Cottage made beautiful

Michelle and I went up to the cottage this morning to prepare for our next round of guests. It looked beautiful in the June sunshine and we sat outside in the garden for a little while before leaving for our new home in Burwell.

On a day when mortgage application acceptances are reported at being lower than ever and property prices are tumbling, we feel very lucky to have been able to hang on to the cottage and hopefully use it to provide for holidays and short breaks for visitors to The Fens and further afield in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.

Full details are available from the

Gardener's Cottage Site

Suffolk by the sea

I visited Aldeburgh for the first time today. It's a part of the coast we know less well than the Norfolk coast further round to the North. Earlier in the year we went to Clacton in Essex which, again, we hadn't visited before.

Aldeburgh was a charming place and unlike many seaside places that seem to have fallen on hard times and uglier sides of life. As with our trip to Clacton, we passed through many pretty villages. The Suffolk villages to the east of us are lovely, without being too pretentious or determined that the chocolates will never leave the boxes.

However, some of the towns were just forgettable - especially Saxmundham, where wealth has clearly been sucked out into the countryside like air from lungs.