Thursday June 16th.
We leave for home tomorrow and are sad as usual to leave. This is very nearly my favourite place in England, certainly favourite countryside. This ancient house sits on hundreds of acres of fields and woods. Friendly heifers fill one field in particular and the woods enclose “Hitler’s Xmas Presents: 3 large craters the result of 3 bombs dropped in mid December of 1943”, also Jud’s Tomb (stone age archaeological burial site), many ancient walls, a service tree from which the Romans made a beer by fermenting the leaves, spring carpets of bluebells, enormous trees and a long ride up the middle.
My friend Lorraine, partner in our Garden Tour business, writes with 3 new cottages for me to check out. I can only do one today, here in Bradford on Avon and on a lock. (see above) We will do a drive by. Perhaps we can use this next spring when we organize an April spring tour to this part of the world. After one week in this region, we will do a back to back Garden Tour in Sussex. Lorraine suggests gardens for this fall. Most we have been to already but there are some new ones. Annie, Hal’s sister who did Garden Tours for several years has suggested some more, specifically Lady Farm in the Bath area.
I am writing to the members of my next tour to Sable Island. We leave in a week for Canso...It seems far away in time, as does the day of arrival two weeks ago, and yet it is not...It will also be over before it has begun..
Monday June 13th
We have driven to Cheltenham to the Science Fair and Hal gave his talk along with the group convened to talk about whales. They did magnificently, seamlessly and the tents were bulging with a sold out audience. We stayed in a hotel that required two PhD’s just to access the lights and bath tub! No joke! I spent 20 minutes trying to determine in what devise the telephone was hidden, and then another 20 minutes trying to use it to call the main desk. Accidently I hit on the right sequence of buttons and ordered tea...only to discover later that there was coffee hidden in one of the rooms “secret” compartments. The water would not exit from the tub... It poured with rain, and horizontal sheets of it hit the sides of the tents.
Fortunately the local village fete had been on Saturday, a day dry, sunny and warm. Lots of dogs, kids, babies, families, ancient cars, games, pimms (an alcoholic drink topped with mint and strawberries), a wellie throw, cakes, etc...and the addition of a table with exotic animals such as raccoons!
Of course, it is my birthday, and dinner at the Poplars: an ancient pub on the way to Rodes where a manor house in the village is the site of an internationally acclaimed murder in 1860. A sign reads in the entrance to the Poplars that one should leave ones cutlass, pistol and/or sword with the Innkeeper for safekeeping.
Friday June 10th
We are here relaxing. Got in last night and walked the gardens in ecstasy, the smell of rapeseed and cut grass in my nostrils. One week to unwind although up ‘till now i’ve been doing a good job of this!
Thursday June 9th
The food at Roger’s was as good as ever, perhaps better. It is a good thing the stay was brief for these visits cause a prodigious calorie retention per day!! Lots of talk. The “Slow Food Tour” is very exciting, but we have not narrowed down the itinerary and are not sure of the duration: possibly one week to ten days. Further, this time we will advertise in Britain. It will be based on our Garden Tours with the rental of a cottage for a week, thus centralizing the daily trips out from the cottage and decreasing the time spent traveling.
It is my birthday on Monday and we celebrated by consuming a large bottle of bubbly, followed by another. We ate our way through the evening talking hard, and fell into bed at 11pm
At breakfast we discussed the many varieties of home made bread Roger makes, the tea they buy, and the bottle of rapeseed oil, cold pressed, that sits along with varieties of olive oil on the counter. The blossoming fields of rapeseed here are nearly over, but a month ago brilliant yellow fields of the grain spread to the horizon. The scent was overpowering and the affect of the pollen extreme on those allergic. I love it. Rapeseed oil, he says, is full of good things, possibly better than olive oil, but he prefers olive oil and its flavour. I decide to buy some for home.
The train leaves Northampton station and Hal phones. He is back from trekking and is catching the plane for Oslo. The fields are full of barley. Beautiful Bradford on Avon and Judith waiting to pick me up.
Wednesday June 8th
I write this from Birmingham bus depot. I have another half hour to wait as I change to my bus to Northampton. The cost of this trip is 10 GBP. Tomorrow I will take the train to Bradford on Avon and the cost is not much more. This is a spectacular depot. It must be new. There are many seats, a Starbucks, food, etc...Many of the depots in Britain no longer sell tickets and one must buy them online and print off the receipts....displaying them upon boarding. But not here. I’m not impressed by Birmingham, but this is not a surprise.
Tonight I will stay with other cousins. I look forward to seeing Roger and Chris again. I seldom miss them on my perambulations in Britain. They are family also and live in a glorious tiny village surrounded by fields, cheek to jowl with the neighbours and little cottages across the way, but surrounded at the front with a tiny lovely garden: flowers hanging from the roof, the wall, everywhere. They cook superbly and their house is very cozy. Roger is in charge of our “Slow Food Tour to Dorset” in the autumn of 2012. He has done a lot of research and we will talk about it tonight. Roger knows a lot about my father’s family history and this is always part of the agenda. This stay will be brief. Perhaps I’ll get back in September after our next garden tour.
