Herefordshire / Abbey Dore

At the end of March, we went to Herefordshire for the week to celebrate my husband's thirtieth birthday. Six friends whom John has known for most of his life joined us for the weekend, along with their babies. Now that nearly all of our friends are married, we can no longer rely on weddings to bring everyone together for a good old celebration. So it is lovely to have weekends like these to travel from our respective corners of the country and spend time together. We stayed in a beautiful converted barn called Bushmills, in a part of Herefordshire called Abbey Dore.


I love living in Bristol, but going to the countryside is always such a welcome break from city life. It was so beautiful and peaceful, with uninterrupted views for miles. There was a field of sheep right outside the house where we were staying, and some very friendly chickens who came to see us each day. Ruby is always delighted to see any animals, so she was in her element being surround by them.

We took a very laid back approach to our holiday, and did very little besides visiting a few nearby towns and going for plenty of walks in the surrounding fields. We went to Hereford, Hay on Wye and Abergavenny. I think I might reserve an entire blog post to write about Hay on Wye. I loved it there.

View of teh River Wye in Hereford

We were fortunate to have amazing weather for most of the week, and we made the most of soaking up the sunshine and fresh air with morning, afternoon and early evening walks around the fields.

I love visiting new places, but I think I might love it even more when we find places like Bushmills that offer everything we look for in our holiday adventures, and get that feeling that we would be more than happy to return there time and time again.