Newlands Corner

Today I met up with a group of friends for breakfast at a lovely café with the charming name of The Dabbling Duck, in Shere, often cited as the prettiest village in Surrey - and the location for the movies The Holiday, Bridget Jones Diary and Bridget Jones : The Edge of Reason (amongst many others). We have been friends since our boys met at school when they were four years old, so these are long term friendships. We try to meet up about twice or three times a year if we can. The breakfast was delicious, and after eating scrambled eggs with salmon I was unable to eat any lunch today and still feel rather full as I am thinking of what to make for supper!

Today was chilly - it reached a high of about 8.5C and the wind was noticeably cooler. On the way back home again I stopped off at Newlands Corner (famous for being the place where Agatha Christie's car was last seen when she went missing in 1926). It has beautiful views over the Surrey Hills and today in the sunshine the autumn colours looked lovely.

Gavin and I had another zoom meeting with the travel agent to finalise some details about our proposed trip to Asia in November/December next year - being more than 12 months away and yet some things were already fully booked, so we had to shift our dates around a bit!

Very good news about the 24 hostages who were freed by Hamas today, and hopefully Israel will release the Palestinian detainees too. Not good news about Oscar Pistorius being released from prison after only 11 years, for murdering his girlfriend.