Sunday May 15, 2011 Home from Gloucestershire! Some of us have remained in London, but the rest flew out yesterday at 11am It was a relatively quick flight back to leafless Nova Scotia. It looks like before we left, with the addition of a bit more green grass! Certainly there is little change in the temperature.
I look out from my morning tea to cloud, mist and hear the sea pounding on the rocks below.
On our last day we gave up visiting Stowe. We decided it was too far, not floral enough, and did not open ‘till 2pm. We all elected to an easier day and decided to attend the local Royal Horticultural Show 20 minutes away by car. I dropped everyone off and returned to the cottage for a well needed nap. They had a marvelous time, kissed me on my return, and declared in enthusiastic tones how they needed all the items they had purchased! There were acres of flowers, all in bloom. Indeed any flower that anyone was interested in was there in bloom! We have decided to do this again on the next tour in September! It was an unqualified success and a wonderful end of the tour.
At 6:30pm we headed for another local pub, built in the 17thcentury. Several groups were sitting in the tiny front rooms, included one with a sedate black lab. He helped himself to chips.
Before leaving, and over a glass of the wine we felt impelled to finish, Sue fed all our leftovers to the resident chickens who much appreciated it, indeed greeted her with raised heads and a chorus of squawks. The rooster ran around making sure his girls all had enough. We packed with difficulty, everyone’s’ suitcase having expanded in the weeks we’d been away. I sat outside, thinking about the beauty of the spot and listening to the rustle of the dove on her nest above me in the roses. All the roses....! In three weeks England will be aglow in the colour and scent of millions of them, far more than usual.
It has been a most successful tour and the best thing about it has been the people involved. We could not imagine a better group and one in which we all got along so well.
Thursday May 12, 2011
It is early as I look out on the valley this morning. The sun came up a half hour ago and the light is still yellow. A misty glow has not yet risen from the green fields and cold water of the Avon. Peter’s blue canal boat rests at its moorings. The birds are definitely awake! As is the crow next door: one of Sue’s “bubbies” who last night she had me photograph as she fed scraps after dinner. I ran after her with my camera, tipsy after too many glasses of wine....”Hey you guys,” she called....”Bubbies! Look what I have. Food!” I saw 8 or 9 heads raised, peering in our direction over the top of the chicken wire. They ran towards the edge of their pen, eyes fixed on Sue. She threw in the left over sausage and there was an ungainly scrabble. “Oh Bubbies...” she crooned. Sue has a lot of chickens at home. Also ducks. The pen is luxurious with long grass and very big.
We had seen bullocks on the way home the evening before. These lovely beasts, anxious to meet us, crowded to the edge of the field with outstretched noses, snuffling timidly. I fed them (not that they needed nor particularly wanted grass, the whole field being full of it!) Too fast a move and they startled backwards, nearly falling over themselves. The shock of it: bullocks, beef....They will not last long. I can barely comprehend the idea and have pondered it since. My beef eating days are over, not that it is much: mostly barbeques in summer.
Yesterday we visited Sezincote, a marvelous house and garden designed by Cockerell in 1805 and is a notable example of New Mughal architecture. It is an enormous park and has been owned by a doctor since the ‘40’s. The roof was being re-done and there was substantial scaffolding around the building. We walked in the garden under enormous mature trees, many of them imported long ago from other parts of the world. I wish I could do the gardeners justice here with my descriptions of plants, but I am not well enough informed... We visited Spetchley earlier in the day. This garden has a superior collection of peonies, not yet in bloom but will be shortly. The grounds are specious and lovely to wander in. I walked the perimeter among the conifers and along the river. The wind blew the weeping willow in my face and the reeds sparkled with yellow iris and whipped about. The mansion is “new” having burnt to the ground during the Revolution in the 17th.C. There is an interesting old church of All Saints on the property, which is a heritage building but remains consecrated which many do in Britain, unlike at home. Later we discussed why this should be. I think it may have something to do with the fact that many (certainly not all) here are Church of England with large congregations compared to the church divisions in the congregations at home. I went in and discovered impressive tombs to the original owners. I lit a candle for my mother, as I usually do when away.
