Thursday.

Today was our forty ninth wedding anniversary. We were in no great hurry to get up, as we'd planned a day out depending on the weather. The weather was fine (nearly 60 degrees), bright and sunny. When we eventually got ready to go out and came down we found this young lady on the kitchen doorstep.  The picture below shows what a good camouflage she'd adopted. We directed her to our tiny garden pond in the hope that she finds it sufficient for her needs, and breeds therein.

Don't quite know why I took the below picture, but I took it just as we were setting out - it shows our Tudor chimneys and chimney stack.

At the weekend we'd had coffee with our friends John and Maud, who told us that they'd just visited Anglesey Abbey (near Cambridge) and said that although the house is not yet open the gardens are, and are surprisingly colourful for February, so that's where we'd decided to go.  We  know that area, having lived in Burwell for some years in the eighties, but hadn't seen Anglesey gardens for a long time. John also recommended a pub in the area for lunch, but we'll come back to that later.
The next three pictures are of colourful trees in the Abbey Gardens.

We spent a couple of hours exploring the gardens, then drove the three or four miles to the village of Reach, and to the pub that John had recommended for Lunch (pictured below). It is called the Dyke's End Pub, and the name deserves an explanation:- The village of Reach is at the Westward end of a long defensive ditch (the Devil's Dyke) which was thrown up, probably just after the Romans left these islands, and the first waves of Angles and Saxons arrived and started chucking their weight about. Folk lore says the Devil's Dyke stopped them in their tracks, and it still looks a formidable barrier.  The pub is pictured below, and I must tell John and Maud that they are quite right about it. It's a very plain, welcoming, English pub. The grub (sorry Lori - the food) is cooked on the premises and is excellent. The landlord has a  brewery behind the pub, and I  was given a small glass of his home brewed porter to try, after which I ordered a larger glass of it to go with my lunch. Ann had a very creamy looking tortellini, with spinach, mushroom, and Italian cheese(I've forgotten the name of it), and I had pheasant leg casserole with vegetables. Both were very good indeed.

We then drove the mile or so to Burwell Hythe where we used to live in a house with gardens down to the river. The below picture is of interest to our youngsters, as on our twenty fifth wedding anniversary they gave us a silver birch sapling. The below picture shows the tree as it is now, and although it's obviously been lopped occasionally, it's now a tall, well grown tree.   Thank you, offspring, very suitable for a silver wedding anniversary. Don't know what you're going to do next year on our golden wedding anniversary. You'll think of something no doubt. God bless you.

And Goodnight All.