Sunshine and Autumn Leaves

Another beautiful day in the UK, for some reason we are having good weather. Taking advantage of such good fortune Ben and I headed out into the countryside to visit various villages. Our first stop was Clare, which is about half an hour or so south of Cambridge. Such a lovely place which has no less than three antique shops. We browsed through these before we went out and explored the surrounding town. We discovered a wonderful river winding its way around the village. It had a lovely walk along side it through the forest where the locals provided various signs about what sort of birds and other wild life we should keep our eyes open for. We had lunch here and then continued southish to Long Melton. This was another sweet village though as it says, it was very long. We stopped here to look in the little boutique shops and have a hot chocolate, which I must say was so creamy and yummy and just the thing to warm you up when it was only 7 degrees out. Unfortunately the great hall there was closed for the season so we did not get to look inside though it did look very grand from without.



This was a great little find, a disused railway station in the forest


We continued through the countryside, such wonderful colours with all the leaves turning and light was quite warm even if the weather was not. This is due to the sun not getting above about 10 o'clock in the sky so it has a very surreal feeling and makes it difficult to judge the time of day. Our last stop was the best of all, it was the village of Lavenham. Upon entering this village you will come across its stunning church. It is quite huge with amazingly tall windows that have such jewel like colours. It is surrounded by a great garden with hedges sculpted into big spheres though one had a hole in the top which looked as if someone had tossed their three year old out of a plane and the unfortunate landed right in the middle. Not sure about that theory of Ben's but it was funny.



After looking about the church we headed into the town proper, I would suggest anyone coming to England who wishes for the small country village stay, that this is your place. Along with ancient buildings and beautiful magic main streets, the surrounding countryside is picture book perfect. It has a lovely cafe and cute little arty type shops and of course great looking traditional pubs. Once we had completed our look around it was starting to get dark so we headed back, for sun set here today was five minutes past four. Yes that's right pitch black by five in the afternoon. It is quite a novelty.

They just don't make them like they use to...