On Wednesday we visited Barnsley House near Cirencester, along with Rodmarton, and Kelmscott Manor which is the home of William Morris. What a perfect day. Supposed to pour it turned out to be warm and dry. Barnsley impressed us all with its magnificent kitchen garden, laid out in squares with box and brick, and afloat in bobbing Icelandic Poppies. We have all decided to make our vegetable patches more like this elegant and beautiful model! Barnsley has a gorgeous alley of plane trees, clipped into squares along two rows, under planted with allium and laburnum. It also has an elegant dining room where we all ate lunch on white table cloths and linen.
Rodmarton is enormous and a private residence. It is suffering some neglect since it clearly hasn’t the funds to keep up adequate maintenance. This is a terrible problem here in Britain and all around the world. The cost of maintenance now is monumental, and few private individuals can successfully manage it. I think of all the private properties we have seen, Cothay Manor might be the most successful in this. They have put out at least one book, take tours around the house once a week for a high price, do the tea and lunch menus as do others, and somehow seem to keep the gardens fairly neat.
It was clear to see how special Rodmarton once had been to a very large number of people. It is situated in a tiny village of the same name, and has many lovely features: an alley again but very overgrown, a tennis court, medieval boxed garden, huge kitchen garden, stables, spectacular round driveway, topiary in the shape of birds, marvellous yews clipped straight off and looking like enormous nests, etc.
Then there is Kelmscott Manor. We parked at quite a distance from the house and walked through the village, past the pub, past the field with a bull and harem of cows.. Kelmscott is mostly the house. This is the home of William Morris and the centre of his utopian book “News from Nowhere.” Here he actually made all his designs and put them into effect in the tapestries and hangings that he lived with. The house is the very centre of his imagination and so beautiful, particularly when one considers the types of decoration popular to Victorians of the time. The garden came off less well but was also less well tended. It is a small residence, surrounded by fields. He is buried in the local cemetery.
A member of our party planned to meet a friend who she had not seen in 44 years. They met in the Horse and Groom in Bourton on the Hill, before entering Sezincote, and we sat down as well at a different table. It is a beautiful large and relaxing pub, mostly a restaurant....
The roses are particularly spectacular this year. There are some lovely climbers blossoming but most have not opened and there are buds in profusion. When I come back on June 3rd England will be awash in colour. Since Lorraine and I arrived three weeks ago, the lilacs are nearly over, the libernum are over their best, the tulips are finished, etc...
The mist is lifting and the sun stronger. Our final day at Stowe will be beautiful. Tonight we will sample a new and closer pub, and pack....difficult after the pamphlets and books and purchases and weight we all have acquired..
Wednesday May 11, 2011 We wandered in Chipping Campden yesterday. This is a touristy town and the prices matched the visitors. We bought bread for the soup Pam made the night before, chocolate again, more wine, and then explored the Earnest Wilson Memorial. Earnest Wilson was born in Chipping Campden in about 1859 and was a well known explorer/plant collector of the Victorian/Edwardian era. He spent much of his life in Asia and is attributed to discovering many varieties of plants which he brought back to Britain, one of them being the Davidia Involucrata, the Handkerchief Tree. He eventually made his home in Massachusetts and died there, along with his wife, in a car accident.
The day was an easy one. We drove towards Cheltenham on B4632 and stopped at Sudeley Castle. An enormous surprise: just a staggeringly beautiful place! Thomas Seymour and Katherine Parr came to live here after the death of Henry VIII. It suffered a great deal during the Revolution of 1642 and afterwards remained derelict for 200 years. In the 1800’s it was taken on by the Dents and renovated extensively. This is a medieval garden with many clipped box hedges and a marvellous show of alum. The local parish church of St. Mary’s sits on the grounds.
Onwards, and dinner to the sound of bells peeling in the church next door. We were told there is a “Bell ringing club” that practices once a week. What a glorious sound. I phoned home to let my partner hear!
