No, not Provence—the Cotswolds, much closer!
On Friday a friend and I journeyed to the Cotswolds to see the lavender fields at Cotswold Lavender, near Snowshill in Worcestershire near the Gloucestershire border. It's less than a two hour drive, even with the inevitable A40 traffic. A perfect day trip, to one of most picturesque regions of the country.
Lavender is one of my favorite purple flowers, along with wisteria and bluebells (which are sort of purplely blue). I have some in my front garden, but it's puny compared to these fields. This was proper lavender: masses of purple, sharp scented, and full of bees.
The bees buzzed around our heads but were too drunk from lavender nectar to bother us. I was sort of drunk too.
They were harvesting one of the nearby fields while we were there. A tractor pulled a trailer while a chute fed freshly cut lavender down to a trailer, where a man spread it with a pitchfork. Lucky guy. If I were a farmer, I'd like to be a lavender farmer, please.
Check out the photo album for more photos, including some shots of the lavender being harvested. If only they smelled as lovely as the real thing.
(And if you like the Cotswolds and English gardens, check out my author blog, where I wrote about our visit last weekend to Rodmarton Manor, an Arts & Crafts-inspired manor house.)
