Back to the Fens.

A dawn coach (well it certainly felt like it) for the grand, polite and extremely ruthless event - The Fry Gallery picture sale. A convivial queue turned into a welter of Barbour and brogue. However fortified by the best cheese scones in East Anglia and ably assisted by my sidekick, I was able to secure my pictures of choice and even manage to down a glass or two.

And so to the Orchard Tearooms at Granchester - in spring like this.....

Started in 1887 the gardens attracted Brooke, Wittgenstein, Keynes, Cockerell, Strachey, Plath, Hughes, Thomas ........ you get the picture.

Today they were quite empty, just a robin or two and the constant falling leaves.

Plath wrote "got up at 4.30am this day with Ted and went for a long walk to Granchester... I felt a peace and joy in the most beautiful world with animals and birds... We began mooing at a pasture of cows, and they all looked up, and as if hypnotised, began to follow us in a crowd of about twenty across the pasture to a wooden stile, staring fascinated. I stood on the style and, in a resonant voice, recited all I knew of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for about twenty minutes. I never had such an intelligent, fascinated audience".