Would you have liked a present too?

This village is jolly kind, you know. Without being told they seemed to somehow know that it was Ned's birthday and they laid on a lovely weekend. Yesterday there was a beer festival at the Sports and Social Club (17 beers - we only tried 6) and then today the church tower was open for visitors.

The narrow wooden stairs from the ground to the ringing platform was fine, if steep; the banisters made it easy though. The ladder from there through the trapdoor to the clock level was unnerving, because it went over the void of the stairs - okay if you hold the rungs and don't look down. Then there was the very narrow spiral stair - very worn treads of a maximum width of 7 inches - first to the bells themselves then onwards and upwards again, finally emerging on hands and knees through a small opening onto the roof itself. Isn't it odd how it's a lot further down than it is looking up? Funny how an episode of Inspector Morse kept coming into my mind; the one where Richard Briers was a murderer and ended up jumping off a church roof ...



Looks like rush hour.


The (very) small white building on the right of the road, in the middle of the picture, is where I work.



And the village even managed to lay on some lovely weather too.