Sunday June 15
Stow-on-th-Wold Youth Hostel

Another film finished & another started. Today the weather has been wetter but I've never been happier! I arrived in England!

The Cotswold Hills are so English they put the rest of the country to shame. Thatched roof cottages, rolling greeeeeen hills, bubbling streams, contented cows, shaven sheep, huge oak trees covered in English ivy, hedges of holly; I could go on & on. This is Narnia, Middle Earth (hobbit country), Wind in the Willows & H.V. Morton's England all at once. And the weather has been English to match: one minute drizzling rain, the next bright sunshine. Birds singing, 14th century churches, Tudor cottages, they're all here. I wish I had an all-round camera, a tape-recorder & a smell-recorder all at once. This is where I want to come & live someday, it feels like home already.

I stopped in Broadway for lunch & despite the tourists it was still a beautiful town. Stow-on-the-Wold is another & the hostel is right in the centre. An old set of stocks is on the village green just across the road! I bought the mouse in Broadway, he's my first souvenir. I also bought a pile of picture postcards because my art talent seems to have deserted me.

Tomorrow I'm heading down to Cirencester then I think I'll go on to Bath along the Roman road called the Fosse Way. I didn't realize that it goes all the way from Lincoln to Bath as straight as an arrow & goes right through Stow-on-the-Wold! The part right here is the A429. Again, the hostel is closed in Bath but I want to see the town anyway, then the next day catch a train or bus down into Cornwall.

I'm moving a lot faster that I though I would right now. If I have enough money, I will have time to see Gerald Durrell's zoo on Jersey. I've got £80 left at the moment. To show the difference between Y.H. & guest house, tonight I get supper, bed, breakfast & a lunch packet for £2; what I pay in a G.H. for just B&B.

Lots of love, Rich

P.S. the mouse is mine.