The Vicar of Dibley

The Vicar of Dibley has long been a favourite show in our household. It's one of those shows that I, and me Jenny can watch over and over - which is lucky, because there aren't that many episodes..... so when this trip was discussed, Jen found an article about the little village that the show is filmed in - Turville, which is conveniently enough located just off the M40 between High Wycome and Oxford. Now you can't actually stay in the village, but you can have a stonking great plate of bangers and mash at the local pub.

That naturally has to be consumed with a jug o Pimms!

The Vicarage.

Now, because you can't stay in the village, I had to find somewhere close by which I did by way of the Fox Country Inn in Ibstone - I give you the name of this place so you don't fall into the same trap that we did if you ever happen upon it - which was staying there!

Let me break it down for you.

The Inn was in itself quite quaint and sweet and looked lovely and was surrounded by fields. There were people there eating lunch and watching England playing in the World Cup.
The girl at the front desk was lovely and friendly although she didn't know where Turville was (the next village approx 2.5 miles down the road) but she said if we went in 'that' direction, we were sure to come across some signs.

She also offered me free wifi which I was later asked (by another chap) to pay for - I don't think so.

We were given 2 rooms - which is what we asked for, so far, so good. 1 room (Jodie's) had a fabulous view over the back field and the other room (mine and Jen's) had a terrible view over the carpark and was stinking hot. We had decided that because of the heat and because we'd just eaten lunch, we would all have a lay down. Our room was so hot that I had to have a cold shower and Jen and I had to strip down to our underwear with a fan blowing at full speed. Now I know that our standards are perhaps a little higher than they should be in a little village like this, but our towels were threadbare and one had a hole in it - one that would be easily noticed when you were folding it up for the room. Jodie came down to see how we were and was nearly pushed back with the heat escaping through the door. We all went back to her cool room and tried to sit around the one little open window. We found a fan in Jodie's room, but it was one of those tiny little ones and it was COVERED in dust..... we still turned it on, so now we were sitting in a dust filled room trying to get air from one window - why didn't we just go downstairs and sit outside with a pint? I hear you ask..... We did ask ourselves that same question but we were in our jamies. When we did eventually dress and go downstairs this is when the saga unfolded.

At the bar - where the ceiling is so low that I had to bend over to walk through - so you can only imagine what Jodie had to do - there was a little boy..... his name was Toby. I know this because it seemed that his name was called out quite frequently and everyone in the bar knew him. Toby's mum had been watching the England game and she was supporting them vigoriously. She was there with her partner, but they'd had an arguement (we found out from the waitress) and went home at about 8.30pm leaving an "overdone" mum and little Toby at the pub. Toby was flinging bar mats around, nearly knocking over drinks; Running through the bar scraming; slamming the door; running through the garden; kicking pebbles out of the garden and towards the other patrons who were trying hard not to notice; pulling the heavy wooden chairs over and letting them slam to the ground. Mum was doing everything she could to take no notice of Toby.

We had dinner - a tasteless, watery mushroom soup and whilst we ate, we were treated to the barman rearranging the dining room by way of dragging the tables and chairs around. He was setting up for a very important conference tomorrow.

As we were heading back upstairs to our oven, hot boxes for the night, I asked the man at the desk, the unfriendly one who tried to charge me for the free wifi I'd been offered if we had breakfast included in our rate. He said in a voice that could have been described as contemptful, "No, you don't" - now this could read fairly innocent, but believe me, it made me pull back a little and enabled me to reply, "Thank goodness, that means that we can get the hell out of here as early as we can!"

And now to end with a joke: What sort of cheese do you use to hide a horse? Mascapone!