Home in the Chiltern Hills

We’ve been busy getting moved into our new place in Lane End, fighting with the uncommon slush, mud and snow, and helping our landlady Karen be done with her projects and headed back to the US. But popular demand requires some notes about our residence.

Lane End is a village on top of one of the Chiltern Hills, with several roads down into the valley of the River Wye, which is where High Wycombe is. Lane End has two butchers, three pubs, excellent Tandoori food, the Royal Mail, and "a surgery." What more could you ask? We are just south of the huge M40 east-west roadway running from London to Oxford, which runs near High Wycombe. South of us is pretty much hills and valleys, pastures and farms, down toward the River Thames. Famous people who have lived in the Chiltern Hills include Oscar Wilde, Mr. Toad, Rattie, Badger, and the others.

Our cottage is at the end of a row of attached dwellings likely built in the last century for farm workers. We’re on a muddy driveway, accessible from the paved road to the next hamlet Freith, and also used by tractors and manure wagons on their way to the fields behind us. Each cottage has a small enclosed yard, a garden plot in “the allotment” (that’s what they call the land out back shared by all), and direct access to the wide world of walking paths and fields.

Winter came to Lane End eight days ago, and we have few pictures from before: the back of the row -- with ours to the left, and looking out from a walking path. One dreary evening Ellie thought it was great fun to picture me hauling a bag of coal through our back yard. I took some pictures of the front of the cottage, as well as the back side – from out in the allotment, and the view across the back valley.

We are free to live outside of the urban apartment environs of the University in High Wycombe, and we are free to explore tiny lanes and villages in the hills, by virtue of our Vauxhall Corsa. though it seems tiny, we are amazed by its headroom, legroom and visibility. And the huge stuff we can fit in the hatchback, with the seats down!