It took Petula very nearly five days to reach Buckden and the journey was excessively uncomfortable in hot crowded stagecoaches.
Passengers received little or no attention at the Posting inns they had stopped at and so only the cheapest and most uncomfortable rooms were offered them where they stayed each night.
Eventually she reached the nearest hamlet on the highway to Buckden and there she had to wait for a carrier to convey her the last four miles to the village.
When she drove down the dusty lane and then had her first sight of the little Greystone Church where her father and mother were buried in the churchyard, she knew that nothing had changed since she had gone away, but for her life would never be the same.
It was as if she had been shipwrecked and in the traumatic experience
