Sissinghurst and Lavenham

Well, Sissinghurst was probably one of the highlights of our tripping around - not because it was the grandest, or oldest, or most beautiful (although possibly close to that), but it was probably the most inspirational of all of the gardens we have seen. Both Jane and I went around saying, 'We could do that in our garden, or ... or... Sissinghurst was not a huge garden, but it was nicely divided into 'rooms', with formal gardens, romantic gardens, wildernesses and open parts. All rather lovely, and some of it eminently 'doable'. Of course, there were things like the 800 year old moat and 400 year old tower that were inimitably English, but there were other features that definitely took our fancy. Jane wants to spend a fortune on pots and pergolas, and I'm thinking of ways of reducing the mowing on the tennis court. These are just a few samples of many photos.

'There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile...' Lavenham in Suffolk is apparently the origin of the Crooked House. It is an extraordinary village, with nearly every building leaning skew whiff one way or another, and all apparently quite stable, despite their terrible looking angles. A lovely village, in a lovely part of the countryside. I think, if we didn't have new Zealand to compare, we could certainly settle in Suffolk as a second best - although I'm not quite sure what one would do there apart from avoiding overhanging buildings.

That's all for this time folks. Just a short blog.

Dear old Sussex by the sea

Hallo, blogspotters.

This is my most ambitious photo gallery yet. And I've found something new - photos load in reverse order. So the first photo was meant to be a PS - a wee depiction of the never-failing politeness of the English. I'm still looking for the rude notice that says No Parking.

The next set are all about Hampton Court Palace and garden - a very sumptuous palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, under Henry 8, then taken over by Henry when the Cardinal fell from grace and his head no doubt fell from his shoulders. In the second piccy you can see a fountain that literally flows with wine on festive occasions, except that these days you pay 3.50 a glass to quaff from the fountain. Loved the wee dogs and dragons on the roofline to the right.

The formal gardens are wonderfully Tudor, but in fact only a few years old as they kinda got lost during Victorian times and have been faithfully re-createdfrom the original plans and, literal archeology. Vut very stunning. Jane took a zillion garden photos.

These pics are of the town of Battle, where the Battle of Hastings was actually fought - several miles inland from Hastings on the coast (which, by the way, is THE most decrepit town we've seen anywhere. What amazed me at Battle was that William the Conquerer very nearly didn't conquer - it was a very long battle by medieval standards - and by all the odds, he shouldn't have won. Harold, his opponent had the high ground, and William's lot had to fight uphill, where neither his archers nor his cavalry had any advantage, and in fact, all Harold's lot had to do was hold them off, and he would have won the day, But by a combination of guile and good luck, Harold's troups got lured off the high ground, Harold got his arrow, and the rest is history. But history teetered on a knife edge that day, and it is fascinating to speculate how history may have been rewritten if it were not, basically for a random arrow.

One wonders what or who may have been burnt at the bonfire site.

After the battle, William, as a penance, built an abbey on the battle site. Here is a tiny detail that rather caught the imagination.

This is the battlefield site. Although the picture doesn't show it well, it is a steep uphill slope to where the abbey walls are, and where Harold's 5000 strong shield wall stood to fend off William's troops.

Dear old Eastbourne looked like somewhere that had been built a few centuries ago, updated to the 1950's, and then frozen in time - except that on the pier, the concert hall/ballroom had been filled with spacies. But the atmosphere of the town was quite wonderful - it was the kind of place where you almost felt undressed if you were not carrying the obligatory 'ice'. But very sweet, very uncle Alf and Aunty Mae.

So, that's all, folks, from dear old Sussex by the sea. Note, by the way, the colour of the sky!

Go well, and don't forget the seaside spades.

Richard & Jane.

Just reporting in after a rather wonderful trip to Wales. Will try and attach a few pics if i can. Wales was quite marvellous! We spent nearly a day getting there, crossing england, and then a great bridge that stretched several miles across the Firth of the Severn, a bridge high enough to take ships underneath it, and found our accommodation at Pontypool in South Wales. We had a bit of spare time, so went down to Cardiff, Caerphilly, and other South Welsh towns starting with a C. We were not overly taken with South Wales. It had all been heavily industrialised in the 19th Century and was full of rather dreary looking Victorian towns full of Victorian Terrace houses, and not an awful lot between the towns. Although Cardiff had a rather pleasant park and Castle right in the middle of town. However, everything changed for the better the next day as we drove north through central Wales, away from the industrialisation and into the older, more untouched parts of the country. It's a place of steep hills, green valleys, and rather spectacular views. Much more like the back end of Tinui than anything else we had seen on our travels. The towns had wonderfully unreadable - and unpronouncable - names, like Llanwrtyd.(Khlan-wor-tid) Came across a lovely old market town called Brecon, where, instead of the usual English grey stone houses, most of the houses had been plastered and then painted, quite a wonderful range of colours - and where one building was shared by two residents, the colour would change halfway acrosss the building. We got into conversation with a couple of ladies with a wee dog. 'What do you call her?' asked Jane. 'Charnty!' they chorused. 'Charnty? Is that a Welsh name?' asked Jane. 'No, they said.'You know, charnty - beer and lemonade!' Mind you, the same evening, i also got into a cross-dialect mixup. We got to our hotel, booked in, and i said, 'Do you have a spare pen?' He looked completely puzzled and said, 'I've never been asked for one of those before. Do you want a straight pen(pin) or a safety pen(pin)?' 'Just a pen to write with', i said, as the penny dropped. Anyway, words are not really adequate, so here are a few samples of Wales.

