I'm scouting new locations to work in. And trying to keep it light and easy going. I want to start feeling a bit more at home in the town. I'm avoiding the obvious food and coffee places that all feel a bit tired and co-opted by others in the laptop brigade. I don't want to enter into a weird relationship with the store owner where I sometimes want to drink a coffee and have lunch but sometimes just want to be able to sit and think and maybe type some bits without buying anything.
So this is where I sat and had a think today. I didn't know I was going to write this or else I'd have taken more photos :) I took this sitting on the steps of the bandstand in the Castle grounds. It's called the Castle grounds, but it feels a bit separate, like perhaps the outer grounds. I didn't even know it was here until a couple of weeks ago when I had a walk and stumbled over it. There's that bowling green and the hedge behind it and then there's a steep drop into the inner grounds, which is the only bit of the castle I'd seen before. It is a castle but it's not very exciting, it's quite ruined and I don't think there's much to see there, although once you know it's there, there are a lot of places in the town that you can see it from.
But it's quiet. It's great in that way. There were some noisy teenagers, but they confined themselves to the covered area below and I couldn't really hear them. It's been warm again today, especially this morning, but very comfortable in the shade of these two huge trees. It clouded over a little at lunchtime, which was actually a relief.
A good place for a sit and a think, perhaps a take-away coffee and picnic lunch.