health effects from air fresheners, and 10.9% reported irritation by scented laundry products vented outside.”

Websites About Fragrances and Indoor Air Quality

• Environmental Working Group on Facebook
• The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
• Cleaner Indoor Air

Spring at Ozleworth

Last year in England it was sunny and warm – even hot on some days – from mid-May to mid-September. Our rain jackets never left the boot of our car. I wore short sleeves all summer long. It rained for a few days in July, but we were traveling in France and missed it. For us it was the perfect British Summer.

But people said it was not a good summer. The school holiday schedule is different here than in the US. In the US students have a long summer break. School lets out in May or June and starts again in August or September (differs by region). In England schools have week-long mid-term breaks throughout the year at seemingly random times. One week I hear the laugher and footsteps of children walking down our hillside to the local school; the next week the mornings are silent. The summer break is August. Hence, August is the summer.

If we get two weeks of not-perfect sunny days in August, it is declared a bad summer. After last summer I read in the newspaper “the promised barbeque summer never happened!” I don’t barbeque, but it sure seemed like a barbeque summer to me!

This year summer started in March with a couple of weeks of sun and warmth. We spent many days hiking. On the warm days we headed to the woods for shade, as we do in summer, but the leaves were not out on the trees yet!

Bluebells in Woodchester Park

The weather changed to typical cool and wet for the first week of April when we were conveniently visiting Boulder and Santa Fe in the US (where we had 70 degree temps one day and snow the next – Rocky Mountain weather).

We returned to three more wonderful weeks of summer. Bluebells and Ransoms (Garlic flowers) bloomed in April, a month ahead of time. Farmers complained that their crops were not getting enough rain. A drought was declared in southern England.

This perfect weather lined up with a longer than usual mid-term break. They combined the long Easter weekend which came late this year (holidays on Friday and Monday) with the Royal Wedding (everyone got a day off for the Royal Wedding – no separation of Royal Family and State here) and the first May Bank Holiday (May has two Bank Holidays - one at the start, one at the end). People could take an 11-day holiday by combining these holidays and taking three days off work.

The people who decided to holiday in Britain got summer-like weather and avoided the crowded airports. Those who flew south to Spain, France or Italy has worse weather than we had here. A small victory for English weather.

I said “If this is all the summer we get this year, that will be okay”. But I didn’t mean it.

May started out good. We spent a hot and sunny week on the east Devon coast. After that it turned cool and wet. Followed by June which was cool and wet. And now we are half way through a cool and wet July. Is this the very British summer?

Blossoms Along the Cotswold Canal

We had visitors from Santa Fe in June who dressed in layers of sweaters and jackets and sometimes even wore ear muffs when we were out hiking. We had to cut back on the number of hikes because they didn’t want their travel clothes to be covered in mud.

In July we had a visitor from Portland, Oregon who is used to rain, so we hiked in the rain and through the mud. We did a four night mini-break with her to the Dorset coast and had good weather – we even went swimming in the sea! But after that the bad weather returned.

I am not complaining. It is just that when you have visitors, you notice the weather more because every day you want to be out and about.

Bad weather is not rain all day. Instead it is very changeable weather – sunny one minute, clouds rolling in and drizzle the next, sometimes a sudden strong downpour. Very nice, sunny days come along. There is an underlying warmth so even on the bad days all you need is a light jacket. When the day looks good, we go out hiking. When it looks dismal, we stay in and work.

I kind of like this weather. But I am looking forward to August and hoping for a barbeque summer.

Adam and a Cat

I was one of the judges of the European Experiences photo contest. People who have been on their tours sent in photos showing their experiences. Here are the 10 winners.

My friends Kathy and Charley Wood, who run European Experiences, are celebrating five years of doing small group tours of France, Italy, England and Austria. They do a great job – as is shown by these beautiful photos.

If you don’t want to spend days and weeks organizing every detail yourself, but do want to have a well planned trip to a special part of Europe, I recommend looking at Slow Travel Tours, a group of like-minded people who run small group tours. These are not tours by the busload, in a pack of people following someone holding up an umbrella, seeing someone’s idea of the “must sees”, but instead are intimate groups experiencing Europe in a special way.

This was my favorite photo by Sally from Washington, May 2010. Sally writes: “More than the fabulous places, our trip to France let us experience real life in the Luberon. This photo, entitled Relax, is actually a member of our group (Adam) sharing a sunny perch with a French feline. Animals help us to realize that no matter what corner of the world we may find ourselves in, we can always find something in common with the lives we cross paths with.”

In January the typical English winter weather arrived – overcast, drizzle, rain – bleak. We are both working on a new website project, so have been spending our time coding instead of hiking for the last several months. In contrast to the “best summer of my life” where we were out hiking all day long, now my life takes place in this cottage, with occasional outings for groceries and walks.

Even the cat is cabin bound. On cold days he goes outside for two minutes, then comes back into the house howling. Then he races up and down the stairs, in and out of rooms (this is a big cottage on three levels, so lots of running space), howling. Finally he settles down under a radiator and sleeps for 12 hours.

We had an exciting short break planned in Rome for the end of January, but we both came down with a flu and had to cancel at the very last minute (the morning we were supposed to be driving to Bristol airport). So instead of walking the Archaeological sites of Rome and Lazio, dropping into cafes for a quick coffee, having lovely long dinners together, we were both in bed exhausted and queasy.

Now we are recovering, the days are getting longer, the weather is mild, the sun is hitting our northern slope neighborhood and yesterday when walking in Woodchester Park, we came across a hillside of snowdrops. Spring is in the air.

See the Snowdrops

Snowdrops in Sapperton, Feb 2008

In England the Snowdrops arrive in February to tell us that Spring is just around the corner. Many estates and park areas open up on February weekends. Here is a list of places to see Snowdrops throughout England – Great British Gardens – Snowdrops 2011.

This week we have garden enthusiast friends visiting (W+R) and will be heading out to the Painswick Rococo Gardens who are famous for their Snowdrops. We visited these gardens last summer and they are lovely.

I hope to also visit Colesbourne Park, north of Cirencester and Rodmarton Manor, south of Cirencester.

I think the Snowdrops are going to yank me out of my winter malaise and get me thinking about the wonderful spring and summer ahead of us.

Hey, the sun is out! Gotta go …

Photos

See more photos of Snowdrops in Painswick Rococo Gardens on Cotswolder.