Hi guys itlaics added by me, R. has talked about all the picies so you,ll be able to piece them togther.We sat and had lunch opposite the colourful houses.I think I liked the place so much because they didnt have all these hedges lining the roads and paddocks, like they do in England and it appeared a much less manicured place, than England, quite rough and take us as we are sort of place, more identifiable with NZ. However must away to bed 10.35. Temps are moving upwards. It was 15 in MK today.

Scotland, Italy, and a few points between

hallo, blogspotters.

Well, it's a few weeks since i have keyed in to the site, but we have not been idle.Spurred on by the arrival of our friends Chris and Jenny, who had unwisely forsaken a New Zealand summer for the rigours of a Northern hemisphere winter, we took to the road again. First visit was to Scotland. We stayed in cuz Hugo's lovely wee flat in Cathedral square in Glasgow, overlooked by the Necropolis (a good word to look up if you don't know its meaning). What Glasgow lacked in terms of warmth of weather was more than made up for by the lovely hospitable people and neighbours.

Glasgow has apparently been receiving a facelift but, although it was quite a 'fun' city to visit, it still showed signs of great poverty. Possibly not a city i would choose to live in, except perhaps for its proximity to the North. But then again, it might be a much more pleasant place when the temperature rises above zero.

But just north of Glasgow, by about half an hour, is what to me is the gateway to the Highlands, Loch Lomond - very wild, very beautiful, and very serene. Here goes - I'll try and pop in a picture. Bother. I never seem to get it in the right place, but you get the impression.

As well as Glasgow, we also visited the fair cities and castles of Edinburgh and Stirling (the latter being an old Drummond stamping ground a few hundred years ago). Again, we visited Drummond Castle, but the gates were still locked. We must try again in the Springtime. Both castles were big, impressive, and cold - small towns - or collections of halls, barracks and prisons - inside extraordinarily stout walls on top of huge bluffs. Both were surrounded by fair and beautiful towns that deserved more than the one-day cursory glimpse we were able to give them. Who knows? A day and a night in the Lake District, popping into Wordsworth's house, and that was us in the North.

What i do love about that end of the country is that, after all the green, pleasant, flat and largely tame country, suddenly you are into wild country, where the trees grow where they want rather than where they are planted, and the land slopes upwards - I guess its got all that i love about New Zealand.

After a bit of a rest, while C&J visited rellies in Ireland, we girded our loins and took off for Tuscany. What a wonderful part of the world! You're not quite sure whether you're living in a picture postcard, a time capsule that was arrested about 800 years ago, or a madhouse - perhaps a bit of all three. We stayed in a 12th Century apartment built into the stone walls of a tiny mountain village, called Pereta, perched on top of a mountain. The plumbing had been upgraded, but that was about it. There was electricity - of a sort. One more attempt at a piccy.

Loved the Italians, their food and their kindness. With my non-existent italian and their often non-existent English, we nevertheless got on remarkably well, and by the end of the week, i was getting quite adept at the Italian equivalent of Chinglish. Every now and then, we could understand each other.

And, of course, we did the proper thing and visited Siena, Florence, Pisa and Rome. The time warp thing got quite weird at times, switching from Medieval to Renaissance to Ancient Roman, and sometimes all in the space of a few hundred yards of each other. But my lasting impression is of high and ancient buildings, impossibly narow streets and mad driving. Definitely a wonderful place.

And now it's back to Blighty - but a wonderful thing happened today. Right on cue, first of March, the clouds rolled away, for a whole day, crocusses and snowdrops started blossoming, the temperature got up to about 7 degrees, and people started smiling. Now, one swallow may not make a summer but it was a pretty good start to Spring.

Oh, to be in April

The weekends continue to reveal all sorts of interesting places, but rather than turn this into a 'what we did in the weekend' narrative, more 'fun, recently has been what is touted to be Britain's coldest winter in, dpending who you are listening to, anything up to 100 years. Snow before Christmas, including a massive dump that shut down the train service to europe (thus no Paris yet) and temperatures down to minus 20 overnight. Britain seems to be totally unprepared for snow conditions - not enough grit for the roads, water pipes bursting, and so on, bur we are staying snug and cosy and venturing out every so often, wrapped up in our woollies and marvelling at the snows. As opposed to NZ, where snow may fall and be gone by the same day, this stuff sits around, literally for weeks on end. My next venture into the mysteries of bloggiing: I'll see if i can upload some pictures.