Tim nodded his agreement and after the usual offers of help with the washing up, which were of course declined, they thanked Tim's mum for the meal and set off up the hill. Tatters, Tim's favourite sheepdog bounded along besides them.

Together in silence, they climbed up the lush green meadow. Primroses and light green beech bushes peppered the high banks of the old hedgerow on their right and the brow of the hill above was adorned with a crown of ancient Oak trees.

Sarah tried to identify individual sounds from the background chatter. She heard small birds trilling and whistling. Insects hummed everywhere and in the undergrowth, tiny unseen animals, frightened by the tramp of feet on the soft soil, scattered with mysterious rustling sounds to secret hiding places.

Overhead, gregarious rooks cackled busily as they swooped in huge arcs to find the security of the highest trees in which they had made their homes.

"It's steeper than it looks", laughed Sarah, gasping for breath with the exertion of the climb.

"Can we find a spot to take a little breather".

"Just a bit further", encouraged Tim. Annoyingly, he didn't seem at all out of breath.

There was a grassy knoll on a small promontory near the top. Tim immediately stretched himself out full length with a huge sigh of contentment.

"What a view", exclaimed Sarah as she joined him, "look you can see the whole valley from here".

In her mind, Sarah had named it 'the valley of the trees'. Oaks, Ash and Beech clustered the hill sides broken only by small patchwork fields that supported the various efforts of a variety of smallholders.

Her eye followed with pleasure the tiny river and the narrow lane as they meandered through the heart of the valley. It was a chocolate box picture of impressions, gentle on the eye but strangely disturbing because of it's out of time rural simplicity.

The grass was soft and comfortable beneath her and speckled with a light down of daisies and buttercups. She selected a daisy and inspected the tiny petals and the delicate yellow pollen in the centre.

"Nature is so beautiful", she murmured, half to herself. "Why do we have to try to improve on it".

She felt on her skin the gentle breeze from the valley that brought with it fresh, countryside aromas. Woodland, grassland, flowers and trees had all contributed. The air even seemed to have caught the scent of the water in the stream as it splashed over tiny pebbles.

"I used to come up here when I was a boy", mused Tim.

"The world always seems so far away, so irrelevant".

Sarah nodded in agreement.

"There's such a wonderful feeling of timelessness here", she said. "I feel that I could just lie here, close my eyes and believe that this is the only world there is and that it can last for ever".

"Things can be what you want them to be. We all make the world we want to live in," commented Tim.

"If you want to live here in the heart of the country, you can. All you have to do is come and live here. It's a free country".

Sarah looked down the valley and tried to imagine coming home at the end of the day down the windy road, pruning the azaleas in the evening and competing with the locals at skittle matches on Saturdays.

Suddenly she felt lonely and exposed. It was too appealing. It was a blissful romantic dream that bore no comparison with the nightmare options that presently confronted her. If only things were simpler.