The Cotswolds: Day 1

Over the last month we have done a lot of playing catch up with things that had been postponed due to lock down. The last of them - I think! - was a night away, using a gift voucher that R gave for Christmas 2019. Yes, that long ago!  The arrangements turned into something of a saga. We decided we would like to go to the Cotswolds - not too far from home, so no long drive, but always lovely. The first hotel we booked cancelled as they had double booked. We rebooked into a Holiday Inn near Warwick, then on Thursday night decided to look at Trip Advisor reviews. It was a good thing we did, not because there were bad reviews, but because there was a review posted the previous day complaining that a booking had been cancelled because the hotel was being used as a quarantine hotel for people flying in from red list countries. M phoned and the hotel verified this. It also turned out they did not have any record of our booking. Oops! We had booked through the voucher company, and something clearly went very wrong. 

We decided that as we had already arranged for R to have TG to stay overnight on Friday we would make a last minute booking of our own and then try to unravel the voucher mess later, and booked in to a hotel in Banbury, about an hour's drive from home. We stopped off on the way for a wander around the town of Brackley, where we found a nice park with a lake and a group of geese pretending to be statues - we had to watch closely to spot any of them moving! After that we headed for Upton House, a National Trust property about 15 minutes the other side of Banbury. We had lunch in the cafe before exploring the house and grounds. 

It was bought in the 1920s by the owner of the Shell oil company, who decorated it in Arts and Crafts style, filled it with collections of art and china and bequeathed it to the National Trust in his will, with the provision that it should be left as it was so that the public could share his own enjoyment in the house and its contents. 

After puttering around the garden we went back to the cafe. Fortified with tea/coffee and cake we then went for a walk in the local countryside. Most National Trust properties have suggested local walks of various lengths - this time we picked the shortest as it was already mid-afternoon and the car park closed at 5.30. The highlight was this view from an escarpment looking over the site of the Battle of Edge Hill (the first major battle in the Civil War between Royalists and Parliamentarians, which took place in 1642). Apparently on a clear day it is possible to see 40 miles across to the Malvern Hills. 

 

After our walk we headed to Banbury and dinner at our hotel, which was originally an inn built in the 17th century, now much extended but still with the old inn at its centre. The hotel has quite a history. King James II stayed there in 1687, and Jonathan Swift stayed there while writing Gulliver's Travels - he took the name of Gulliver from a tombstone at the church on the opposite side of the road. Also one of the rooms was used as a secret meeting place for Catholic priests during penal times.  

We packed quite a lot into Saturday, so I'll put that into another post. In other news all our young folk have now had their first dose of Covid vaccines, except TG who is too young as the UK is currently only vaccinating over 18s. R and H and R's boyfriend all had Moderna, which hasn't been widely available in the UK until recently, and H's boyfriend had Pfizer. H came over this evening to watch the new Disney movie Luca with us. It is set on the Ligurian coast of Italy, where H spent her year abroad in 2018/19, so that was quite fun, although as it was an animated movie with a fictional location we didn't exactly recognise anywhere! It did mention H's university city of Genova though. She brought strawberries and chocolate with her, and we have concluded that strawberries with melted chocolate may be the ultimate movie snack!

Weather Extremes & Afternoon Tea

This week has been very much a game of two halves as far as the weather is concerned. Monday and Tuesday were hot, and the forecast temperature was so high on Wednesday that we decided to set off early for a walk while it was still relatively cool. We visited a stretch of the Grand Union canal we had never walked before, starting at Cosgrove in Northamptonshire, walking down to Wolverton at the northern extreme of Milton Keynes and back. We parked up at Cosgrove and were slightly startled to find that our route to the canal towpath went under the canal through this tunnel. It was built to be wide enough for horses, so not as narrow as it looks in the picture - we were glad we were not tall though!  

The canal is carried over the river by a short aqueduct. The "Iron Trunk Aqueduct" was built in 1811 after the previous brick aqueduct collapsed, and was a pioneering piece of engineering at the time. Lovely views, particularly on a sunny day. 

We got as far as the derelict buildings which were once a huge railway works before turning round and adding in a loop round by the River Ouse back to the aqueduct. This pool where the river widened looked as though it could be good for wild swimming - nice and clear, though I don't know what the depth would be like.  I have a friend who goes swimming in the river a bit further upstream, but I'm not sure I am brave enough! 

By Wednesday evening it was both very hot and very humid, with a sticky night making it difficult to sleep. We bought a fan for TG's room as we could only find one - an old one disintegrated last year and I thought we had replaced it, but apparently not. Thursday was cooler with some rain, then Friday was chilly with heavy rain all day. Hard to believe it had been so warm only two days earlier! 

