Titley, Suckley and Wyre Piddle

I took a long east-west drive from Dover to the mid-Wales border in Herefordshire to see my chums' new project near Kington. It was a journey of contrasts: the first part all motorway and then from Oxford the slow winding A44. This wends its way over the Cotswolds, through the Vale of Evesham, over the Severn at Worcester before plunging into that great inland sea of deep rurality that is the Welsh borderlands. Here the land loses the regularity of its SW-NE escarpments and becomes a jumble of cross-cutting waves and valleys, forlorn and bustling market towns, deep sunken lanes of hazel hedge and the encircling hills of the Brecon Beacons, the Black Mountains, The Cambrian Mountains, the Berwyns, the Long Myndd and Hergest (pronounced 'hargest' ) Ridge and the path of Offa's Dyke.

The drive along the A44 is like travelling through an old 'I Spy' book with its strange place names (see title), ancient pubs, half-timbered 'black and white' houses, barns and courts and shops that seem from another era.

The weather was sullenly cold and grey and  the drive surprisingly long and it was great relief when I finally arrived at M&S's new farmhouse perched on its knoll above the Arrow Valley.

The photo is of one of the very locally quarried flagstones in the kitchen of the house that unsurprisingly perhaps seemed to reflect the topography of the surrounding country.