Day 89 - It's bloomin' December!

After a few days of drizzly weather, the ground was a bit muddy today. But that wasn't going to put us off a Sunday walk, particularly as the weather was to be warmer than it had been and partly sunny.

We took the train to Kingham to get a festive start to the day: a Christmas Market was on at the Village hall. Beautifully handmade goods including an absolutely gorgeous rocking horse. In one tent outside the hall, were samples of homemade fudge, handcrafted chocolate, sauces, and local game. We sampled some positively delicious cured meat made by an artisan chef from the Saltpig Curing Company.

Can't wait to try what we purchased on some buttered toast...although the chef's recommendation of using it in pasta has me intrigued. Love seeing such entrepreneurial spirit that promotes local product in such a high quality way.

Next up was the Cotswolds Distillery. We'd been reading a lot about this distillery since we arrived in the UK. They released their first year of single malt whisky this year, and Phil had been anxious to try it. He finally got his chance...I'll let him describe it in another day's blog, but suffice it to say he liked it well enough to buy two bottles which he then proceeded to carry for the next 12 kms of our walk. I remarked that it would have been good if it had been colder and the weather had stranded us somewhere as we would have been able to stay warm and happy for quite a while until we were rescued! And if we'd had bread and a toaster, the cured meat from Saltpig would have made life in our makeshift lean-to even more bearable.

With restraint not to reach into the backpack a wee sip of whisky, from here we walked down a rather muddy but straight road toward the tiny village of Dayleford. The road leads through farmland, and this case a large organic farm that provides meat, poultry, fruit, vegetables, bread, and milk products produced on site. Heartening to see so many free range chickens. The main farmshop is beautiful. Regrettably our boots were too muddy to stray inside, but we did glance around the property. It consists of a spa, accommodation, shop, cafe, cookery school...the list seems to go on and on.  The car park was packed, so the place must be the place to venture out to. We look forward to coming back to discover why and will share our report here when we do.

We continued into Daylesford. The manor and estate currently belong to Sir Anthony and Lady Bamford (who own the Dayleford Organic farm business). The highlight of the village for us was the breathtaking Norman church. It has the most romantic architectural style, small, but so exquisitely detailed. A hidden gem.

What was really remarkable about today was the number of flowers we saw in bloom. Hard for us Canadians to believe it is December.

Back through countryside to Bledington before catching the train back to Moreton in Marsh. A truly lovely day.