The Cook and The Gardener: Beginning the 2012 Journey

Here we are back in Pongolia for another Summer - hahahahaha. The weather has been bloody freezing, (highs of 10 during the day) wet, bleak, sunless and windy for our first week.   Not quite what we were expecting. Like the rest of the world the weather patterns are completely up the whop and so very different to the drought we arrived in last year.

The bad weather did give us a wonderful chance to get over our jet lag without any bother about what work we should be doing, The Saturday night we arrived we closed the gates at 7.30pm, went straight to bed and managed a 12 hour sleep - bliss!!

We were feeling a bit restless by Monday and the sun did come out that day and gave us a high of      16 deg (felt positively tropical) so we headed down to Cirencester - the capital of the cotswolds and a town with a huge Roman history. The drive through the Cotswolds was just gorgeous - a real patchwork of beautiful rolling fields of yellow (rape in flower), and a mixture of yellow and grey greens with wheat and barley crops.   They have a museum which exhibits mosiac tile floors that have been rescued from old Roman sites as the area was a busy settlement in 43BC. The tiling is quite spectacular with its detail and variety of patterns. Not far away is the site of an old Roman Villa - really an extensvie mansion with hot and cold baths, drainage systems etc. and covered an area of about an acre.
In the 1800's two hunters had to dig down a rabbit hole to retreive their ferret and discovered all these small coloured tiles. They showed the owner of the land and he arranged for 50 of his workers to excavate the site over a period of 10 years.  The dig was not conducted like a proper archeological process, but he did put up coverings over the massive floor areas to protect them.  Lucky for us the site now belongs to the National Trust and is well protected.

Found a really lovely cafe called Made by Bob for lunch - delicious food and decor and had a good look around the market and bazaar which had a good standard of gifty things for sale.

John and Barbara Hill are over here for 1 year and living in the South Cotswolds near Malmsbury. We made contact with them on Thursday and took a drive over to join them for dinner and check out their digs. It was so wonderful to see fellow kiwis and I know we were as excited as each other. The lady they are working for has done some serious PR for two local guys who own a very impressive and grand hotel and next door a lovely pub/restaurant called The Potting Shed. She managed to secure a table for us for dinner at the last minute and we had a fabulous meal and shared much hilarity comparing notes. It did us both the world of good to have a laugh and unwind after the stress of travel and settling in to foreign surroundings.

The wet weather has prevented us from doing too much outside - managed a trip to the library to gather lots of travel books and we braved the cold and reacquainted ourselves with the gorgeous Barley and cute as Maisey. Went for a good brisk walk with them for an hour around the usual circuit and enjoyed watching them play, run in puddles, and bound along beside us.

Have had a cuppa with our very favourite Knightcotians - Richard and Rita Sanderson and just like the first visit we had with them it started out as tea and finished with wine. Moira and Graham, our neighbours has also had us in for a cuppa yesterday afternoon and we had a visit from George Wood who called to say hi. Our other neighbour, Veronica delivered a community newsletter with news of the jubilee celebrations and also gardening club news.

Spent today (Saturday) gardening and mowing as the place is starting to look quite wooly. Areas of grass are still very waterlogged, but the stripes look very lush on the house lawns. Are not expecting to see Susie until early June so will have it looking smashing by then.

Thinking of you all - all the time lots of loves and smiles Jonnie and Sue