A Wedding in Downton Part I

It's not every day that one of your best friends gets married.

So why limit the celebrations to one day?


On the 19th August the village of Downton was slowly filling up with friends from all over the globe.

From near and far people traveled to this beautiful part of the country.

Not to be confused with Downton Abbey, as I first thought when visiting.

It is the cutest little village equipped with stunning field views, a stream (good enough for swimming), the Downton library, Downton bakery and a couple of pubs.

And for this weekend only, lots of Durhamites.

In my 2nd year of university, Lucy, Fiona, Alex, Hal & I all lived together at no. 18, The Avenue. It was a rather fantastic old house, even if I did try to gas everyone out (by accident!) or burn it down on a few occasions, but lets not go into that...

Every August since then we've had a house reunion, usually in London. But this August would be ever so slightly more special as Hal was preparing to make an honest woman of Josephine.

A
As soon as we arrived it felt like absolutely no time had passed. After hugs and shrieks of excitement, Hal took us on a mini tour of Downton.

He showed us where he went to school, the place he used to play in band, where he first played football whilst we all excitedly tepidly avoided puddles of mud and caught up on life from the last 6 months.

He even topped it all off with a tour of his house (family included!).

It's so great to see these two. Lucy, or Dr Knox as she will soon be known as, and Fiona who is all the way over in Seattle (literally other side of the world!).

After our family portrait we headed to the pub, naturally.

We took over a few picnic bunches a la Durham style and as the evening wore on, more and more familiar faces showed up, some we'd seen recently and some who have been complete mysteries for the last 4 years.

At around 10 we hit the hay, not wanting to spoil ourselves for the big day tomorrow.

We were staying in a lovely B&B about 10 minutes away.

Brickworth Farmhouse it was called, and the lovely Ramona took care of us. The B&B had dogs, and a huge garden and donkeys.

It was my first time staying in a B&B and I was a little nervous as I didn't want it to feel like I was intruding on somebody's house, but I guess this is the point of a B&B?

But it was lovely, the room was big and clean and airy. We had fresh sheets, fresh towels, coffee, tea & biscuits. It was homely but lovely.

I wasn't a fan of the shared bathroom, even if it did have THE best shower and bath I have ever seen!



After a good night's sleep we got up and got ready for breakfast. We placed our order the evening before and admittedly, booked it way too early. 9:30am for breakfast on a Saturday. I mean we were a little late...

W
We had breakfast on top of the world.

The full works.

On top of the world.

Literally.

 We had to spend this morning moving from the lovely Brickworth to a B&B down the road, as someone forgot to book a 2nd night and Brickworth was all fully booked.

Not before seeing our friends the donkeys again.

Who were just not interested at all.

Ramona rang Newton Farmhouse and they had a free room, but it was a twin but it didn't matter. I was just pleased we had a bed for the night.

More on Newton Farmhouse and the Wedding in my next post!

Keep reading