kelmscott

How ever many years it took us to walk the Ridgeway, so with the Thames path - every year we say we will finish it, but still it wends on. When the days begin to lengthen at the start of the summer we make our resolutions, in September as the evenings draw in we renew them with vigour - too late!

Kelmscott, the Thameside home of William Morris was our Autumn treat. With limited summer open days I had been intending to visit for the past thirty years and never had. The internet is a great tool! We have walked almost to Lechlade and with only two open days before the  house closes for the winter we made it. The sun shone on the pretty gardens still laid out as the great man decreed. Apples hung heavy on the trees and we ate outside the great barn as lazy wasps sucked on windfalls  and we sucked on local ale. Extremely pleasant. Inside all was much as when the great man was there - his daughter May lived there until the 1930's and allowed no changes to be made before leaving it in her will to Oxford University. Her hand embroidered hangings still decorate her father's bed and his own weaving hangs in the hall near the unfaded preparatory drawings. All is very peaceful, a rural idyll. We will go again.....