Suite dreams
SHE settles in her favourite spot, in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, all the better to take in the view of England at its finest. The parkland rolls away from her and in the distance, emerging from the early morning mist, is the solid Norman tower of Tewkesbury Abbey.
Suddenly her eyes dart to the left. Forget the 900 years of history, there are rabbits out there. Hundreds of them. And she’s in doggy heaven, at the Tewkesbury Park Hotel, a golf and leisure complex in an old country house in the rolling Gloucestershire countryside.
Bella couldn’t be happier, her nose pressed to the glass. Actually maybe she could, if one of her pesky owners would get up from their king-sized comfort and roll back that sliding door so she could get out. They seem so settled in the stylish, modern room, with a bed almost as luxurious as her own.
But at least she can watch from the comfort of her own bed, with its memory foam mattress, while occasionally lowering her eyes to feast on some of those scrummy nibbles that keep appearing.
Yesterday afternoon, she had the run of the 1st and 18th fairways of the golf course that surrounds the hotel. Down at the bottom of the valley she gambolled into the “Bloody Meadow”. She saw that funny look in her owners’ eyes when their minds wander – did she care this was where the House of Lancaster was routed by the House of York in 1471 in a decisive battle in the War of the Roses, where it feels like the ghosts of the thousands who lost their lives still wander? No. She just went and sat in the boggy stream and waited.
She found herself waiting again