Wanderings through Blighty

Sissinghurst and Lavenham

2010-05-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-04-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Londinium

2009-11-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hallo, Bloggies - that is if there are any of you left out there. The blog kind of spluttered to a halt round about the time we hit the wall and knew the honeymoon was over. Diary entries would have been along the lines of 'went to visit Woburn Abbey, but it was closed. Didn't really expect otherwise' . (all recited in true eeyore tones). However, a good friend got us out of the glooms by suggesting a walking tour of london. Well....

We ignored the advice of all and sundry and decided to take the car into lunnon (just as well we did - the tubes were on strike), but we found out why people don't really like driving in the city: intricate street systems and conflicting street signs, road works and diversions all over the place, and heavy, slow traffic. nevertheless, in spite of all of that, and thanks to jane's growing talents as a navigator - i only had to contradict her twice and on one of those i wasn't qwuite right.. - we survived unscathed, althought i would swear that we went over Tower bridge at least 3 times rying to escape the one-way system.

Saturday we went to St Paul's. Not as big as York minster but more beautiful. Definitely on the Must see list. While Jane sat down in the ground floor and found herself in a small service, i climbed up all 500 odd very vertcal steps to the tippety top of the dome. Brilliant views, but i wouldn't want to be a roofer on the job.

Back out of the city to the nearest affordable lodging on the M25. Getting quite fond of the service bay hotels. Cheap, cheerful and clean. On the Sunday, in for the walking tour. 10 minutes into the 2-hour tour, the skies opened, and we spent most of the tour ducking under shelters and feeling cold and miserable. Fascinating stuff, though. Tour was on 'ancient London', and while much was on the standard naughty goings on in the priories and nunneries (including the very model for Chaucer's Nun's tale), there were also some nice wee gruesome bits like the story of the poor old Duke of Suffolk, who lost his head in the 1500s. It turned up in the 1800s sans body, so they put it in a glass jar and displayed it in front of the altar for 50 years or so, until a vicar could stand it no longer and shoved it in a biscuit tin and put it in a dark cupboard. They finally buried the last of the Duke in the late 1950s. Various other charming tales tripped from the lips of our dripping but cheerful guide.

So that was the weekend. Back to the grindstone during the week, til someone (bet you'll never guess) hit the Big six oh! And doesn't timefly when you're having fun. Off to Yorkshire rabbit and chardonay jelly in a 16th century pub, now surrounded by 20th century suburbia. Lovely company, lovely setting. Think I've decided to grow old disgracefully. MMM Pass some more jelly! All for now, boys and girls.

Mid term break

2009-10-31T01:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, hopefully, having got to grips with the blog thing, this will come as a post, rather than a comment.

It has ben a remarkablybusy week, so again, I'l just capture a few highlights.

The English are great tourists. It probaly started with the Norman kings, who would tour the country with their retinues and land on unfortunate barons, who they would then stay with and eat out of house and home - although possibly the tourism bit was started with the Vikings, who would pop down for a bit of rape and pillage during the summer season (the Celts, Romans,and Anglo-Saxons seemed a bit more settled in their invasions, although the roads weren't that terrific then).

But the English have definitely carried on the tourism tradition - and no wonder! Most seem to live in tiny terrace houses or apartment blocks and, apart from finding their social life in the pubs - much different from NZ - seize every chance that they can to tour England and elsewhere. And, of course, they have been joined by new waves of invaders - Americans, Indians, Africans, New Zealanders, Vietnamese, East Europeans, you name it. So when it is holiday time, everybody, just everybody is on the roads visiting the hotspots.

The trick, apparently, to becoming a tourist hotspot, is to become a market town some time during the Middle Ages and then try and stay that way for the next 700 years or so. This has worked for places like York and Stratford apon Avon. But the places that went all industrialised during the Industrial Revolution pulled down their medieval buildings, built huge factories, abandoned them and or generally became large and ugly, and the tourists stay away in droves (Glasgow, I am told, is an exception to the rule, but i ain't been there yet).

It's fine to be cutsey. English towns compete to be cutsiest, and some succeed very well. Even the odd disaster, such as a 17th enury fire that destroys half the town is no barrier. A lovely story from Stratford-a-A shows how disaster can be profited from. Apparently, when Shakespeare retired, he built a large house in Stratford with a large mytle tree in the front garden. A generation or 3 later, a vicar bought the house and built his own house next door, objected to all the tourists visiting the garden, and so had the tree chopped down. The locals, who liked the tree and the tourists who visited, then broke his windows. The vicar objected loudly, the town council supported the townsfolk, and so the vicar left town and, as a final act of spite, had Shakespeare's house demolished. Ande so one now visits a fine early Georgian house where the nasty vicar lived, with a reconstructed Shakespearian garden, and that will be ten pounds, thank you. This is one of about half a dozen more and less authentic Shakespeare sites in the town, which also happens to be a market town, thus, medieval, cutsy etc.

So, Stratford. Beware, by the way. Stratford is a common name. Within spitting distance of us, we have Stony Stratford, Fenny Stratford, and Old Stratford. Avon, too, seems to be the name of every second river. Mot of the others seem to be called Ouse. Beautiful, crowded and commercial. Worth the visit. That was our Saturday.

Sunday was down to Surrey, Jane Austin country, and the site of a small church where an over-devoted lady was walled up for several years (2 occasions - she took a break in the middle) to remove herself from the temptations of the world. She simply had a small hole in the wall, through which food was passed. Not my cuppa tea.

Monday through to Friday, we went up to the Lake District then across to York and back. Most of England, outside of the towns, is green and pleasant rolling country, followed by more green and pleasant, followed by... but every now and again, something breaks out. The Lake District is remarkably different - steep, glaciated crags, with glacier-bed lakes at their bases. Very dramatic, very beautiful. Visited Beatrix Potter's house/ writing studio - very Peter Rabbit- ad Wordsworth's house - a dark and grotty former pub. Both places very tiny. But then again, the B&Bs we stayed in at both Lake Wyndermere and York were 3-storey buildings, all of one room wide, and that room only about 8 feet or so. A friend described the houses as Lilliputian . By contrast, however, i have never seen a building as vast and ornate as York Minster.

Called in on Jane's aunt in Kirby Stephen, saw the village school where her great grandmother taught , and visited the farm that her family having been farming since the 1600's. A second cousin runs it now, breeding Swaledale sheep.

York was very very busy, touristy, crowded, etc, etc. Lots to see, not enough time, well worth visiting. It, too, had been a market town when it wasn't being a Roman, Saxon, Viking, etc fort, often fought over.

That's probably more than enough. Next blog, promise, a note about English food.

First Beginnings.

2009-08-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hallo, World.

This is my very first attempt at blogging. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...