Our last day in Corton. We did some packing first thing, then Anne arrived and took us for a drive down to Sherrington where I photographed a VR mailbox. Behind Boyton, she led us up through a grove of beech trees and along the edge of a newly sprouted field to a gap in the trees hiding Boyton Manor. It was quite a sight, with an avenue of trees leading down to the formal garden and the house itself, with the little Crusader church and the ranges of the Salisbury Plain beyond.
Further around the road, she showed us the Golden Valley, a gorgeous little valley running up between rows of trees and carpeted with smooth green grass. Later on, up on the ridge behind Corton, we stood on a tumultus in the howling wind, the tableau of Wiltshire Downs spread out all around. To the east, distant Hampshire. North, the plains stretching clear to Marlborough. West, the ridges and furrows of the Great Hill Forts and behind us, the Great Ridge Wood. The sky was gunmetal blue above a patchwork of beige and brown, the remnants of the nearly complete harvest.
In Warminster, we had an afternoon tea with Betty, prolonging for her sake the moment when we would leave and say goodbye. That night, we dined on a Bernard Matthews New Zealand lamb roast: “Bootiful!”
CurseOfTheTraveller 