An English Countryside Adventure

My husband took the day off work today so we could join friends of ours on a day-trip to the lovely English Countryside.

Our destination? A little village called Shere which is where the film 'The Holiday' was filmed. You know, the one with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law in the oh-so-unbelievably cute village? Yeah, well I can safely say that Shere is most definitely an oh-so-unbelievably cute village. Talk about feeling like we had just visited where Wind In the Willows was based, or Brambley Hedge.

We arrived for a late lunch at a pub called the White Horse which was built in 1425 - originally as a farm house - and then became reknown as a meeting spot for sheep bandits and poachers in the 1700's. It even has it's own ghost aparently - a young Victorian girl whose body was found in the chimney during the 1955 refurbishment. Well I never saw her. And I even looked in the chimney.

Seeing as it was such a lovely hot day we treated ourselves to Pimms and lunch in the pub's beer garden under the trees.

Then it was off to discover this quaint little town

A walk down a country path led us to trickling brooks with lots of stones for collecting or sploshing back in the water and for cooling down the feet

So many wonky houses where their walls seem to defy the law of gravity.
Garden plots with wild berries growing up over old stone walls, tempting little fingers to pick them and taste their succulent, sweet goodness

Beauty was everywhere, causing one to take many intakes of breath in an attempt to absorb it all

It was a day of friends spending time together.
Old friends

...and new.