Saturday 11 February 2017

Week-Ends: Stow-on-the-Wold



We woke up to a crisp and snow dusted morning. Everything looked sparkly and pretty and familiar yet seen through rose tinted glasses. After a few weeks of threatening, my body surrendered to a cold and I'd spent the night tossing and turning and feeling bunged up. At 3am, awake and restless and fighting illness I read the beautiful words of Belle Augusta, suddenly my heart was filled with all sorts of magic, the kind she weaves with her love letters to New York. I fell back to sleep dreaming of adventure and with thoughts of truly embracing the natural beauty around me, as Belle does so wonderfully. So upon waking, in spite of not feeling my best, after a hard week of school and work I was determined to make the most of this hard earned precious time with my family. I nourished myself with superfoods, baked sweet potato, rocket, roasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a drizzle of sesame seed oil and a little grated cheese plus greek yoghurt with honey and coffee ... Real coffee from Kilimanjaro no less. I followed this with a deep, hot bath filled with the most delicious smelling bath oil, a gift from a friend, that immediately has you conjuring pictures of the Black Forest, mountains and evergreens and pines. I added my Bay & Rosemary candle, a christmas gift from my three boys, then, I lay. Making waves. Imagining myself swimming laps, closing my weary, tender eyes and allowing myself to daydream, sort of, as I drifted in and out of my parental role hearing the background noise of two active boys. The boys had already devoured pain au chocolat for breakfast, the ones that my husband had driven out to collect the night before in readiness for Saturday morning. I toasted the remaining ones for him alongside some mediterranean loaf and of course, added a real coffee for him too for a morning breakfast in bed. I searched my notes for my 'places we must visit' list and I found a few places and my husband chose one of them - Stow-on-the-Wold. She was all kinds of beautiful and just an hour away from home. The journey was gentle and lulling and The Cure kept us in a state of blissful melancholia if there is such a thing. We found perfect teahouses and independent stores and coffee shops and free parking and cake, very very good cake, orange and poppy seed and brownies, chocolate and coconut. We ate lunch in the middle of nowhere next to fields with a white covering and it was cold, so cold. Those boys of mine, all three, ate hot chicken drumsticks in the wilderness with the passion of resplendent kings of old feasting at a banquet. I, took myself back to the car and put my mittens with yellow pom poms on. Small pleasures. The week-ends are all about feeling all of the feels. Feasting on time, simplicity and togetherness. 


* Not the best photographs by any means but I promised myself I would blog this day




































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