Seen through a hole in the wall

Went for our Saturday morning walk via our allotments, the library, through Mote Park and to Tesco for papers, fish and wine.

On our way through Mote Park we pass by Mote House and all its outbuildings, walls and land. Mote House was the country estate of Lord Bearsted and was given to Maidstone in the 1920s. For many years it was a Cheshire Home but latterly was emply and forlorn until a property developer took it off the Council's hands and redeveloped the whole site.

They converted the main house into a series of luxury retirement apartments, converted the outbuildings into houses and built new houses in the grounds to make quite an extensive but well hidden development which has made good use of derelict building and uncared for land.

The view you see is through a hole in the wall around the development onto the "allotments" or gardens of people living in the complex. Looks too tidy and perfect to me, designed for people who don't want to get their hands, clothes or shoes dirty with good old honest earth. Still each to his or her own.

No rugby to watch today owning to the waterlogged state of many pitches. I would say that only 25% of the fixtures went ahead and all the referees I could have watched had their games cancelled. So I took the opportunity to work on my own website philipnoakes.com and buy this year's seed potatoes: Arran Pilot for earlies and Cara and Lady Balfour for main crop. The sap is beginning to rise!