Ladies (and Tim!) in Lavender

On a Sunday at the beginning of July, I drove down to Surrey to spend a day with Mary - we had decided on lunch at Denbies vineyard, because, frankly, you can never have too much of Denbies!  (We had been there a few weeks previously having lunch en route to Auntie Joyce's funeral and, of course, that wasn't really the occasion to be shopping and thinking about buying wine.)  What I didn't realise is that Mary had been in league with Tim and Sara who met us there - what a lovely surprise!  (This was also the day that Gary proposed to Sophie - who accepted - while on holiday in America, so I got to share their lovely news too!)

After lunch, a look round the shop and then the photography exhibition, as it was still quite early on in the day, Mary suggested we head off to Mayfield Lavender Farm in Woodmansterne, just opposite Oaks Park, a favourite truanting spot when I was at school! 

It was beautiful!   And so full of people!  I guess it is only really full for just a few weeks of the year when the lavender is all in bloom - not much else to see any other time of the year, after all.  There are different varieties planted up, which explains why some of the field is brighter than others - but the smell was gorgeous!  (It reminded me of a walking trip in Provence a number of years ago when we snapped the flower heads off and stuck them under our hats, on the assumption it would cool us off.  It didn't.) 

I'm afraid I got a bit overwhelmed with it all and took hundreds of photos!

What a fabulous day!  Of course we did our fair share of larking about too ...

I love this last photo - it was a bit of an experimental selfie shot - my camera is huge though so it's all a bit of guesswork!