My Favourite View, by Ruth Watson
Country Homes & Interiors Magazine, June 2010
I discovered this view last year while filming at a house called Abbey Dore Court in Herefordshire for the latest series of Channel 4's Country House Rescue. I had booked into a not-too-distant boutique b&b called The Old Vicarage, over the border in Norton, Radnorshire.
The Old Vicarage is owned by an engaging and professional couple, Paul Gerrard & John McCall, and is furnished with great panache in Gothic Revival style. From the front of their house there were lovely views, but nothing prepared me for the view across open countryside at the back. Shown out to the terrace to have a look, I confess to 'exclaiming' - rather like the chaste heroine of a romantic novel surprised by a passionate declaration of love.
What faced me was a perfect view of gently rounded, ridiculously green hills, one rolling in from the left; one from the right; and one coming straight towards me. There was no disfigure-ment: no pylon, road or unsightly house - just this perfect, picture-book view. It was much the same as that wonderful moment you have as a child going on holiday, when you wait and wait for the sea to appear, and then it suddenly does. Standing in the garden of The Old Vicarage I felt that, for all its troubles, our world is a truly beautiful place...