R had given us a voucher last Christmas for afternoon tea at the Luton Hoo Hotel, which we had booked for Friday. Built as a country house by the Earl of Bute in the 18th century, it is now a 5 star luxury hotel. M had been once before, but this was my first visit. I had the vegan tea and M the standard one with slightly tweaked sandwiches (he doesn't eat ham or cheese). There were four sandwiches each, two scones with jam and cream, and four little cakes, and of course plenty of tea! We were too full to eat all the cakes, so brought the leftovers home for TG. When we finished it was raining fairly heavily. As the car park is a few minutes walk from the hotel, the doorman offered us a lift to our car in the hotel taxi, which was driven round and we were courteously ushered into it under the protection of a golf umbrella - definitely the luxury touch. We are not used to chauffeurs and uniformed doormen treating us like royalty! Getting back to the car dry was definitely a bonus. 

Today has been mostly dry, but it is still cold enough to have needed extra layers. We managed a short walk this morning without getting rained on, and this evening M is working. TG is studying hard as she has exams at school all next week. The school are calling them mock (practice) GCSEs, though I suppose in reality they are pre-mocks as she will have another set in the winter before sitting the actual exams next spring. I think she is mostly bogged down in science, as she is taking physics, chemistry and biology as separate subjects and each has lots to remember.  

A Warm and Mostly Lazy Weekend

After my long day out on Thursday I had a lazy weekend. On Saturday I had a rare few hours home alone, as M was working and H took TG out for a shopping exhibition to spend birthday money. It was another warm weekend, so I caught up on a few things then spent most of the afternoon hanging out in the hammock, listening to an audio book. There may have been a gin cocktail later on.     

On Sunday morning we went for a three mile walk round the canal and woods, before it got too hot. Everything is still beautifully green, early summer at its best. We saw a swan family on the canal for the first time this year - I think it may be the same parents as last year's swan family, as they same nest was occupied a month or so back. 

When we got back I helped TG to put up LED strip lights in her bedroom. She had asked for them for her birthday, and I had been procrastinating as I thought it might be complicated (there were some odd looking clips in the box I wasn't sure what to do with). Once we started it couldn't have been easier, as it was just a case of peeling off backing paper and sticking the strips to the wall. There were two strips of lights, which we ran up the corner by her bed and then round the room. We didn't have quite enough, with a 12 to 18 inch gap in the far corner - fortunately this was over the wardrobe, so she just put some bags on top of the wardrobe to hide the corner. The end result looks very impressive. The lights can be set to different colours and / or changing patterns. When combined with her galaxy light, she has quite a spectacular light show! 

A walk followed by standing on a step-ladder in a warm room reaching up to the ceiling for quite a while was tiring, so in the afternoon I went back to the hammock and watched most of England's opening match in the Euros against Croatia on my phone. Today I was back working in the archives again for the first time since mid-May. The office was warm, but I managed to escape upstairs occasionally to the temperature controlled storage area to cool down. This evening we went out for TG's birthday meal, which had been postponed from last week because R had to self-isolate. It was the first time all five of us had been out to eat together since just before the first lockdown last year - another lovely bit of normal. 

A Prehistoric Day: Part 2

So, Stonehenge. While numbers are limited tickets have to be booked for a half hour entry time slot, and mine was 2 to 2.30pm. There is a large, relatively new visitor centre (opened in 2013), with a permanent exhibition, shop, cafe and reproduction late neolithic houses. When I arrived it was raining slightly, so I decided to visit the indoor exhibition first. As well as the permanent exhibition on the history of the henge and the other prehistoric features in the landscape (lots of barrows, mostly of later date than the stones), there was an exhibition of photographs sent in by members of the public showing people enjoying visits to Stonehenge over the decades. Until 1978 there was open access to the stones - I remember playing on and around them when I visited as a child - but the sheer number of visitors meant that for their protection they had to be roped off. 

The visitor centre is more than a mile away from the henge, with a shuttle bus service available. I decided to do the 30 minute walk, to get more of a sense of the landscape. It had stopped raining, but there was still some ominous looking cloud when I reached the stones. Fortunately it cleared while I was there and the sun had come out by the time I left. 

It seems almost certain that the point of Stonehenge was to allow celebrations of the summer and winter solstices. The single stone in the picture above is the heel stone, which points directly through a gap in the centre of the henge to the setting sun on the winter solstice. Looking the other way, at the summer solstice the sun rises behind the heel stone. 

