Our local manor house. in The View from the Terrace

It’s hot! and I mean hot. Tony has just come back from Tenerife and he thinks it is hotter here than it was there. I have just been sitting outside with a my coffee. It’s 8.30 pm and it’s the first time it’s been cool enough to go out, apart from brief forays to the washing line to hang Tony’s holiday washing, which is dry almost before I’ve finished puttin it out. I love this weather though, even if I do have to retire to my bedroom and lie down with the fan on for an hour in the afternoon.

I went back to the dentist yesterday afternoon. She said she had had a problem finding one of the root canals when she did my tooth last week and that could be the trouble. She did the second stage of the procedure then and this time she thought it was more successful. It’s a bit sore today but that’s to be expected and, of course, I developed a migraine overnight which is also to be expected with me, any kind of dental treatment can be a trigger for me. So I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping this time it settles down.

Afterwards I decided to make the best of the afternoon visit to town and I bought myself a lovely top in Debenhams with the birthday voucher that Tony had given me.

On Saturday the volunteers at the crisis line were having a picnic but I didn’t feel up to going. Apart from the troublesome tooth I had so many migraines last week that the after effects of the meds were slowing me down and I didn’t feel like socialising. It was such a lovely day, though, that I didn’t want to stay home either. Hubby suggested a visit to the gardens of Kentchurch Court, our local manor house. They have been opening to the public for a few years now but we haven’t been there before. It is just a couple of miles from us and is the home of the Scudamores a very old Herefordshire family who own most of the land around here. I think they originally owned the row of houses that we live in. They were built in the 1870s to house the workers of a small chemical factory down the lane. That is gone now and the houses were sold off many years ago. Funnily enough they still own the mineral rights so if we do find oil in our back garden we won’t be able to profit from it!

The manor house is very old, parts of it originate from the 14th century.

The gardens were beautiful. We enjoyed a lovely walk through them.

I couldn’t believe that they only have the one gardener, although the family do a lot of the work too. This is the gardener’s cottage. It’s bigger than our house!

There was also a woodland walk which was lovely after the warm sunshine. Afterwards we enjoyed coffee and cake in the stables cafe where, unbelievably, it was self service in that you made your own drinks, helped yourself to cake and put the money in an honesty box.

It was a lovely afternoon and just what I needed