Saturday May 7, 2011 It rained. In fact, last night it howled and poured. The power went. In the morning we visited our village of Knowstone and then moved on to Gloustershire and Worcester. In the village we spoke to two locals, one a woman with a whippet and the other, a man who was tying up his clematis and roses. The age of his cottage? The thatch? He pointed out that it was nearly new since 30 years ago it had fallen into the village street! One would not imagine this from its appearance. New thatch needs to be replaced every 30 years or so, and most of the material used comes from abroad, such places as Turkey or Australia. Straw is still used in places but is very expensive and doesn’t last as long as reeds. Note that the town of Annapolis Royal in N.S. used to send reeds back to Britain in the 1700’s for thatching.
Yesterday we visited Tintinhull Gardens, parked and approached through a field of apple trees. Lovely place with a small house paneled in pine and originally hung in silk. It was warm and we wandered through the alum, the roses, the nearly finished tulips, and lilac. Another beautiful pond in a rectangular shape. Lunch in a nearby pub where I was able to find the internet, and then on to the most beautiful, in my opinion, East Lambrook. This is the house of Marjorie Fish who developed it in the early part of the 20th Century. It is lived in, small, slightly messy and real. The old house nestles in the trees. Two yellow sports cars sat in the driveway, one a model something or other and although I have no interest in cars this one was a roadster and very special!
Driving between the fields I reflect on the age of these roads...most dating from long before the Romans. England has a tradition of a network of lanes as structures with boundaries and surfaces going back to well before the Romans. They are extremely ancient, and have serviced a population that was dense before the Christian era. The fact that a road exists at all attests to its continued heavy use since the surface area is always more fertile than the surrounding area, and without traffic the whole would disappear under heavy thorn in 10 years.
A rabbit bounds across the road. This species was introduced by the Normans in the 11th Century along with Fallow Deer and pheasants. It was at first a gentle creature, not even knowing how to dig its own burrow, but after centuries of proliferation, then Myxomatosis in the 50’s, the current creature is a survivor: hardy and anti-social!
We visit Iford Manor near Bradford in the afternoon on our way north. This is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. Harold Peto, an architect heavily influenced by the Italian Revival, built it as his own in the early years of the 1900’s. There are walls, terraces, columns, cloisters, statues, and incredible beauty wherever one castes ones eye. This was his intent as he designed the house and garden together. (It was Harold Peto who gave my partner’s grandfather advise at Inwoods when he was an old man just after the first great war.) We approached the manor down a long hill and then over a humped bridge decorated with a statue of Britannica. Wisteria line the main house with trunks that are so immense they have to be held up with chains. We parked in a field on the edge of the river. We are finally in Worcester and ensconced in the new cottage in the evening. The owners are very kind, provide movies, eggs (they have chickens), milk, advise on local Gardens, and join in our tired hilarity. Pam and I watch 2 hours of Jane Eyre in the evening and then pass out.
Friday May 5, 2011
Grey today but clearing. We go to Tintinhull Gardens and East Lambrook...
Tomorrow we drive to Worcester to our second cottage. It will be a squash in the car..and we’ll stop on the way in Bradford to see Iford Manor and to have lunch.
Yesterday we were in Wells. The Cathedral is spectacular as ever. Marvellous organ and “cross hatched” area where an enormous sculpture of Christ on the cross hangs just below the ceiling. Impressive alter drapes, plus a large wooden box of many centuries in age that contained the priestly capes, called a “Cope Box.” I looked for the beautiful stairs to the second floor and discovered it closed but there. I had begun to wonder whether my memory was playing tricks. St. Cuthberts Church earlier has a most gorgeous painted ceiling, a copy of what was there many centuries ago.
Lunch near the Gate to the Bishop’s Palace, and then the group disappeared within. I looked for a place with WiFi, got distracted by a dress shop, and never did find the internet. Certainly it wasn’t at the library. The ladies escaped the guide in the Palace towards the end of the tour, shopped and met up happy later with the addition of scarfs and sweaters..