I also look forward to seeing Hal, my partner, again. He has been at a conference in Norway and is trekking today. Tomorrow he flies into Heathrow late at night and goes down to Inwoods late. I will arrive in the late afternoon. The roses should be blossoming in the south. There were so many buds 3 weeks ago, more than I have ever seen before.
There is a science fair and conference in Cheltenham on the weekend. Hal will deliver a couple of talks. Perhaps I can be inspired to do a new tour to some other wonderful part of the world. The last time I went to one of these, I met someone who will work with me on the Namibia Tour of 2013.
Monday June 6th. 2011
I am leaving, and sitting rather than stand in the long snaking line of the departure lounge. Pete dropped me off and we had a long chatty drive here this early morning. It has been a lovely visit. A friend’s barbeque nearby...X Pats from Canada with two beautiful girls in the International school in Groningan. We have looked at towns, and had a barbeque of our own outside last night just as thunder blew in from the south. It rained later in the night leaving a marvellous scent outside. Pete talks of the next job in Vienna: the largest pipeline job ever done and the biggest job for him. It would be 5 years. Then he would retire. I don’t believe him!
Into London by train, and then up to Manchester and Mellor to the south. My cousin Margaret picked me up and we celebrated at the house with large glasses of white wine. They are family and it is good to see them...and so many of them. Two cousins here, many offspring with even more grandchildren and one on the way.
Margaret and I go to see Lyme Park nearby. This is a beautiful and grand house, the rear complete with columns and looking out over a man made lake and orangery. It rained and we wandered the apartments for 3 hours. Mary Queen of Scots stayed here and her room is supposedly haunted. There has been renovation but not excessive and one can touch the past in a way such buildings sometimes encourage. One of the versions of Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth, was made here. I am told that he leapt into the lake. As we left, Margaret said that her Dad (my mother’s brother) would bring them here in winter when she was young. “There was always snow” she said, “and he’d bring us here to toboggan on the slopes. It was wonderful.” She pointed to the gentle slopes to the right as we slowly inched our way out of the open park land and approached the gate. We have a get together in the evening with Christine and her husband and Margaret and Petes’ son Robert and his wife Emily...Lots of fun. There are 3 little red haired grandsons, “real” boys who run rampant through the house and fly their paper aeroplanes from the deck into the garden. They are beautiful. The youngest at 3 is an expert on cars and can name them all!
Sunday June 5th, 2011It was a reasonable flight to Heathrow. I got in on Friday morning and had a coffee and adapted to being back in England. The underground was an hour to Liverpool St. Station and I rolled my suitcase, not hindered inordinately by stairs. There are long stretches of escalators ascending to the main station. I left my bag at “left luggage” at Liverpool and got on the train for Stansted Airport. I forget how long this train ride was, possibly 45 minutes....and then an interminably long wait at the airport. I won’t waste this sort of time again. The Ryanair crossing to Bremen took an hour and fifteen minutes, and my brother Pete and his wife Katalina were there to meet me. No change, but it has only been a year and a half since I last saw them at our family wedding in Mellor, south of Manchester. Pete is in charge of environmental, and all safety on a pipeline project near Papenburg. The drive took an hour and a half through the gloom and then dark. We drove into town to the Ascension celebration going on in the centre and at 11:30pm bought beer and walked down the canal and back, sipping, talking, watching the lights burning in open oil lamps on the ground. The shock of the cultural difference! So German it was, and somehow I was not prepared. I had not begun to think of being in Germany and of seeing anything remotely different. So attuned I’d been to the visit itself and wanting to be with my brother again.
There are canals everywhere in this low lying country and they eventually link to the sea. In the winter the wind howls across the land, hurtling down from the North Sea. It is the wind that is cold for there is no snow. In the spring the fields produce acres of colour: tulips, lavender. The air is full of scent.
Also boats, everywhere boats. These are used to live in and to transport goods to the sea. At Papenburg the Joseph L. Meyer shipyard employs a large part of the town population to make cruise ships that are sent all over the world. We are beneath sea level here and dykes keep the salt water away from previously flooded large stretches of land. The fields are marshy and wet, and continuously drained for all the fields have ditches and must manage their soil and test their water
An hour’s drive to the west in Groningan, Holland, there is a University. One sees tourists, bikes, and large areas free from vehicles, young people walking...We sat in a large square, sampled beer and ate fresh Atlantic cod fried in deep oil as well as raw and pickled.
The sun shone. I had indeed brought the good weather, although I am not sure from where!
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