A small English market town and an eccentric earl

I live about ten minutes away from a small English market town.It's the sort of place where they have
blue placques on the walls to tell you Samuel Pepys spent the night there.Imagine living near a place where the writer of one the most famous diaries walked and breathed.Pretty cool.

To get there, I have to drive throught a huge forest owned by an eccentric earl. I kid you not.
I never walk the dogs in this forest if I can help it.

There is a creepyness to it that I find unnerving. This is one of the trees which you have to drive past.

                                                             photocredit here

Do you blame me not getting out of the car with a tree like this ? I'd rather move on and avoid the mad axe man that might be hiding there.

Then the forest is also notorious for the starting place of a horrible massacre by a lone gun man ages ago.

And thirdly it is owned by the eccentric earl.

Poor guy.I reckon if we all got shipped off at the age of six to cry ourselves to sleep without our parents and to warm the loo seat of sadistic posh teenagers we'd all be struggling with what life throws at us.
I hope he will be happy and relaxed one day but I guess at the moment that is not on the cards .I suppose it would make everything very normal and very  boring.

So there is always something going on and it always makes me want to get get through the forest pretty damn quick and get the hell out of there in case I come across him.No offence, Earl! I wish you well!

My favourite place to walk my dogs in this pretty little town is on the common.There is a golfclub there which you can ignore and part of it is used  for rugby .But that is mostly played when when it rains buckets. I don't know why.An English thing.

See.So pretty.It almost makes you want to take up rugby yourself. The views are pretty spectacular and you can see for miles around as though you are on a great big ocean.

Very refreshing .
They build great bonfires on bonfire night in November on this common from which I have rescued a lovely antique-ish side board and a really handy wooden ladder .People sometimes!

Apart from the high street, the little streets around the town are those steep ones you don't want to climb with a bicycle.

And the high street is full of flower baskets the English do so well.

The secret is watering every single morning and every single night.

It just makes it so nice and cheerful.

And they are all along the street.

Yep, I count myself pretty lucky just living round the corner from here.
And maybe one day the earl will chill out and even the forest will be a cool place to hang out.
But I am pretty happy with the rugby field anyway.

Have a great day people!!

XOXO

Bea