Travel south for an hour then west for another and you’ll be met by a toll booth where admission to Narnia is gained only on the production of six florins. Payment made, its teenage guardian will uncaringly allow you to pass and only shrug when asked how you might find your destination. You journey on as the buildings age and the road cedes to a track just wide enough for a pony and trap. You drift back in time and the Tudor surroundings overwhelm you as the Hunter-wearing, dog-walking mothers and polo ponies stare disinterested as you pass. You turn around at least once, carefully avoiding the incongruous Maserati, but this time you do find the wooden signs, buried in the hedge. The welcome is warm and the open, wood-burning hearth is doing its best against the morning cold. Coffee is delivered to you weary travellers.

Tennis in Narnia is slow enough to have the one hour time limit invoked more than once and lunch is a generous, gentle and unhurried affair. The tennis had its highlights and no match was one-sided. That the rather fun day ended level was only fitting and, as we left, the world sped up again, gathering pace through Pangbourne and soon the motorways brought us back to the all too hurried real world.

TK aka TR