Felt like I was in Brigadoon on Tuesday night, but without the kilts, the singing and the dancing

[Pauline Rowson]

On Tuesday night I went to Brigadoon.  OK, not really but it felt like it. I gave a talk to the Women's Institute in the small picturesque Wiltshire village of Broad Chalke.  It had a kind of lost village feel about it tucked away down a narrow winding English country lane that gave me a sense of being in Brigadoon, (for those not familiar with it Brigadoon is a film about a lost village in Scotland which only appears once in every hundred years for one day, starring Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse).  I was told by the ladies present for my talk that this feeling is amplified when the snow comes, and as the weather men and women are predicting that could well be this weekend.

Broad Chalke has a beautiful ancient church, a stunning old English Inn, a post office, village shop and a village hall where I was giving the talk. The only problem was I couldn't see the village because it was dark! Nevertheless the welcome I was given was warm and light hearted and I've vowed to return to Broad Chalke in broad daylight one day, which will also give me the chance to see some of the lovely sweeping Wiltshire countryside.

Wiltshire is a county I am very fond of despite it being some fifty or so miles from the sea. I love the rolling downs and the pretty thatched villages and market towns and I am rather biased because I once lived and worked in Wiltshire. My husband was stationed at RAF Lyneham and I worked in Swindon and Chippenham Jobcentres many moons ago.

 

In my thriller In Cold Daylight my reluctant hero, Adam Green, travels to the old market town of Devizes and rides across the Wiltshire downs.

 

Thanks ladies for inviting me and making me feel so welcome. I will return in daylight just to make sure you really do exist!