Oundle

A long and curious day which involved a three and a half hour cross country drive to Daventry in the Midlands to visit a dowser. The brightness of the sun and puffs of cumulus were a joy as we sped through the Fens although as we headed towards Peterborough and beyond I was shocked by the sheer volume of rubbish and refuse that people toss from their cars onto the roadside. I guess some people never learned to clean up after themselves. The savage attacks on public services worsen the situation because cash strapped councils are bound to save on less essential services like roadsweeping. I guess this is the Tory vision, every one for him/herself and forget about the community...

Anyway we stopped for a late breakfast on a country lane just west of Peterborough where the May blossom was roaring away...at the end of March...and on to Daventry which is just the far side of Northampton.
As we got there early, there was time to sit in the sun for twenty minutes before going on to the neat detached estate home of our dowser.
This was a fascinating experience focusing mainly on general health and wellbeing including diet, the sorts of exercise which might be good or bad, foods to avoid or cultivate, emotional vulnerabilities and strategies for managing them...and here we took a diversion into the subject of past lives, a topic of which I thought I had no experience (though I discovered otherwise since I was apparently living a rather difficult life in the 9th century!) All this was divined with the use of a pendulum in a skilled and focused manner. The upshot is that I will have to make a few changes in my life including giving up on coffee and red wine, drinking a whole lot more water and less tea and taking better care of my own emotions...

Driving home in the afternoon light and comparing notes, we stopped in Oundle since I had heard it was pretty and we were in search of some (more or less healthy!) food. The town has a chocolate box sort of beauty, all built in local stone and almost devoid of ugly shop fronts...