It suddenly crossed his mind that a picnic would be nice... his first since he had left home some forty-five years before, so he went back to the kitchen, made four doorstep ham sandwiches and took two flagons of Somerset cider, put them in a carrier bag and retraced his footsteps. Then he walked around the back of the mansion and entered the wood at the nearest point. His intention was to write under the oak, but he wanted a little look around first.
He had spent a lot of time in Porthkerry Park as a child and teen, mostly when he had been in the Scouts, but on his own and with friends too. If the mansion was in Barry, then there was a good chance that these woods woods would be fairly similar to those in Porthkerry, he reasoned.
The first thing he recognised was the bracken extending j
