A couple of houses, Pretty Painswick and Abigail’s play!

This is Sunday and we have left Claire and Andy and travelled a bit backwards to visit the country home of Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of England during Victorian times. Again, there were lots of Christmas trees but this time they were decorated to reflect post 2nd World War when decorations were made from whatever was to hand as there were such shortages after the war.

After visiting this house, we drove over to the west of the Cotswolds to Painswick which is a village where all the houses are built from the Cotswold stone. I don’t think you would call it a small town but there weren’t many shops etc there. There were 2 pubs - one of the pubs supplied coffee early in the morning - the only place open on Monday morning! We stayed 2 nights here in a very comfortable Air BnB. It was a beautiful area so we went for a long walk Out of town - lots of hills and dales - so very pretty. We also took a drive to a town called Burford which had an interesting main street.

This is a little more modest house.

and these are some photos of Painswick and our walk.

And this is Burford’s Main Street- a long street filled with old buildings like these.

on Tuesday, we drove back to Romsey via another old house. This was called Dhyram Park and belonged to a fellow called William Blathwayt who set up the War Office for James 11 at the end of the 17th century. He lived in this house from 1690 so it was over 300 years old. After this, back to Romsey , where we then went out with our friends, the Lillie’s for a Christmas dinner.

Abigail was an angel

In the school nativity play

This was our outing tonight.