This is a beautiful country where there is not much true “natural landscape” after millennia of domestication. This rural domestication is full of people... I read that the roads and lanes that one encounters in this landscape are mostly archaic in age, often probably dating from the bronze age or before. The straight Roman Roads came in later and often appear as “red” roads on our modern maps. There are few new ones. Likewise the banks and hedgerows, although some date from the Enclosure Act of the 1700’s. You take a stretch of hedgerow, count the woody stems (not brambles or clematis) and multiply by 110 and you arrive at a date BP. This is not exact but close to. Even before the Romans this countryside was densely populated, only really being set back during the plague years around 1300.
Wednesday May 4, 2011
We drive to Cothay Manor and on the way stop in South Moulton to get various necessities. Susan her card reader, someone else cash at Barclays, me shampoo, and Lorraine, our guide, wandered... As Lorraine is want to do, she stopped at a sign saying John Houre Artist. It was a residence. She knocked and asked to see the paintings and he let her in. When I found her she was deep in animated conversation in the kitchen at the back of the house with the entire family. We honked initially, no response and I went in....was hugged and kissed and told to bring in the rest. “We have a garden that you must see,” Jacqueline said. “It is high up, above the house.” She is a tall woman, taller than I, over weight with a lovely face that reminded me of someone...Full of animation. We all trooped through the house to the garden at the back which was indeed high up. One followed a path laced overhead with climbing roses. “We put this in over the last 20 years,” she confided. “There was nothing before. Last week my 7 boys came back for Easter and they played cricket here! Can you believe it? They broke my vase and I was so angry!” Roses everwhere, along with two pears, one apple, clematis and all manner of plants. For me, the so so-gardener, much of it went in one ear and out the other. All this in the centre of town! They came from Ireland, via Oxfordshire, and John gives workshops in painting all over Europe and also in their residence here. This summer they’ll be back in Italy. When we left we were kissed again and departed, with promises to come again.
I tease Lorraine mercilessly. Only she can meet anyone. Only she has people fluttering like butterflies around her as she smiles and talks and talks.
We arrived at Cothay Manor, down endless roads one foot wider than our vehicle and banked ten feet on either side. With a moat in front, Cothay was probably built around 1300 and is now the property of Alistair and Mary Ann Robb. We met Mary Ann when I asked again to go in the house (first time refused). At this point we hadn’t the time. The garden was spectacular and composed of many divisions/rooms, sculptures, box wood hedges, etc, with wisteria, clematis and roses clinging to the rock walls of the building. It has a most ancient demeaner and one has the feeling that the family is barely keeping up with maintenance, the cost of which must be immense.
Later at Dulverton, the Gateway to Exmoor, the sun was going down and all was closed. I was sorry that we had gotten behind and were not able to stop. We had stopped earlier in Dunstan (near the coast) for dinner. Dulverton is lovely, many shops, built up and down, an ancient church, and the abode of my partner’s sister who owns many hundreds of acres up the hill.
But now the sun fell out of the sky, turning the hills and sky red, and we arrived back in our village for herbal tea and showers.
Tuesday May 3, 2011
A sunny day this morning and the horses in the field next to the cottage are still grazing wrapped in their blankets. Last night they were disinterested in our apple peelings! They are fat and well fed, and would no doubt have better things! We made a huge pasta with salad and drifted in and out to the horses in the evening, to the sound of the TV pontificating ad nauseum re Ben Laden. Tired and tipsy, it became a hilarious evening.
No idea what has happened in Canada re the election...We’ll find out soon enough.
Hestercombe was idyllic, situated as it is deep in the rolling hills and surrounded by cows grazing and flocks of lambs playing. It is a gorgeous garden, lots of walls and brick..and the plants I cannot tell you about for I am not the gardener that the others are! I managed to get online for the first time in 4 days.
John Leach’s pottery is interesting and he has a most beautiful studio in the countryside near the comfortable village of Muchelney. Earth coloured stone ware of all sorts along with a gallery of art ceramics in the back. The village has been widely restored and we went into the Priest’s House, built originally in about the 12th C. Now an interesting rug restorer and his wife live there as tenants, and we were taken around. The last addition were stairs put in around 1900 by an architect of the Arts and Crafts persuasion. We had to drag Lorraine out, who tenaciously discussed textiles (a former life)! The church was interestingly late in date, only the 1600’s, and had an extremely beautiful painted ceiling that was reminiscent a later period before the turn of the 20th C.
