We went to the Edgemoor Inn, near the village of Edge in Gloucestershire on Sunday to celebrate our daughter Abigail’s 20th birthday – and for once our timing was perfect! For the day was bright and clear, very unusual for 5 October in England, and the Edgemoor Inn stands on a ridge overlooking the beautiful Painswick Valley.
One of the joys of this particular inn is the fabulous outlook both from within the restaurant, and from the terrace outside.
Not far from here is Prinknash Abbey, occupied by an order of Benedictine monks, and its location has the most spectacular views.
Nearby, from the Painswick Beacon, you may also see distant vistas across the Cotswolds.
Perhaps because the Cotswold Hills are a relatively short drive from Warwick, I’m drawn back here again and again; and of course the action of my novel Mystical Circles is set here. It was this landscape that inspired me to site my community The Wheel of Love in a lovely valley. Here, you may imagine, everything is perfect. But no. Where there is a disparate group of human beings, there will be dynamic change – and so it will always be.
As one of my Amazon reviewers put it: “In contrast to the peaceful rural setting, the varied group of people Juliet meets are a maelstrom of conflicting emotions.”
Meanwhile, let’s glory in this tranquil landscape, and draw more peace from it than we ever will from the complex, fearful, vulnerable human beings to be found within the Wheel of Love!
scskillman.com 
Abigail 20! big girl! Many happy returns to her. I’like to see a photo of her.
I put some photos of her on Facebook, Juan.. but I’ll email them to you!