England

Hello from Malvern, Worcestershire!

We arrived safe and sound on Saturday morning, and have spent the weekend catching up with Adam’s family, doing a bit of ‘adulting’ (setting up mobile phones, organising inspections of homes and cars etc.) and generally enjoying our new surroundings.

We had a welcoming party at the airport, including Adam’s two little sisters (a surprise), who’d made us a lovely banner with our names on. After a cup of tea and a slice of specially made cake at his mum’s house, we walked into town.

We grabbed a coffee each (Adam also indulged in a pork, apple and stuffing pasty) and went and sat in the grounds of Malvern Priory – where building started in 1085. We’ve managed to time our arrival to catch some of the autumn colour and we had a lovely break looking at all the trees and spotting squirrels, darting around finding food ahead of winter.

Malvern is an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ and on the western edge of town are the Malvern Hills, which rise up from the countryside and have provided the stone for many of the buildings in the area.  It’s been overcast the last few days, so when the cloud clears, the hills suddenly appear and add an almost magical quality to the scenery.

After wandering through town for about an hour or so, we made our way to Adam’s favourite pub to meet his best mate for a drink.

We found a spot by the fire, ordered a scotch egg and just took in the lovely-ness that’s an English pub (dog friendly, full of people reading newspapers, with a skeleton in the cellar!)

We’re still struggling a little with jet lag, but when you’re bedroom overlooks scenes like this – it’s a little hard to stay in bed too long!

We’ve got a few errands to run over the next few days, but are hopeful we’ll be able to squeeze in a bit of sight-seeing too. This is a beautiful part of the UK and I can’t wait to explore it a little more.