Making Changes

This will be our tenth festival and, strange to say – as all time consuming as it is, we love putting it on as much as you seem to enjoy it. We have had a year’s sabbatical during which time we’ve all been thinking about it, and missing it.

During our sabbatical the grounds have been tended and new views have opened up. The park in front of the house has been drained and filled in with thousands and thousands tons of home produced quarried stone and 1,000 tons of topsoil. Now, with luck, it will not flood again so it can be used as additional space for camping, playing football, flying kites, or any of your suggestions……?

Some of you may notice that two enormous beech trees have had to be felled in front of the House. We used to climb them, camp in them and have been loved beneath them. They were huge, old and will be missed.

The Orangery and Greenhouses have been painted, the hut on the Bowling Green restored and we’ve also had time to do other much-needed jobs around the estate. There are now 20 doves in Cathy’s dovecote and Pixie and Dixie, the two Hawaiian pigs who live on the estate and ate up all the edible waste after last year’s festival, are as eager as we are for the festival to get going.

Roll on July…