Houghton Mill

Yet again it was another beautiful day - and we had no choice but to get out of the house and hit the open road. Our travels took us to Houghton Mill near Royston in Cambridgshire. This is another National Trust property, but this time a working watermill. We had been before, but it was on a wet day and the mill wasn't working - apparently it only does on Sundays and Bank holidays.
We were able to buy some flour that had come from grain harvested from the Wimpole estate (yesterday's blip) and had come straight off the grindstone. It was destined to become a wholemeal loaf later on in the evening.
The whole trip was enhanced by a picnic of sandwiches containing salad from our garden and a nicely chilled bottle of wine. There is something very satisfying about being close to the production of the food we're eating - it all tastes so much better when you either grow it yourself or are able to get it as fresh as possible right from the source. As we sat there in the afternoon sun in a field packed full of other NT visitors we couldn't help musing on just how civilised it all was - everybody making sure they didn't disturb anybody around them - no shouting, no music - not even radio 4. Just the sound of the birds and insects and the watermill. Totally relaxing.

The only difficult bit of the day was trying to correctly exposes a photograph with the challenging lighting conditions, but if it means warm sunshine I can live with that.