Week 41

Because we haven’t had a trip “in a while,” because I’ve been feeling like I’d rather live on a farm lately, because I’ve been feeling particularly sensitive to and unforgiving of city living lately, and simply because we can and we should, Keegan, Liam and I packed up and headed out to the lovely villages in the countryside of England, the Cotswolds, just an hour and a half drive from London. Set against a backdrop of rolling green hills, endless prolific farmland, and wildflower meadows splattered with God’s very own paint palette of the most brilliant yellows I have ever seen, the warm limestone storybook villages nestled themselves into these hills as if they had been there since the beginning of time. It was indeed the perfect, regenerating weekend of which I was, in fact perhaps we all were, in dire need. Saturday we spent the entire day, aside from a two hour lunch at the village pub, hiking through fields, working farms, wildflowers, along streams, ancient stone cottages, gracious English Manors and stately cows at pasture. The weather threw just about everything it could at us just short of snow really . . . rain, sun, gale force winds, but we forged ahead, somehow feeling that no matter what, we could not turn our back on something quite this special. I’ll stop now, because the images speak louder than I ever could. Can’t wait to go back. Trying to figure out how we could spend an entire summer at our charming little Honey Cottage and send Daddy off to work as needed ;)

This is literally the hike, from start to finish, as we saw it.
Heading out of town:

Sound of Music anyone?

Random soccer ball to pass some time . . .

Arriving at halfway point, the Lower Slaughters, for lunch . . .

Heading through town . . .

And back on the return path . . .

This was Liam's longest hike ever at right around five miles I think. He complained a lot about the distance, and rightly so, but in the end, I think he was giggling and thoroughly occupied with the surroundings 90 percent of the time....