We seem to have fallen into a time warp… five days have passed! After the pub we moved to… Berrington Hall built for Thomas Harley in 1778. NOT Thomas Hardy (who was born in 1840) as I thought the guide was telling me. Inside my head, not out loud, I said – how did he afford to build this house, wasn’t he a poor writer? No, Berrington Hall has nothing to do with Thomas Hardy. History is very interesting to me but also confusing sometimes. There’s so much of it and lots of things repeat over and over like wars, there’s also a lot of men with similar names. I struggle to keep the years and the names clear in my head.

Thomas Harley was a member of the Harley family of whom Harley’s Street in London was named, they made their money from providing uniforms for the army, probably not poor then. He was a Lord Mayor of London and when he gave that up he retired to the country for some peace. It is very peaceful here. It’s in the middle of the countryside surrounded by fields, hundred year old trees, thousands of sheep and a lake. There’s a walled garden too and a laundry garden – where the servants laid out the washed bed linens on the grass to dry.

National Trust houses and gardens are run by volunteers. I didn’t understand this until now. It’s a very different system to the OPW in Ireland. It makes sense now why they charge to go in and also ask for donations, of money and books. They sell the donated second hand books to gather much needed extra finance to keep the houses open to the public. I bought a two week pass so I hope to be going to many more National Trust locations. I’m also going to check out their secondhand books. Also, it was Beatrix Potter (of Peter Rabbit fame) who set up the National Trust.

Today in Tesco we met a woman in the queue who was very friendly. She chatted to us about the queue and said “I must be bored I’m talking your head off.” So I asked her what she did when she wasn’t bored and she said she loved to read and she loved her garden and she told us about it. This might be one of those times when you had to be there to appreciate how nice this was. We have been noticing how friendly everybody is in Ireland and missing that. It is a much underrated (by me until now, anyway) experience to chat while waiting in a queue.

But I’m skipping ahead, there were five more days lost in the time warp… After Tomas Harley’s house we parked overnight in the trucks car park at the town of Upton on Severn. There was a very good supermarket, called Warners, next door and we stocked up on English pies. Afterwards we dined out at an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was located in an old low ceilinged house with beams and looked out on the narrow high street. It was while we were eating that I spotted a ginormous tractor and combine harvester holding up the traffic. By ginormous I mean the height of a two story house on this street. It reminded me of my childhood. In our town farm life got along with town life. Even though we lived on a street where there was plenty of through traffic going to Dublin or Cork, the cows still had to be milked. Twice a day the farmer (can’t remember his name, was it Mr. Roach?) who lived on this street walked his cows home for milking.

Summary: Thomas Harley is not Thomas Hardy. The countryside has always been very peaceful, unless you were a servant waiting for the linens to dry. Volunteering is alive and well in Britain. Tesco is a great place to meet new people. Farming is big here. Query: Do you have any hacks for remembering dates in history?