To help with social distancing there is currently a one way system leading clockwise around the circle of stones. When I reached the opposite point I managed to get a photo pointing exactly towards the summer solstice sunrise. The tall stone with the bump on the top is the remaining upright of the central trilothon inside the outer circle. Its partner and the lintel have both fallen, but the line leading through what was the  centre of this trilothon to the heel stone (which you can see in the distance just to the right of the upright) formed the axis along which the solstice sun rises and sets. 

English Heritage has put together a good audio tour of the stones, the exhibition and the landscape, available as a phone app.  I had downloaded the app before I went and took AirPods with me so that I could listen as I walked around. One thing I learned is that the back is scruffier than the front. The builders were very careful to make the front of the henge smart, but were more careless about the back and put less effort into cutting the stones smoothly.  

At the end of the circuit of the stones I sat on a bench for a while, enjoying the sun and the view. According to my Watch I had walked 7.5 miles by then and my legs decided they didn't fancy walking back so I took the shuttle bus back to the visitor centre. I bought myself a couple of pencils and a key ring in the shop as useful souvenirs and fuelled up on coffee before heading home. I possibly had just enough juice left in the car battery to make it home, but decided to make a quick charging stop at nearby Amesbury just to be on the safe side. A ten minute top up was all it needed and I made it home in just over 2 hours. Such a treat of a day, rounding off a busy but very enjoyable couple of weeks. Five months of lockdown, and now it seems as though everything is happening at once! 

A Prehistoric Day: Part 1

Way back in December I booked to visit Stonehenge, but had to cancel the trip when we went back into lockdown. Yesterday I finally made the trip, six months late! With hindsight, the delay was a good thing. I have read more about prehistoric Britain, so was more clued up about what I was seeing, the weather was a lot better, and I was able to drive in daylight. I went on my own, as M is not interested in the history and going alone meant I could explore at my own pace without worrying about him being bored! 

I decided that if I got an early start I would have time to explore the prehistoric landscape at Avebury in the morning and Stonehenge in the afternoon. It took me 2 hours to drive to Avebury and I arrived just before 10. I remember going there as a child, stopping off for a break when we drove to Cornwall to visit relatives, but I don't think I have been there since. The whole area is a UNESCO world heritage site, with good reason. Avebury itself is a small village built both around and amongst the remains of the stone circle, which is the largest in the world. Many of the stones are missing - some were broken up to use as building stone for the village - but many have been replaced by concrete posts, to give an idea of where they would have been. The perimeter stones are huge, dwarfing anybody who stands next to them - I should think maybe 15 feet tall? 

The stone circle has an out ring of tall stones, with two smaller circular henges within it, all surrounded by a ditch and bank earthwork. It was built around 2850BC, and added to and altered over the next 600 years. An avenue of stones joined it to another area known as the Sanctuary, which is even older. 

After exploring the stone circle I walked down the avenue, though not as far as the Sanctuary - I didn't have time to do everything in a single day. Part way along I turned right, walked over a hill and towards another of the area's spectacular prehistoric features - Silbury Hill. This man made mound was built around 2400BC, over a period of about 120 years. It is estimated to have taken 4 million man hours to create, and to have needed about half a million tons of material (mostly chalk). Nobody really knows why it was built. It wasn't a burial chamber and there is no obvious purpose. It was clearly a communal effort involving people over several generations and from many locations - maybe that in itself was a large part of the point of it? 

The National Trust owns this land and much of it is now wildflower meadow, which judging by the amount of birdsong was home to a lot of skylarks. Even without the historic surroundings it would have been a lovely walk. I didn't go all the way Silbury Hill, but turned left and walked along the hedge in the photo above, heading for the other site I very much wanted to visit - West Kennet Long Barrow. Again, I have hazy memories of visiting as a child, but had not been back since. (Rather oddly, although I remember the stone circle and West Kennet, I have no memory at all of Silbury Hill, which is very prominently visible from the long barrow). 

To say this place was worth the walk is an understatement. Built around 3650BC, it is a thousand years older than the Great Pyramid. About 50 people were buried there, in small chambers just inside the entrance - most of the barrow itself is simply an earthwork. The stones at the end hide a small courtyard in front of the entrance. 

The barrow took my breath away. Cold, old, quiet stone. Even after all this time entering feels an intrusion. I met people coming and going along the path, but was alone when I went in. I didn't have a sense of anything fearful about it, just a sense of awe. 

A couple of small sky lights have been put into the roof, otherwise it would be dangerously dark away from the entrance. The chambers were hard to see in the dim light, but the camera on my phone showed me the detail - the picture below shows the only chamber that had a central stone. I loved that in a couple of places people had left bunches of wildflowers. 

