Well, it’s not been much of a summer, has it? But at least we can always rely on a good book to cheer us up and there are two more wonderful reads available via this week’s Writer Top Tens thanks to Rowan Coleman and Chrissie Manby. Happy reading, everyone!
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Summer in the city
I can’t believe how quickly the summer is passing and I can’t believe how bad the weather has been! Still, there’s been a lot of fun like the brilliant day I met up with writer friend, Deborah Wright, last week. We visited the beautiful Wallace Collection in London and then had a picnic in Hyde Park before taking a ride out on the lake in a pedalo. It was great fun but suprisingly hard work and I’d like to report that the two dodgem-style incidents were due to the lack of skill in others and had nothing to do with us!
The writing has been going well too and I’ve just finished the second book in my Austen addicts trilogy, Dreaming of Mr Darcy. This is the one set in lovely Lyme Regis and I had so much fun researching it. The next one, Mr Darcy Forever, will be set in Bath and I’m looking forward to spending a few days there next month when the Jane Austen Festival is in full swing.
And the big news is that we’ll be welcoming home some feathered friends in the autumn. We’re rehoming some ex-battery hens via the amazing British Hen Welfare Trust. I’ve been wanting to keep chickens for ages and can’t wait to welcome them to our little patch of suburbia. It’ll be like a scene from The Good Life here!
Summer Top Tens!
To celebrate the summer holidays, I thought we’d have a special double issue of the Writer Top Tens with four fabulous authors whose books should be found in everybody’s holiday suitcase: Jane Green, Paige Toon, Jo Rees and Veronica Henry. Happy reading, everyone!
Along the Thames
Yesterday, I met up with bestselling Regency romance novelist, Nicola Cornick, for a walk and a talk! With our dogs, Molly and Monty, we walked in the grounds of beautiful Ashdown House where Nicola is a tour guide. You can read more about the house and its history at her brilliant blog. Ashdown has so much to offer from rolling fields, shady woodland to an iron-age hill fort and some very friendly ponies, and it’s somewhere I’ll certainly be returning too.
Then we had tea and biscuits, giving the dogs – and ourselves – a chance to catch our breaths! It’s what Sundays in summer are all about.
Then it was on to the oddly-named Cheese Wharf on the Thames and Molly and I enjoyed an evening walk following the river to Buscot. The air was filled with thistle-down and the riverbank was thick with Himalayan Balsam. It was a gorgeous walk that I didn’t want to end. I love long summer evenings…
Summer evenings
One of the things I love about summer is that you can decide to go out as late as six o’clock and still have hours of daylight to enjoy. That’s what we did yesterday – heading off into Oxfordshire. Roy’s painting a series of pictures along the Ridgeway and this means me and Molly get to enjoy some glorious walks. The countryside is laced with chalky footpaths and, because it’s too difficult to choose just one, we decided to explore all of them!
One path led to a pretty little ruin. I love how the crumbling arches frame the countryside in this picture.
The evening sunshine turned everything golden and Molly kept having to pull on her lead to remind me we were on a walk and weren’t there just to stand and stare!
On with the novel now and I’ve almost completed the first draft of Dreaming of Mr Darcy – the second in my trilogy about Jane Austen addicts. It’s always a moment of great relief tinged with sadness when you finish a novel and I’m both looking forward to and dreading it!