Travel

On the first night of Clare’s maiden buying trip they stopped at the White Horse Inn in Finchbottom and spent the evening in the restaurant where Clare proceeded to drink more than was good for her. Martin thought she had been in a really strange mood since the journey down and all evening she had kept looking at him in a funny way.

On the journey from Northern Downshire all the way down through the Pepperstock Hills National Park on their way to Finchbottom, Clare was still berating Martin on her mother’s distrust of her.

Downshire is a relatively small English county, but like a pocket battleship it packs a lot in, a short but beautiful coastline, a channel port, the Ancient forests of Dancingdean and Pepperstock, the craggy ridges and manmade lakes of the Pepperstock Hills National Park, the rolling hills of the Downshire Downs, the beautiful Finchbottom Vale and farm land as far as the eye can see from the Trotwood’s and the Grace’s in the south to the home of the Downshire Light infantry, Nettlefield, and their affluent neighbour’s, Roespring, Tipton in the North but it’s in Nettlefield where our story begins.

As she sat on the patio drinking a glass of wine she began to feel a little light headed. It was nearly one o’clock and she hadn’t eaten all day as she was on her second glass of Pinot and she wasn’t used to drinking.