Lunch with a view

As usual, we were late getting away this morning and had to phone our lunch hosts to confess - luckily, they weren't bothered. I also had to ask where I could stash the cat once we got there, as there was no time to leave her at home first. Our hostess found the perfect spot, an abandoned stable, but it involved wading through almost waist-high grass. "I hope there aren't any snakes", she mused, as she showed me the way. The cat wasn't too impressed with the place, but eventually accepted her fate and was sleeping peacefully on a pile of dried horse manure when I went back for her later - probably nice and warm.
We were infinitely more fortunate, lunching on the veranda with good friends and the most wonderful view (another angle, here)
 
- even better than one I've posted here before, from a vantage point a couple of valleys over (and can't find). We had a tour round the garden afterwards, to check out the improvements - it's a work of art that continues to evolve after 30 years or more. The snag is, I can't ask these keen gardeners with beautifully tended properties back to our place, I'd be too ashamed of our ill-tended jungle, overrun by ants and weeds.

Anyway, it was a perfect lunch and afternoon and we were sad to leave. HH wanted to take the shorter route home, a dirt road straight up an over the hill from their valley to ours, which comes out by our back gate. But I know the state of the back roads better than HH and that this one was liable to be deeply rutted and probably muddy. Taking the other route, we still had a good 25 kms of dirt road before we reached the asphalt, and then a long circle round to get home. Plenty of washboard effect, but not too many ruts and rocks. and more fabulous views on the way.