A Special Place

Pliny c. AD61 - 113

We all have a special place that we would like to esacpe to - even if its just a vision in our minds. Pliny's description of his friend's villa, presents a most attractive idyll that is perhaps universally enduring:

"I wonder how our darling Comum is looking, and your lovely house outside the town, with its colonnade where it is always springtime, and the shady plane trees, the stream with its sparkling greenish water flowing into the lake below, and the drive over the smooth firm turf. Your baths which are full of sunshine all day, the dining rooms large and small, the bedrooms for night or the day's siesta - are you there enjoying them all in turn, or are you as usual for ever being called away to look after your affairs? If you are there, you are a lucky man to be so happy; if not, you do no better than the rest of us."

[Pliny The Younger: Letter to Caninius Rufus]

Where is it that you dream of escaping to?

[Castle Campbell, Dollar, Scotland]