My country memories: Hugh Bonneville

'I proposed to my wife on the South Downs. I picked scores of wildflowers and pressed them into a book I gave her. It must have been late spring because I remember swallows flying overhead and the long grass rustling in the breeze. It was a beautiful day. That grassy spot is memorable for me in many ways. I sat up there one summer with my mum and learnt my lines for an audition while looking down over the expanse of South Harting and Midhurst. I didn't get the part - Rupert Everett did - but it is one of those frozen snapshots in my mind. I was 14 when I first encountered the South Downs and now I can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else. I still like walking around the huge acreage that houses the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum. It charts domestic architecture throughout the ages and before historic houses are demolished, they get taken apart bit by bit and moved there to be reconstructed in order to preserve them. It is fascinating to zigzag between Saxon dwellings and a Victorian tollkeeper's cottage.

'Everyone overseas teases us about the rain here but we are so lucky. When I am away I miss the changing colours of the green fields in different lights and endless summers of chutney and squash soup. But it is the contrasts of the British countryside I miss the most: the hard ground in the summer and the sogginess underfoot in the winter, wrapping up warm and then taking T-shirts off. One of my favourite smells is the deep headiness of the sweet peas we grow in our vegetable garden. Wherever I am in the world, that scent takes me right back to West Sussex and Hampshire. The only things I don't miss are badgers and moles. I have a personal vendetta against them. My front garden used to be as smooth as a billiard table and now it looks very much like a battlefield.

'My childhood was spent in East Sheen but in the summer holidays we'd go to a little cottage that was part of a smithy my parents bought in Chetnole, Dorset. I have fond memories of times spent there. I used to revel in the fantastic village names like Piddletrenthide and Tolpuddle. In fact, it inspired the naming of our family beagle. We called him Plush after a neighbouring village as he loved eating pheasant and there was a pub there called the Brace of Pheasant - it seemed fitting somehow. Together, Plush and I used to roam the surrounding fields and he would scamper off chasing after rabbits. I was nine when I fell in love with one of the girls in our lane. She wasn't remotely interested in me but, knowing that my mum had an account at the village corner shop, I decided to buy an enormous box of chocolates as a token of my esteem for her. Mum interrogated me that night in bed after she had spoken to the shopkeeper, so I had to come clean and tell her it was a love offering and that I had, of course, been spurned. There was also a tomboy in our village and we would trundle off to build beavers' dams in a little stream nearby. We were very Swallows and Amazons about it. And then I would always get told off for coming home with soaking wet trousers. I have a very strong memory of the crows in the huge pines near our house and how they would caw on Sunday mornings. They used to wake me up - that slightly macabre, eerie sound they made when they roosted, which used to make my imagination run wild.

'One particularly magical moment for me came on a sailing trip to the Channel Islands with my dad in his 33-foot Albion. We were on the foredeck and there was something about the sunset that evening that I just cannot forget. The purples and yellows were so vivid and in my memory there was an angry cloud to the south that was the colour of a full-blooded grape. It was almost like being in a William Blake painting. As I watched the sun going down and the stars coming out, I remember feeling close to the elements and a rush of contentment washed over me.'

Hugh Bonneville is a BAFTA-nominated actor, known for his performances in 'Notting Hill' and 'Iris'. He is taking part in Trailwalker 2009, a challenge to walk 100km in under 30 hours in aid of Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare Trust. For details, see www.justgiving.com/lumleyslads.

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