Saturday 30th April - Grand Day Out

We went to Petworth - no reason in particular.

I needed to back some cheques, and we needed some fruit and veg, so going somewhere with the right kind of bank and a place to buy fruit and veg, seemed a good idea. Town was heaving so going somewhere else seemed a better choice.

And He wanted to go more than a couple of miles - it's alright for me, I go here there and everywhere, but He tends to be a bit more local during the week.

Banking the cheques took very little time, and it was too early for lunch, so we walked up hill, and past the church.

Now that's not the most attractive church I've ever seen. From a distance, the tower looks more like a water tower, and the building itself looks like an accretion of various extensions and add-ons built here and there over the years.



although from other angles it looks more conventional

 

This link will tell you EVERYTHING about the church. And it's where I copied the pictures from.

We carried on past, without going in, as there is a notice over the door of a building called the Coach House which I've always wanted to read, but when I've been caught in a traffic jam, I've never been able to stop at exactly the right place. There's a picture of it here. I should have taken a picture myself, but the owner was standing outside and I was all shy.

Carrying on down the lane, we found ourselves in the old cemetery, surrounded by houses crammed up against the boundary wall. At the back of the cemetery, the ground sloped sharply away to - quintessential West Sussex Countryside. There was something about the way the valley was formed, and the pathways and woods and scattered houses and green fields and blue sky and peace and quiet that made you want to just walk away, out of the town, out of your life, into somewhere else.

  

Even the footpath sign nearby seemed to indicate that we should just go, anywhere. Left, right, or away over the hill.

But we turned back, spent rather too long in the bookshop, and had lunch in The Cocoa Lounge, which serves good coffee (and chocolate, obviously) and delicious savoury quiche. The next challenge is to work out how to recreate their pastry.

Home, via the garden centre, because our shopping list also included a lawnmower (the old one is properly busticated) and some bedding plants.

The cabbage pagodas - which were beyond a joke - have been replaced with lobelia and petunia plants.

And then there was evening, and night time, and another day.