Country mouse at Wilderness
Our country mouse gets trendy at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire


Lunch was a choice between Mark Hix, St John, Ottolenghi, Moro or J. Sheekey. However, the choice of where to eat was not in London, but deep in the Cotswolds, surrounded by an 800-year-old deer park and 1,700 acres of the most ancient forest in Britain. Cornbury Park was playing host to the Wilderness Festival, which is pretty much like any other music festival except the food and setting are unmatched. Couples were married, others became engaged, but most just soaked in the atmosphere. Anna, my daughter, set out the guidelines once we arrived: I was not to dance at all, nor was I to stare at the strange get-ups, and if I smelt incense burning, it wasn't. We had a ball.
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It's hard to believe that the new shooting season has started. The prospects for grouse as well as other wild gamebirds look extremely positive following the warm, dry spell and the new season could be a memorable one. However, the same weather has played havoc with the salmon and trout stocks, which suffer in warm weather from depleted oxygen in the water. It seems that, for every winner, there is always a loser.
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Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
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