Heading into town...

Hello again! As promised, here's a little peek into our new neighborhood.

We live on the Duke of Gloucester Barracks army base in South Cerney, England:

Most of the area around our house is either green fields on the base or the farm next door (our house is right on the edge of camp). Here's the view from our bedroom window, which looks out onto our front yard and the camp's playing fields.

Here's the view of our farming neighbor behind our house from our upstairs hall. The grassy part to the left of the fence is our yard, to the right of the fence is our neighbor's yard. The big fence in the back is the edge of the camp, and the brown field behind is the farm. Hooray for living in the country!

But South Cerney is just a village, not a proper town - there's only one shop and a couple of pubs. So when we need to "go into town" we pop down to Cirencester, which is only about 2 or 3 miles down the road. Cirencester is a market town that back in Roman times used to be called Corinium. I absolutely love the town - it feels to me like Newburyport back home. Here's a couple pictures to show you what I mean...

Today we picked up a few more things for the house and also stopped for a yummy lunch. I had a fish cake salad with a lemon hollandaise sauce that was to die for!

YUM!

In downtown there is also a really pretty cathedral-like church called St. John the Baptist.

But it's not all country living - we still have lots of the comforts of home. My favorite right now is our SKY satellite cable. We sprung for the good package to keep me (and also Jay!) from feeling too homesick for US TV (we've watched Bones and House already). But the best part is my new favorite channel...

Just yesterday we watched the Red Sox - Phillies spring training game. And we've been keeping up with a good deal of March Madness as well. Hooray for technology!

Allright, that's all for now. I'll try to update again tomorrow. We still have a fair amount of unpacking to do (we had hoped to get it all sorted today before shopping took a bit longer and a bit more energy than anticipated), but we're hoping to take a trip to Blenheim Palace (birthplace of Churchill!).

Good night!

Meg