Everyone is keen to eat in the cottage which makes evening meals cheap. I thought to read a great deal, but seem to be socializing instead...
Sunday May 1, 2011
Knowstone, Devon
It is the end of a wonderful day! I notice that I have not written anything since we first arrived and this was levelled by exhaustion.
We awoke to clouds, wind and spotting rain. Then tea, coffee and eggs, ham and asparagus, created by Lorraine. There is a lot of room in this large cottage and most of us have our own room. The kitchen is immense with a large pine table in the middle, laden now with flowers, fruit and wine glasses. We all get on very well and there is a lot of laughter.
It was late when we set out for Rosemoor Gardens following back roads and our new GPS became confused early, taking us to some other “South Molten” in Scotland. Rather late we noticed, and re-directed her. For the rest of the day, untrusting and irritated, I questioned all her directions... Anyway, we eventually arrived at the magnificent Gardens and bought memberships. Lorraine took everyone off to walk to the Woodland Gardens and I attempted to get on the internet in the main office. No luck and I gave up. Bought presents. Had a coffee and then set out for the woodland area to find everyone. There are the most sublime rhodos here, a wonderful walnut tree with enormous nuts on the ground..., marvellous trees that not being a gardener like Lorraine I cannot name, but I hugely enjoyed taking photographs.
Later we drove to Appledore and wandered on the narrow back lanes. This ancient port is of pre-Celtic origin. There was a Saxon settlement here in 878AD and it prospered in the Elizabethan period. At the end of the 1700’s New Brunswick timber was imported here for boat building and this revolutionized the guay in the centre. We admired a beautiful Madame Gregoire Rose that grew to second floor height out of a small wooden tub!! Had fish and chips in a little cafe and ran across the road to purchase beer and wine, taking it back to the cafe slopping and dripping en route. Half a block down, a tiny ancient pub pulsed with fiddle music. Very little room to sit down and no food, but only beer and nibbles. This pub existed at the turn of the 1800’s.
Walked and walked and eventually returned to the cottage where we drank wine and plotted activities for the morning.
Wonderful day!
Saturday April 30, 2011
We arrive at Heathrow to pick up the group a little delayed since we are unable at first to lock the new vehicle. However, we succeed and then it is a long wait for all the flights from Canada are very delayed.
We arrive at Inwoods to see the carpets of blueberries by 4pm and spend an hour and a half walking in the woods and up the ride. Everyone is very impressed by the "Hidden Garden" and its tree sized rhodos and enormous towering Handkerchief Tree. Judith makes tea and cookies and we finally bid a happy farewell.
We arrive at Valley Rise in Knowstone, Devon, about 8pm. A long day for all!!
Friday April 29, 2011 ROYAL WEDDING
It is impossible to extricate ourselves from the television this morning. Lot of tea and chocolate! Very simple ceremony and lots of "others" views on dresses, hair styles, hats............etc.....................
Thursday April 28, 2011 "Inwoods" Bradford On Avon
Lorraine and I arrived after a short red eye flight from Halifax, picked up the car from an efficient rental agency and drove down to the house. It was very fast and effortless. The countryside is lush and beautiful, the weather warm...What a day! After a large meal and a glass of wine and a long walk in the woods, we were flagging...and passed out around 9:30pm.
Ten hours later we had a large coffee and walked out into the woods. 100 acres of trees: along with great swaths of bluebells, 30 varieties of wild flowers, mixed woods, Hitler's Birthday Present times 3, Jud's Tomb, etc....Marvelous. Deer everywhere and weather warm.
Later we acquired a new GPS for the car and drove around testing it out! Visited Iford Manor and Prior Park, various pubs, the city of Bradford on Avon... We are resting today. Tomorrow we will drive to the south and Exmoor. Tonight we go to sleep early. Everyone comes into London on Saturday and there will be time for our explorations.
