Boyke Manor...

This last weekend I escaped Londong with my friends Sarah and Mark to Mark's parents place... three years ago Paul and Linda (said parents) bought a rundown old manor house and have been restoring it to its former glory - and what a job!! All the main timbers and most of the brickwork dates to the 1300s, with about half the house in the 'half timbered' or black beams/white walls style we think of as "Tudor". Apparently the family that built the original house were given the land when they came over with William the Conqueror, and this was the second house built on that site (no idea what happened to the original - 'burned down in a terrible fire' seems to be a common fate... all those dodgy old chimneys and dried out thatch...) There are two wells, and a 15th century barn... Inside, dark 'tudor'/cromwellian panelling and a priest hole (for hiding catholics during the wars of religion). They've done a gorgeous job with it - especially compared to photos of the two of them wading through piles of rubble... in the dining room!

Hosepipe ban notwithstanding, their garden, the whole acre of it, is gorgeous - Linda is planting lots of low-water plants, like lavendar and rosemary. Utterly, utterly gorgeous... And Paul and Linda, Mark's parents, are lovely people, with lots of interesting tales to tell (Paul dives, has run several London Marathons, most recently at the age of 50, and last year climbed Mt Kilimanjaro for something to do). We ate and drank our way through the entire weekend. Life should have more of this.