Englefield Green

Our town, Englefield Green, is tiny and mainly residential. Basically there is one main street with a bakery, butcher, small, limited market, a pharmacy and a couple of restaurants. Our house is about 3/4 mile from the main street and about ¼ mile from “Englefield Green,” which is a huge open field with an small playground on one side. In route to the playground, next to the field, is a pub called The Barley Mow. The great thing about pubs in England, as you may know, is that it is more of a family and community meeting place and less a "bar." Kids are welcome and there is even a small play area in the back garden of this one.


We are really happy with the house we are renting. In the photo above, we live in the left side of the house. It is larger than our house in Seattle, has a spacious front room and three bedrooms upstairs, a ton of storage space and sizable kitchen. It is very quaint and charming. There is a fairly large grassy backyard with a green house and a little path leading to the “office”, the owner’s previous workspace. The kids have renamed this their “school house” and love to “play school” and have tea parties back there.



The only issues with the house are two- the wall decorations and the dryer. There are pictures hanging on seriously every wall or space in the house, including the molding and wood paneling. Lots of sailboats, scenery, an eerie looking hamster, etc. I tried taking some down, but that somehow looks evern worse. The dryer basically does not work, or would take hours to dry one towel, so we hang our clothes up to dry in the backyard, which is kind of a relaxing task. The only problem is the frequent rain that seems to hit almost every day lately and that crunchy feeling to the towels.



Our neighborhood is fantastic. Lots of kids- all girls! There are four girls in the family across the street ages 4-16, and two girls in each family on either side of that house. Since it has been warm, they have all been playing outside quite a bit. Linnea is in heaven, following them around with adoring eyes. As for the little guy, well, he seems to think he is playing along as well as he trails behind them running and yelling (though I am pretty sure he doesn’t have a clue what they are yelling about).