Tetbury and Dyrham Park

It has taken us a few days to get over all that energetic rambling in Malta, and together with Harry catching a cold, we decided this weekend would be a little bit quieter. But both days have been warm (for winter anyway) around 15 degrees and so we couldn't stay indoors all that time. We had a wander around some of the houses in Clifton (well to-do area of Bristol), which reminded me very much of New Zealand. Detached houses with some garden and trees close to the Downs where many a Bristolian were walking, running, flying kites or pushing pushchairs around the grass. We also had a drive to Tetbury a little town in the Cotswolds. Just outside the town is Highgrove (where Prince Charles does a lot of his gardening), but you can't see the house - the gate is marked by about a dozen police cones with 'No Stopping' all over them. In Tetbury is the Highgrove shop inspired by the Prince and his gardens. Everything was quite expensive so we looked at the soaps, bulbs in pots, garden tools, onion marmalade, address books, cookery books and organic food. The shop even has its own leaflet that told us that the lavendar body care was made 'to a natural formation free from petrochemicals, sulphates and parabens', the savoury jellies are 'made locally in limited small batches using seasonal, handpicked ingredients from the Highgrove estate' and the organic biscuits 'are baked by hand using Shipton Mill's stone ground flour, which contains wheat from the Duchy Home Farm'. A number of customers left the shop with things inside big recycled bags but we left with a small paper bag after trying a sample of fudge and smelling the soaps. So, we picnic'd on a park bench in the sun beside some bulbs that have decided it is spring, and then wandered around Tetbury with a map (from the Tourist Information Centre where the woman behind the counter couldn't even manage a hello to us) and past the church, market place, a pub called (the Snooty Fox), a hotel with a library in its lobby for people to enjoy, some lovely old buildings and heaps of antique shops. We went into one shop, not to view the antiques, but to explore inside a three storey 16th century cottage, where the wooden floor boards groaned and with each step the china sitting on wobbly legged tables rattled. We bought some things at the small supermarket, we couldn't find serviettes but we did find bottles of New Zealand Oyster Bay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir at reasonable prices. Dyrham Park was our next stop - another National Trust property (they really must be the biggest landowners in the country). The house was built in the late 1600's and although closed for winter we wandered the park like surroundings with deer and many locals out enjoying the day. In the park is the statue of Neptune (built apparently in early 1700 and stands on the spot where a 6 metre fountain once stood), old lodge buildings (mainly used now as an exhibit for farm wagons and with a nice picnic area), the frying pan pond (which was once a drinking pool for lifestock but now is considered too dangerous for us to explore), and Hinton Hill where an iron age hill fort once stood and there was a battle (no idea between who) in 577AD, and of course a number of trees trimmed in a way that gave the impression they were having bad hair days.