Ridgeway Lodge

I won a one night stay at this peaceful rural retreat by composing a poem about The Chilterns area which has been published on the Visit Chilterns website. The booking by email was administered very efficiently and we extended at a cost of ninety Pounds for one extra night as my Australian friend was over. Miv, the owner asked us if there were any special dietary requirements but there are none for us.
We caught, at some expense, Chiltern Railways from London Marylebone to Princes Risborough. The internet instructions I got, not from the actual B&B website, but from Google Maps or something, proved to give us the runaround. We walked in the pouring rain and I had to knock on someone else’s door in a different part of town for directions as there are two streets with ‘Icknield’ in them.
Our upstairs room was very clean, quite large with a small TV and a rocking horse, shower and comfortable bed. We were able to order an Italian meal from a local takeaway to be delivered on the first night which we ate in the kitchen.
The breakfasts are superb with bacon, sausage and the usual, lovely bread and I tried Grape Nuts for the first time with yogurt and lemon curd.
We walked into the quaint town on the next, much sunnier day and gazed at the lovely church and Amy Johnson’s house, browsed charity shops and then caught the 300 bus to Aylesbury which I had never visited before. The 300 bus we caught back (destination High Wycombe) and this dropped us at the end of the street from the B&B (we just had to pass a crossroads).
Miv gave us use of the annex lounge and kitchenette which opens onto a very large garden and I finished a crime book sitting and lying in the sun next to a farm at the end of the garden. The cats are shy — I would have liked to have stroked them.
A real rural retreat from London, peaceful and some of the houses are very ‘Midsomer Murders’ around this area.
Well done Miv for donating this prize — I’ve never really spent the night in a large house in The Chilterns before and her husband very kindly gave us a lift back to the station for our train to London as it was raining.
I can understand a B&B owner not wanting smoking inside but I think an ashtray for the garden would be handy although we didn’t really get negative comments about our cigarettes.
It reminded me of New Zealand this B&B!