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Thanks, I hope it'll be soon. I'd love to have at least a couple of months to try to really get to know things a little. Your situation sounds ideal! Are you British,or an import:)?

I feel like I'd love to live there,in a little village(if I could ever get my husband to live there),but it's my understanding that "outsiders", especially foreigners,aren't especially welcome in the out-of-the-way places,where I'd want to live,but if they'd have me,even as an outsider,I think I'd like it.Of course, I can't say for certain,without having been there,but I feel like I would.

Constable,as in the painter?

I lived and worked in England for nearly 1.5 years, way back in 1991 - 1992. That seems nearly like ancient history now, so much has happened since.

I lived in a small village in a farming district, and spent as much time as I could touring England, much of it in London.

I found a lot of Ye Olde England. There was Sir Isaac Newton's house, Warwick Castle with its fantastic gardens, Edinburgh Castle and City, Dover castle, and all the Sights in between.

I was also able to find much of the more humble, everyday England. The truck stop cafe on the A-45 West of Cambridge, I suppose it was. One Saturday morning on the way to Warwick Castle we stopped for breakfast.

The menu, written on the blackboard behind the kitchen counter, consisted of one word: BREAKFAST. Full English Breakfast, of course, which is actually quite good, if one ignores the fried bread, which I've always suspected was present only to sop up the excess cooking lard.

There was my land lord, who asked for the rent in cash, because she was avoiding the tax-man. She instructed me to tell anybody who looked as if they might be official that I was her boyfriend.

The row house was a super-efficiency. The hot-water heater electric was only on for 3 hours in the early morning, and the same went for the space heaters. The heat provided had to last for another 21 hours.

A great concept, but I suppose because it was subsidized by government funds, It was finished up in a slipshod fashion. An honest builder would have been shamed by the fit and finish.

Anyway, I think the real England is still there to be found, quite easily, once out of the immediate touristy venue. In London, I went to the hotels that did not cater to the tour companies, and I found Fawlty Towers. In the countryside, I stopped at restaurants that did not cater to tourists, both on and off the beaten path, and I found all the bad food you've ever heard about, especially the Motorway Restaurants (stay away!).

I also found very, very good restaurants, such as at Tuddenham Mills, off the A11. It is inside a refurbished 14th Century mill, much rebuilt over the centuries, with many structural timbers obviously out of junked ships. Even the old water wheel still turns. If you ask, they will demonstrate it. Interestingly, the manger told me that they own the stream for ten miles up, and control all development on the stream banks.

I'm English, from a long line of Yorkshire mariners and farmers though I've broken the mould by moving south. Constable (the painter) was from a neighbouring village, Dedham. His father's mill is still there and the river and fields look just the same (except the mill's a museum now of course!)