MAY 23 IN SEARCH OF THE FLOWER FAIRIES……

I’d never even heard of the Flower Fairies….Well I’m a bloke aren’t I? Fairies??…Utter Nonsense…Preposterous! However the charmingly childlike Mrs SHPics, who was a chubby, pink faced, pig-tailed, cutie in knee socks in the 1980’s, was it now transpires, a huge Flower Fairy fan, and a firm believer.

This became apparent during a visit to Hampton Court Castle in Hope Under Dinmore, near Hereford, earlier this week. The whole place really is rather spiffing, but the gardens are something else.

We’d ‘cooed’ and ‘aaahd’ pretty much in unison as we’d walked around the walled kitchen garden, but as soon as we took the first of the steeply twisting steps down to the Sunken Garden I was treated to a rapidly escalating series of excited high pitched squeaks as my usually highly intelligent and sensible wife reverted to her eight year old self, chuntering on about secret gardens and flower fairies, magic slippers, enchanted waterfalls, unicorns, my little ponies, piglet, tigger, rampant rabbits, and all manner of girly stuff…..

She did make rather a fuss…. but…..it was a very beautiful little garden.

The Flower Fairies themselves were always just out of sight, which is of course exactly where they should be, but I heard them, I swear I did,  splashing about behind the waterfall.

‘Come on…They went this way!’

All Images Copyright Stuart allan Hyde……….(p.s.  I made up the rampant rabbit bit, just to see if you’re paying attention).