Potcote Farm in Towcester Trip part 1

After another 3 hours or so in the car (by this time I was almost comatose from having had no sleep) we arrived in Towcester. This isn't pronounced as you would think it is; the locals call it "Toaster", leaving out the"wce" part completely. Potcote is off the beaten path, and we drove around a little first trying to find it. Finally a very nice local woman who was out walking her little dog gave us directions to turn at a small sign that said "Potcote only". Then we went down a one lane road with fields of wheat on one side, and sheep on the other. After a short way, we turned into a beautiful tree covered lane.

We both experienced an immediate feeling of peace, like we just returned to a home we didn't know we had. Potcote was built around 1860, but everyone who has lived there has added on to it, so it didn't originally start out to be as big as it is now. Everyone has done a great job in preserving the appearance of it so that it is very difficult to tell what is newer and what is the older parts.

The best part of Potcote for me was the space. The lands of Potcote stretched further than I could see. I never asked Helena how much land they had, but another guest told us that Potcote is composed of around 1500 acres. For someone that wouldn't like the country and the peace, it wouldn't be good, but for me, it was absolutely perfect. The tiny white dots in the background are some of the herd of cows that live there.

The grounds of the farm were beautiful too, with gorgeous manicured gardens.

The big window on the left was our bathroom window, the lower window that matches it was in the formal dining room downstairs.

Another super cool part of staying at Potcote for me was the experience of staying on a farm. Right outside our room and across the driveway was a fenced pasture that held 2 black and white cows and a retired racehorse named Arnie. I couldn't get close to the cows, as soon as I spoke to them they toook off. But Brad could touch them. I thought they might sense that I would eat them! But Helena said that only men take care of the cows on the farm, and they are spooked by females. When she has to help her husband with the cows, she can't speak at all or they will freak out.

Me and Arnie. Arnie is 17 years old, and we saw him kicking up his hooves and running in the field like a much younger horse.

Arnie also had a strange habit of wanting to nibble on other horses as they nibbled on him in a scratch-me-scratch-you manner. Here he is trying very hard to give The Hubster a sneaky nibbling.

These are pics of the room we were in, before we could junk it up too much. (Note tequila on table, haha! Our motto for tequila is "travel light, but travel right") :-)

Behind every nook and cranny there were other things to explore at Potcote. Besides the barns and gardens, there was an indoor pool, a snooker room, and an outside chess set.

The first night we were there, we went to a local pub, The Red Lion, for dinner of fish and chips. The Red Lion's name isn't special, because almost every town we were at had one. :-) the owner of this one had a nasty disposition and a constant frown. We thought maybe it was because we were "tourists", or something....well, anyway, I didn't take a pic of the fish because like lots of our dinners, I was too ravenous to stop and photograph it, but this was our appetizer...garlic fried mushrooms.....scrumptious!!!

ok, so then I was going to be happy just staying at Potcote and not leaving until it was time to go back to Germany, but we DID go there for the Mini Rally. We attended it together for 2 days, and it was nice. I had a Ploughman's Pie thingy which was fried crust surrounding steak and 'taters and cheese, and our mini got new side mirror caps and we both got shirts and a new keychain....oh, and a bit of a sunburn. We met up with some AF friends and had a great time with them. Like so much of life, the best time was totally unexpected, and our AF friends coupled with the Hubster and I asked some locals if we could share their outside table, and they said sure, and they were totally funny and cool, and we talked to them for about 2 hours. No pics of them, sorry to say. None of us even asked the others what anyone's name was. It was just sit and party and drink and talk. Totally awesome.

The next day we asked Helena at Potcote what she would recommend for us. She was very helpful without being invasive, and she suggested we go to the Cotswold. Maybe this isn't exactly how it's spelled, but that was how it sounded. She said to go to Stow-On-Wold, so with a sense of hopelessness, I looked that up on the map.....OMG there it was! Ok, so we have a destination that we can plug into the GPS!!! (You never know there, the name might be a region or a town or whatever)

Stow-on-Wold (whatever that means) was a little town full of very old dwellings that had been converted into shops. There were a lot of antiques, and handmade chocolate shops. There were a few shops like our dollar stores, which looked out of place to me.

We left there and found a big castle that was unfortunately closed by the time we arrived.

Next door was an old church, so I went in and found a marker on the floor that I think is the oldest grave marker I have seen yet.

I love looking in old graveyards. They all have a story. Here's a marker that caught my eye because of the loss this one family must have experienced.

I wonder what happened to these babies that they all died so young? The marker next to this one was also for this family, the mother and father, and one daughter who survived into adulthood.

Another couple had stopped to look at the mansion and the church, and they took our pic for us. I think it looks like this is our new summer home, we all look like we could be very happy here, the mini included.

After leaving here, we drove back to Towcester and tried to find a place to eat. But lots of places were closed because it was a "bank holiday" - whatever that is. So I suggested we be brave and try some Indian food. OMG! It was soooo good! I can't believe I have gone for over half my life without eating delicious Indian foodies, and now I'm a tremendous fan of it. We had the mixed Tandoori grill, there was lamb, chicken, pork, and some kind of spicy sausage in a sauce of tomatoes and green onions and spices.

We decided at dinner that we were having such a marvelous time that we would stay another day at Potcote. Even another year wouldn't be enough for me to live there - I just want to move in and get some more dogs and a draft horse and I would be in heaven on earth. We watched the sun set and also watched from our window as all the rabbits came out

That night, we heard a very peculiar sound that woke us both right up. It sort of sounded like a cat, but it was obviously not a cat. http://http//www.foxforest.com/upclose/sounds/redfox-distress.wav I used to know how to make those links look cool, but I seem to have forgotten how to. It might not even work, but that is the url if anyone wants to hear it. It was the cry of a fox, possibly caught in a trap.

After a wonderful breakfast, we went to Sulihall (I might not be spelling that right) to talk to a man that rebuilds Land Rovers. The Hubster is tired of his XTerra, and would like a vehicle with more personality. I must admit they ARE pretty cool vehicles. But I'll stick with my mini for now.

On the way back, we stopped at another Indian restaurant that was on a narrow river. There were all these "long boats" on them that are available for people to rent to cruise around on the river. We walked along the river for a little while, had dinner (and it was even better than the first dinner - this time we also had spicey pompadoms with sauce, and the staff gave me a beautiful rosebud as we left.) I didn't get any pics of the foodies because I was too busy eating it, but here is the narrow river and a boat I liked.

So the next morning (after a night of undisturbed sleep and no fox sounds!) we packed up and said goodbye to Helena and to Potcote. I took some shots of the different rooms at her request, and hopefully she will take them and use them on her TripAdvisor site, as the pic she has of it could be better. After another walk around the grounds...





(This one isn't Arnie, he was much younger, and a lot taller and heavier and belongs to Victoria, Helena's daughter. His name is Mister Winkie)


...we left for our next Bed and Breakfast, a home named "The Thatched House". This ends our first part of our trip, new post to follow where this one leaves off.