England’s Green and Pleasant Land.

For a change – and to let Nokky experience some other parts of the UK – on our return to England from mainland Europe, we stayed in an AirBnb in the delightful Cotswold town of Northleach, located about 12 miles from where my father and mother lived for around 50 years! Returning to this part of the country I was once again reminded of the natural beauty of this rural area, helped, for sure, by the gorgeous weather for a change!

Nowadays, Northleach is just a small, quietly sleepy small town with a population of less than 3000. But back in the 15th century, despite a population of a mere 400 or so, it was considered to be the economic powerhouse of Europe based upon the importance of it’s wool trade. For example, the ransom paid for King Richard The Lionheart’s release during the Crusades came almost entirely from Northleach’s wool trade revenue.

The town’s fine ‘wool church’ is a great testament to the wealth of this area back in the day. Although dating back to the 13th century, it was during the 15th century that, thanks to the generosity of many of the local ‘wool barons’, the church was developed into the magnificent building that dominates this still relatively small market town.

Just a few miles north west of the Regency town of Cheltenham Spa, my architect father designed and built our family home into which we moved in 1951 and in which they both lived until they passed away. Whilst in the area, we did a ‘drive by’ when I was intrigued and delighted to see that the current owners had done little to change the overall appearance of both house and garden. What a trip down Memory Lane!

Northleach is ideally located to explore the rolling hills of the surrounding area, full of quintessentially English small towns and villages mostly crafted out of the local honey coloured Cotswold stone. One of the more famous is Bourton on the Water with origins dating back to pre Saxon days and where time seems to have stood still ….

apart from the tourists! This group of Chinese seemed quite bemused that such a beautiful and scenic attraction hadn’t been turned into some sort of gigantic rural theme park.

The numerous craft and gift shops and a quirky motor museum seemed to be doing very well without this, though!

The much larger town of Cirencester lies a few miles south of Northleach and dates back to early Roman times and was well worth a visit. The splendid St John Baptist church with origins dating back to the 12th century dominates the centre of this seemingly vibrant and up market town ,

full of interesting markets and many quirky independent retail outlets.

Towards the end of our stay in the Cotswolds, whilst driving my daughter, Robyn, back to her railway station and onwards to London, we stopped off at the King’s Head in the tiny village of Bledington and enjoyed a fine al fresco lunch where I suddenly remembered that, many years earlier, my father and I had enjoyed the occasional get together here, the pub being more or less the mid point between where I worked and where he lived. Another trip down Memory Lane!

Our final adventure before heading back east was to visit our friends Chris and Wendy. And what a great time we had. Apart from a catch up and fun evening with our hosts, Chris had arranged a tour for us round the Morgan Car factory – and what an experience it was!

Morgan have been making hand built cars in this same factory in the town of Great Malvern ever since the company was formed in 1909. Having visited hundreds of factories during my business life, walking onto Morgan’s shop floor was like walking back in time – a long way back. No computers, no robots, no automated production lines.