Game, Set and Coffee

Each day I try to take some sort of exercise, and Monday has become a favorite day of the week, because I start off at 9am playing tennis with three girlfriends. Despite the English climate we are usually lucky and continue in a little drizzle of rain, any more than that and we do have to retire for coffee because Sally, who runs the gift shop wears glasses which unfortunately do not have windscreen wipers. If the wind is blowing from the wrong direction and therefore across the court it is a very sporting game.

All the dogs watch us play. Sally brings her Labrador too, who was born here, and thus returns to play with his brothers and mother on a regular basis. During our match, the dogs play hide and seek in the garden, while the two ponies watch us, over the garden fence.

It is the most wonderful way to start the week, we run around, yell with excitement and then someone says the word “cappuccino” and we lose concentration and retire to the Castle tearooms for coffee. Amazingly we can now sit outside in the March sun, setting the world to rights, rediscovering every Monday that all husbands are the same,  before walking back to change and be enveloped in the first meetings of the week.