This morning as Philip and I ate our huge, delicious breakfast at Well Cottage, we watched two grey squirrels scampering on the back lawn. I thought I was listening to a Fawlty Towers dialogue this morning as our host tried to take a breakfast order from the table next to us – not quite… it was done with pleasantness, not Basil’s impatience and frustrations!

When I first poked my head out of our little dormer bedroom window this morning I saw sunshine, but the grey clouds soon rolled in and so they have stayed.

Time and inclination for us to do another walk in this beautiful part of the Cotswolds. But we decided to walk in the other direction of the Thames Path, following it downstream for a while.

The crystal-clear waters are shallow, only a few inches deep and as wide as a small creek. Sometimes the River burbles and gurgles along, sometimes it’s silent.

We heard more bird song, saw more butterflies.

A woven willow fence line

We listened to the wind in the trees softly sighing as it rustled through.

This is a “Pooh-sticks” bridge if ever I saw one!

We thought we’d walk as far and as if or when we came to another village. We walked through farmlands.

Cows sleepily supervised our footsteps.

We heard the sheep in their paddocks long before we saw them.

They were self-shedding sheep, looking like they’d had bad haircuts. I picked up one of the tufts of wool on our path – a short wool staple.

Their lambs were older, but still constantly bleated for their mothers and ran to them as we passed by.

Past wheatfields, nearly ripe unto harvest. A farmer mowing his paddock on his big tractor.

We walked along the Thames Path for nearly two hours to Neigh Bridge which I thought would be a village.

It’s not. Neigh Bridge is a lake – part of the Cotswolds Water Parks that are conservation lakes and wetlands that filled up the gravel pits naturally from rivers and streams after gravel extractions were finished in the early 1970s. A huge wetlands area.

Beautiful spot, but time to turn round and head back to Well Cottage. For one thing, I needed a toilet and there were none to be had or nearby. So, we walked back at a faster clip than we left! We both really enjoyed the walk. Our highlight was rounding one corner of the Thames Path to see this.

Seven swans a-swimming! Well, eight actually. It’s seven cygnets and their mother. Such a delight and joy.

We ate our lunch in the back garden and did a walk around the village of Ewen. There’s only houses here, lots of posh houses – no shop or post office, no church, no pub. Brigid, our host, says it all started with the posh people coming to the Cotswolds when the Royal family bought some houses in the area years and years ago, then other celebrities did too and now it’s far too expensive for the ordinary people.

There used to be a pub in this village, but new owners in renovating the Grade 2 listed pub-house knocked down some walls they “shouldn’t” have knocked down. So it’s closed, and our hosts think will probably not re-open, as it will probably cost millions to fix everything.

It’s been a delightful couple of down-days here. Tomorrow we head for Duffield, near Derby, in the middle of England (approximately). Here’s another photo of the seven (or eight) swans a-swimming!

Finishing off with some vivid blue forget-me-not flowers growing wild on our walk. I love forget-me-nots, but can’t grow them in Perth. They always remind me of our little dog Lucy in Melbourne with the seedheads like burrs in her coat. In the end I would have to cut them out and Lucy would look a bit like those self-shedding sheep!