Thursday 22 May 2014

The Froome Valley



Yesterday, four of us met up at the Daneway Inn for a walk up to Pinbury Park and back via Dorvel Wood. We saw a trip of goats (all black), a rag of colts (destined to be polo ponies, and waiting for the vet to geld them), and a bevy - there must have been a dozen or more - of roe deer, showing us a way into the woods. There the wild garlic reminded me of the bärlauch on so many menus in Germany and Switzerland last month. (My photograph shows the sign I followed when looking for a bed in Märstetten - and very comfortable it was too.)

The new service station on the North-bound M5 near Gloucester is "Hofladen" (farm shop) writ large: we stopped there for (very expensive) petrol en route home from supper with Edmund in Bristol last night. On the one hand, I can't conceive of any reason beneficial to the environment why more commercial outlets should be needed: on the other, if you are going to have motorway service stations, they might as well be on this (the Westmorland Tebay) model.

Today, I've been in amongst my not-so-wild garlic. (Only the weeds have gone wild, but they pull out readily after the rain.) And this evening, we went to Cineworld (along with half the rest of Cheltenham, it seemed) for the National Theatre's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This, with its dizzy-making camera angles and Pirandellian roots, hugely benefited from the big screen relay. Fabulous drama!

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