She Is Now Bemused

[caper_est]

A lot of words yesterday and today; something over 2500 over the past three or four, whenever I started the chapter of the Embassies.  Now I am in Clover Clough, which is one of those fantasy tourist attractions Diana Wynne Jones was getting at in her immortal Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  Or at least my version of that: not the Vale of Aldur, not even Malham Cove, but such a little valley as could easily get me on a train to the north-dales of my own kingdom, to spend a happy week exploring.

I don't think it'd be my choice of place for scratching out a mediaevaloid living, though - even if its lords, for lords, are uncommonly decent to their tenants.  (They almost have to be.  It's small, relatively unproductive, and for most purposes on the way to nowhere; they'd barely be able to keep up their own manor, if they had to spend much of their substance stopping sullen peasants from running away to fairer pastures.  Not that that has stopped plenty of their peers from going the other way...)

It really is one of those nice places to visit but, &c.  For all that, I see it so clearly this last day or so, writing about it is almost as good as a sudden hour's holiday.

A valley of three waters, sibling sparring, a Queen Victoria moment.