Window Wednesday – Selborne

Selborne is a sleepy village near Farnham in Surrey and features on Window Wednesday this week

We have seen the signs to Gilbert White’s house so many times that we thought it might be worth a trip to finally see it.  That and we only had a couple of hours to spare on Sunday morning to go out and take photos.   But then when we got to Selborne it was such a lovely day that we didn’t really fancy being inside so we went for a mooch to the church and just kept walking.

The village sits on the edge of a common looked after by the National Trust called Selborne Common so it didn’t take us long to find ourselves out the other side of the graveyard and wandering along a frosty path towards, well who knows really.   There is a circular path but it took longer than we could spare but we mooched for long enough to get some great shots.    What really struck me though was how every person we saw, be it teenagers, dog walkers, joggers, ladies off to church, all looked up and said “good morning” or at the very least gave a cheery smile.   It dawned on me that at home nobody does that when you walk past them, yet in this small town half an hour away it seems to be the done thing.   Seriously made me consider moving.

That and this sign:

I am not sure this person really existed but might be some kind of red herring to catch out the tourists but it did make me smile.  And wonder if Sullivan were still alive if we would be friends, he sounds like the kind of person I would love to spend a few hours with on a Saturday night.  And wastrel needs to be used much more frequently.

The meadow, or Long Lythe, beyond the church though was glorious

 

 

And had we more time I think we would have just kept on walking.

We didn’t though, we turned around and headed back to the church so I could fulfill my urge to photograph some windows, this being Window Wednesday and all, but did stop to admire this seemingly random gate.  No fence, just a gate:

The magnificent stained glass window above is of St Francis feeding the birds.     There is also a handy guide below naming each bird, I have to say I wouldn’t have been able to name half of them!

 

 

I always find that churches put me in a reflective, contemplative mood and I found myself getting quite philosophical as I caught my breath at the top of the hill on the way back up.  Looking back at where we had just walked, and forward to where we going.  Pondering the meaning of life, the fragility of it.   So whilst I stood humming “American Pie” and the impending doom that seems to be enveloping that country I snapped this:

and found myself hoping that as the frost goes away this spring and makes way for a warmer future that Donald Trump does the same thing.