It was just 10 years ago -- early August 1999. My husband and I were in the midst of a long-anticipated trip to England. We'd just done a wonderful but hectic week at Sidmouth, spent a night at the Red Lion Inn (inside the stone circle) at Avebury, and parted company with our traveling companions, a dear English-American friend and his somewhat less dear girlfriend whose eccentricities had limited our enjoyment of the trip somewhat.

We'd thus snuck off, a day before we'd planned, to Kelmscot, Oxfordshire, a village which William Morris considered his heart's home and in whose churchyard he is buried. The afternoon before, I'd plucked wildflowers, woven them into a wreath and placed them on his grave. We'd then had an excellent dinner, with a glass or two of equally excellent local sloe wine, and gone upstairs to the room we'd booked at The Plough, the charming village pub and which had graciously taken us on a day early. The following morning being a "fresh" (moist) one, my husband (who hates rain) suggested that we spend the day doing the bookstore circuit -- a favorite activity of ours -- in nearly Oxford, but I demurred, wanting instead to experience the tiny remote village, the lovely inn, and all that history, rain or no. So off he went.

Left entirely on my own for the first time in ten days, I set off over the fields and soon found myself walking the Thames Path. The stiles over which I clambered, the berries and ferns, the birds foraging in the grass across the Thames, the wildfowl in the river: these were the flowers in the garden through which I rambled. Every inch of the green landscape, sprinkled with clinging raindrops that sparkled in the transient rays of the sun, was its own masterpiece.

The occasional passing narrowboat hardly disturbed my solitude, nor did the swan counters I met to whom I reported my cygnet sightings. I paused for a half-hour at a lock-keeper's cottage, watching with interest as the narrowboats negotiated the lock. I arrived at last at Radcot, where I stood gazing at the moving water from "the oldest bridge on the Thames" (circa 1200) before heading back to Kelmscot and another glass of sloe wine. (Had I only kept walking upon returning there, I could have had a pint in The Trout at Lechlade, but this was before my Mudcat days, so I knew not my ignorance).

There you have it, a happiest moment – in fact, a whole happiest three hours. The idyll continued into the following day, when we explored Kelmscott Manor (where Morris, his wife, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived together in, I think, rather less bliss than mine in visiting there) during the near-total solar eclipse (total in Cornwall and France, some will recall); visited the Great Coxwell tithe barn, which Morris believed the most beautiful building in England; and finally toured Buscot Park, a National Trust house where Edward Burne-Jones' wonderful Briar Rose triptych is installed. But those are a glorious memory of a different kind.

Thanks for the three hours I've spent recollecting -- more happy moments.

Claire