A Walk Around Buckingham

The weather forecast yesterday morning was decent so I took it as my morning off from archive work and M and I went to Buckingham for our walk. This is another town on our short list of possible places to move to in a few years. We know it well as my mother lived there for twenty years, and we might well have decided to settle there ourselves when we moved out of London nearly thirty years ago if it had been easier to commute as M was still working in London. In the end we came here to south-west Bedfordshire where we are in easy walking distance of a railway station. 

Buckingham is a bit larger than Towcester, and also a historic town although not quite as ancient. The Old Gaol in the middle of town is now a museum and tourist information centre. Although built in the style of a medieval castle, it actually only dates back to the mid-18th century. 

I have walked past the house below many times, but had never noticed the detail in the plasterwork until a heritage trail I found online pointed it out. It seems I don't look up often enough! If you look closely, you can see that the pictures are sunflowers. 

Like the Old Gaol, the church is not as old as it looks. It was built after tower and spire of the previous church collapsed in 1776 at a higher site on Castle Hill from where it overlooks the town. The site was once occupied by an Anglo-Saxon fort, and the later Anglo-Saxon kings established Buckingham as an administrative centre for the shire (county) named after the town. The Normans also had a castle here, but it seems to have demolished or fallen into ruins at quite an early date - possibly in the early 13h century. My mother was a very active member of this church for many years until she moved to be closer to us just before she turned eighty. 

The old churchyard is down the hill from the church. This holly tree was almost dripping with berries - a little piece of winter in amongst the early autumn foliage of the trees. 

In the evening we had another socially distanced band rehearsal, and recorded a number of Christmas carols - the seasons really are tumbling over each other. We are planning to put out a virtual Christmas concert jointly with a local choir, and need the carols so that choir and audience can sing along. As we have no idea for how long it will possible to rehearse in person, we took advantage of the opportunity to get the recording in the bag while we can. While we can record things individually at home, it is very time consuming for our techie expert to put all the recordings together into a full band version. 

Today's walk was in the late afternoon, when it was at least dry, even though it was still very dull and felt as though it was threatening more rain. Autumn seems to be coming fast now, with much more colour in the trees then when we walked along this same stretch of the canal tow path a few days ago. After we got back I took TG to her dance class, then came home and cooked stir fry for dinner. She has a geography test tomorrow and wanted me to test her on the causes of coastal erosion and the various possible options for mitigating it. H is still mostly closeted in her room either on work training calls or studying.