Revisiting a scene from my younger days

I had to go shopping today, firstly to the farm shop near Bisley, and later to Gloucester. Between the two journeys I took a short drive out of Bisley down country lanes on the look out for good vantage points for different landscape views. 

I went down to Througham Slad but couldn't find a place with views across the main valley of the Holy Brook. So I wandered along the western ridge of the valley to the original hamlet of Througham about a mile away. 

I had first visited it about forty years ago when I came to work with my new business partner George, staying with his old friend who wanted us to paint the interior of his house, and especially the newly converted barn adjoining the farmhouse. We lived there for nearly five months of a long hot summer sleeping in the second floor bedrooms in the gabled roof space, where the servants would have lived originally  The farmhouse was built in the 17th century and now had about 400 acres of land, with pastures for cows and sheep, a piggery, and some arable land for growing crops.

 I still remember living in the roof and hearing the sound of the dawn chorus of birds and sheep early on a mid-summer's morning. The room looked out over the haha at the edge of the garden and down the small field in front of the house where the drive went straight to the road in the middle of a small avenue of trees. Today they re much taller and generally bigger so that the views between the house and the distant fields is somewhat blocked.

This photo is taken from the the gate where the avenue meets to road and the farmhouse can be seen in the distance. I have set up an 'Extra Photo' which was taken by truning round and looking away across the farmland down the valley of the Holy Brook. Througham Slad is a small side valley in the distance on the right, running down into the main river. Unfortunately because I haven't yet paid my new membership fee, I seem to have lost that facility.  Hopefully I will get it back quite soon.