Here s a spot that we visited earlier in the year on a lovely summer day, I hope it cheers you on a very grey winter day here in the UK. This is near to the small village of Snowshill in the Cotswolds. Well worth a visit when you are in this area.

On this walk it occurred to me that this view has probably not changed in centuries. There’s no evidence of modern living in this image, no wires, no telephone masts, and even no houses. That aside there may well have been fewer trees in the old days, we think that it would have been heavily wooded but the fact is that very old photographs show much less wooded area. They did, after all, cut a lot of it down to heat their damp and leaky cottages, now highly desirable second residences for City bankers.

I’m told by my good friend Robin, that the loudest noise in the countryside in those old days, was the sound of singing. The fields would have been heavily populated by farm workers before the tractor came along, and they would have sung songs to pass the time of day. The sounds one hears these days is either road noise from far away motorways or the odd ginormous tractor seemingly driven by a fourteen year old at breakneck speed.