Philip and I went for a short walk this morning to a nearby supermarket and by the pathway I discovered ……

…… ripe blackberries! It’s still very early in the season, but I’ve constantly looked out for them and this morning I was rewarded. Puckeringly tart, but so enjoyable.

Gill and Peter drove us this morning through the glorious, rolling green countryside of Surrey to the village of Shere. A much-visited tourist village. And as we’re tourists, we visited it!

Some of the houses were built in the late 1400s and the photos don’t show the radical wonkiness of these houses. They are such fun to look and marvel at.

We had a great lunch at The Dabbling Duck, near the village stream.

Philip joined Gill and Peter to eat ice-cream near the village stream. Nearly as good as Gabriel’s ice-cream, but still not as good as Philip’s home-made ice-cream.

Do you remember the movie “The Holiday” with Jude Law, Kate Winslett and Cameron Diaz? Well, this village and this pub (photo below) were used as a setting for some of that movie. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie, so I didn’t recognise any settings.

Wherever I looked there was another fascinating house to gawk at.

The village church is St James, and as well as a churchyard of lop-sided worn grave headstones, it has a history going back to mid-1100s and a list of all their rectors since 1270!

There are bricked-in arches in the church where an anchoress called Christine Carpenter in early 1300s withdrew from her world to lead an intensely prayer-focussed life. She received her food and drink through a metal grating on the outside wall of the church.

St James church has been on the Pilgrims’ Way since it was built in 1190, between Winchester and Canterbury after Archbishop Thomas a Beckett was murdered. Pilgrims still walk this route today and can get a scallop shell stamp at the church as they walk the Pilgrims’ Way.

A Norman arch in the church.

On we drove to nearby Hatchlands Park, a Georgian family home since it was built in 1756. It’s still a family home and they live upstairs. But the parklands around it and the ground floor are usually open to the public.

There you can see the most extraordinary collection of keyboard instruments. The current tenant of this house has been collecting instruments and other very interesting things for decades.

I got goosebumps as I looked up close to a piano played by J.C. Bach and by Mozart. Bach autographed the soundboard! Harpsichords from early 1600s. Instruments either owned or played by Charles II, Chopin, Liszt, Edward Elgar and the like.

Their music sheets, the walls covered with collectable artwork. It was amazing. I felt like my jaw had dropped and hit the floor. It had the effect on me of making history timelines compressing tightly and centuries-old history feeling like “yesterday”.

A built-in pipe organ.

Scones for afternoon tea at the cafe in the old kitchens.

In another little outbuilding is a second-hand bookshop run on an honesty box system. Woohoo! I skipped afternoon tea and headed straight to it. I found a couple of paperbacks in the bargain box. I did find some other more interesting books, but they were too heavy for plane luggage, and they had to be left behind.

A wonderful English day to be sure. We didn’t get to take our jumpers off, but it’s still the summer season. So therefore, a wonderful English summer’s day! Thank you Gill and Peter.

To finish off, here’s some extra photos of our English summer day.

Goodnight! We’re off to Switzerland tomorrow.