We took the long way home… a very long way really, passing…quite unnecessarily…through the quaint old streets of Woburn, with its rather grandiose church fair bristling with dragons and through the park of Woburn Abbey.
Mainly because the park is full of deer… and we were lucky enough to see some. Reindeer are not a common sight in England and after having ‘made their acquaintance’ at the workshop, the brief glimpse was a rather special moment.
In need of refreshment…and somewhere the three of us could sit and talk face to face instead of through the rear-view mirror, I drove to a little pub on the canal. It was sunny, but nowhere near as warm as the last time we had been there, but even so, we braved the breeze to sit and watch the narrow-boats navigating the lock.
The first to come through was the Bluebell… aptly named after our outing the previous day to Ashridge Woods. The next made us share another smile… the Pendragon seemed all too appropriate coming so soon after our Arthurian workshop.
These small ‘coincidences’ that follow us may be no more than that, but the synchronicity, when they follow one upon the heels of the other, makes you sit up and take note…or perhaps it is that you already are paying attention to your world that brings them to note.
We stopped at the Swan a little later, dining on a selection of entrées…which is far better proportioned for our appetites than a large scale meal. There was one more slight detour on the way to the site of a Knights Templar preceptory. Little now remains to be seen, but there are traces in the farm buildings and cottages for the curious eye. But we needed to get an early night. Alarms were set for unearthly hours… the next day would be May Day and we were Oxford-bound.
France & Vincent 