Felt like I was in Brigadoon last night but without the kilts, the singing and the dancing

Broad Chalke, near Salisbury is a picturesque English village with a beautiful church, stunning old English Inn, a post office, village shop and a village hall where I was giving a talk last night to the Women's Institute. The only problem was I couldn't see the village because it was dark! Nevertheless the welcome I was given was warm and light hearted and I've vowed to return to Broad Chalke in broad daylight one day, which will also give me the chance to see some of the lovely sweeping Wiltshire countryside.

Wiltshire is a county I am very fond of despite it being some fifty or so miles from the sea. I love the rolling downs and the pretty thatched villages and market towns and I am rather biased because I once lived and worked in Wiltshire. My husband was stationed at RAF Lyneham and I worked in Swindon and Chippenham Jobcentres many moons ago.

If you have read my thriller In Cold Daylight then you'll know that my reluctant hero, Adam Green, travels to the old market town of Devizes and rides across the Wiltshire downs.

Last night Broad Chalke had a kind of lost village feel about it tucked away down a narrow winding country lane that gave me a sense of being in Brigadoon, (for those not familiar with it Brigadoon is a film about a lost village in Scotland which only appears once in every hundred years for one day, starring Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse).  I was told this feeling is amplified when the snow comes, and as the weather men and women are predicting that could well be this weekend. I hope the ladies and their relatives and friends will seize the moment by curling up in front of a lovely roaring open fire and reading one of the many crime and thriller novels they bought last night. Thanks ladies for inviting me and making me feel so welcome. I will return in daylight just to make sure you really do exist!

Below are a couple of photographs from the event.

Audience gathering round for a book signing

Pauline Rowson talking to the Broad Chalke WI

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

If you like Peter James, John Harvey, Ann Cleeves and Peter Robinson you'll like Pauline Rowson's crime novels

Marvik is about to face his biggest challenge in mystery thriller FATAL DEPTHS, no 4 in the series.