At the hilltop we came into quite a Highland country, and thence we could catch glimpses of lovely scenery and far-off blue hills.
The effects of the sunlight on the green oak woods and the yellow ashes were very charming.
Lount at last; a humble inn, quiet, kindly people, and a little meadow.
Chapter Nine.
A Quiet Sunday at Lount—A Visit to a Pottery—Beeston Hall—A Broiling Day.
“How still the morning of this hallowed day!
Hushed is the voice of rural labour,
The ploughboy’s whistle and the milkmaid’s song.”
June 28th.
The country is indeed a Highlands in miniature. I might describe the scenery in this way: Take a sheet of paper and thereon draw irregular lines, across and across, up and down, in any conceivable direction. These lines, then, shall represent blackthorn hedges bounding fields of flowering grass and hay. Place trees in your picture anywhere, and, here and there, a wood of dwarfed oak, and dot the field-nooks with picturesque-looking cattle-huts. In the centre let there be a cluster of irregularly-built brick-tiled houses and the domes of a pottery works. This, then, is Lount and its surroundings, where we are now bivouacked. But to complete the sketch there must be footpaths meandering through the meadows, with gaps in the hedges for rustic stiles. Nor must the cattle be forgotten.