England is famous for being a rainy country, and it’s a reputation that has been well earned. Summers in the British Isles can be fleeting and forgettable, overcast skies dampen many a weekend, and the rain is never far away. But then there are days when this country can look astonishingly beautiful.

This afternoon, as I walked around the leafy lanes of Aldridge in the West Midlands, the sun managed to burn away the blanket of grey clouds that had moved in unnoticed then stuck around like bad neighbors. With the bad neighbors evicted from the skies above, the landscape was bathed in a glorious autumn glow that transformed the surrounding countryside into something that looked like a scene from a watercolor painting or old English novel.