We began our vacation by flying to London, then "hiring" a minivan to drive to Owlpen Manor, where we rented a cottage for a week. The manor house and surrounding property has been owned since 1974 by Nicholas and Karin Mander, although parts of the Manor house date to 1464. This area is in the Cotswolds, famous in the past for their wool industry, and is about two hours west of London. There are still lots of sheep grazing around, and the area is full of beautiful rolling hills. You can see the church behind and to the left of the manor house, and the famous yew hedges just in front of the church. The church is owned by a congregation rather than by the Manders. We bumped into the Lady of the house one day when she was leaving for a walk with her two dogs, a playful Rhodesian Ridgeback and a deaf Jack Russell terrier. She seemed very nice, and helps prepare meals at the Cyder House restaurant which is open only on Saturday. We also saw her coming around to replace curtains in our house, so she participates more actively in the maintenance and operation of the cottage rental and guest service than I expected she would.
We stayed in the Grist Mill, built in 1728. It was a working grist mill for a long time, and very obvious evidence of it's primary purpose is all over the house. The water wheel was still around the left side of the house, although it has fallen into ruin. There were huge gears in various places designed to convert the power of the wheel to use in different parts of the house by way of belts. There were also several separating devices still in the house as well as chutes for grain to travel from floor to floor. The house was four stories tall, and there used to be a central vertical shaft they could use to haul bags of grain from the floor to the attic to begin the grinding process. These holes are now glazed with tempered glass. We never quite got used to walking on glass, although it was fun to call to people three floors down and wave to them from above. There were huge strong beams above the stairwells to bonk your head on, especially on the third floor where the ceiling was only about five and a half feet high. Boy, they musta been short in 1728!
Right behind the grist mill was the mill pond. It has been maintained, and was full of water. The water poured out the gate and down a steep hill to a creek which passed in front of the manor house a few hundred feet downstream. This brook gave us a wonderful babbling noise whenever we went outside or opened the window.
The roads in the country are quite narrow. These people mostly have much smaller cars than we have, and you can't understand why until you drive on these roads. It was quite common to drive down one of the smaller two-way roads and have the rear view mirrors on both sides of the car simultaneously hitting vegetation growing from the sides of the road. The plants which grow profusely from the sides of the road are constantly being trimmed- by passing cars! You drive just slow enough that you can stop before hitting oncoming cars. If you meet someone coming in the opposite direction, whichever person is closest to the last driveway or street crossing will back up until they can pull off the road, letting the other person by. In some places there was a tunnel of foliage so thick over the road that it was like driving through a tunnel, and you felt like turning on the headlights even during the daytime.