On Sunday we headed to Steeple Aston to visit the Kewley family (Jan is Mark’s godmother). We didn’t get a photo of the B&B we were staying at in Badsey until now and Mark wanted everyone to see that we were staying in a land of little people – here he is coming in the door. Elsie, of course, was right at home.

Now on to Steeple Aston …. we arrived to Jan and Davids house which was an 17th century farmhouse that use to belong to Iris Murdoch called Cedar Lodge. The house has 5 acres of land around it that Jan and David have turned into a perfect english garden. Yes, Julie this is exactly the place that you need to be.

The House is beautiful and the gardens are spectacular. We arrived for lunch and were lucky enough to have coincided with Kate who was home for the weekend before Exams.


We had a lovely lunch of home grown veggies and some fresh baked scones and then took a walk through the grounds.


The kewley’s horse, Kismet is 29 and just loves Jan. “Kizzy” has her run of a field, but comes in at night to her stable. Jan really wanted Kizzy to have her ears up for the photo.


Here is david creating a hedge wall on stilts – when this place was first purchase 14 years ago only the the mature trees were there – the rest of the garden has been imagined and created by Jan and David. Jan is filled with gardening knowledge and we were sad to tell her how poorly our garden is doing in Colorado…


The Kewley’s have two cats, one looked much like Crenshaw and was instantly wanting to snuggle me and elsie while elsie had some lunch.


Of course Jan just loved Elsie (who wouldn’t!) and Elsie loved the Enlgish Garden!! Now we are off to London!