When I left the barrow I walked back to Avebury in search of lunch.from the National Trust cafe before heading for Stonehenge ... I'll write about that tomorrow. 

Thames Path: Kew Bridge to Fulham

We had planned to walk the next leg of the Thames Path through London on Sunday, but were too tired after doing lots of walking in Brighton and spending the day before on the boat. This is my week for working at home and as I didn't have anything time critical to do I managed to rearrange it so we could walk on Monday instead. 

We took the train down to Shepherd's Bush, then caught a bus to Kew Bridge. Fortified with a coffee we set off at about 12pm (to get cheap train tickets we can't catch a train from our local station until after 10). The first section was along Strand-by-the-Green in Chiswick, where Georgian houses look over the Thames. The area is obviously prone to flooding, as many had gates and walls obviously intended for flood protection. One of the beautiful things about yesterday's walk was the number of profusely flowering, scented rose bushes we passed. 

After the Strand-on-the-Green the path went inland onto a road for a while, then back to the river and past a couple of boathouses. We stopped after a mile and a half to eat a picnic lunch overlooking the river. A lot of the path was very green. I think the picture below was taken as we were walking through Dukes Meadows, a public park in Chiswick. 

It was hot and we were thirsty, so after walking along Chiswick Mall we stopped at The Black Lion for a refreshing glass of Pimms and lemonade - a bonus of taking the train was that we could have an alcoholic drink! We reached Hammersmith and passed William Morris's home, Kelmscott House, which is now owned by the William Morris Society and open to the public some of the time. Probably to M's relief it was closed! A little further on we also passed the site of the Dove Press, operated by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson. 

The story of Dove Press is an intriguing one. Around the turn of the 20th century Cobden-Sanderson designed a type face of particular clarity and beauty, but following a dispute with his business partner he decided to destroy it. Under cover of darkness he took all the metal type to Hammersmith Bridge and tipped it into the Thames. Occasional pieces of type were found by mudlarks (I learned this story from Lara Maiklem's book Mudlarking) and a few years ago a dive was organised to find as many further pieces of the type as possible. The Doves Press typeface was recreated and is now available as a digital font. 

We walked on towards Hammersmith Bridge, resisting the temptation to stop for another drink at a riverside pub - to be fair, we probably only resisted because we were aiming to get a particular train home!  Hammersmith Bridge is currently closed for repairs, so we had to skirt round the end of the bridge instead of under it. 

Towards the end of the walk we passed a statue which turned out to be the great 18th century landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown. One of his most famous gardens is one of our favourite local National Trust properties, Stowe - though the scale of Stowe makes calling it a garden very much an understatement. Soon after Capability Brown we found an unexpected bonus in the form of an ice cream stall. I have decided to try eating mostly plant-based again so opted for a vegan coconut cream and apricot ice, which M had his usual plain vanilla. We ended this leg at The Crabtree pub in Fulham, caught a bus up to West Brompton station and were home soon after 5 o'clock. 

In other news yesterday was TG's 15th birthday - hard to believe! We had planned to go out for a family meal in the evening, but R is in self-isolation. She spent the weekend before last in London catching up with a group of old school friends, then after they got home one of them tested positive for Covid. Fortunately R and the others all seem to be fine, and all being well her isolation should be over tomorrow. TG decided she would  rather postpone the meal than go without R, but H came over for a while in the evening to wish her happy birthday and to make plans to take her on a birthday shopping trip on Saturday. Rather than a birthday cake I made an experimental giant chocolate birthday cookie using this recipe. My icing didn't look as pretty but it tasted good - possibly because it included three large bars of chocolate!

Messing About on the River

 ... or, more accurately, the canal.

Last year we booked to hire a small narrow boat for the day with a group of friends but, inevitably, the pandemic intervened. Twice. Yesterday we finally got our day cruise at the third attempt. Most of us met originally through brass banding and it has become a friendship group that we all value highly - although we have a wide mix of ages and personalities, we share a similar sense of humour and enjoy each other's company. It is also one of those rare and valuable truly supportive groups where if anyone needs help, someone will step up and give it. 

After a rainy day on Friday the weather cleared and it was a lovely sunny day. It was a very, very slow boat - narrow boats are a very leisurely form of transport, and this one had a maximum speed considerably slower than walking pace - so we didn't get very far. We chugged up the canal for a couple of hours, stopped for a picnic lunch, then turned round and chugged back. After we handed the boat back we went to the pub next door for an early dinner. Some of us hadn't seen each other since before the winter lockdown, so it was lovely to have the opportunity to catch up.

Today we had planned to do another leg of the Thames Path through London, but after a busy week we decided we didn't have the energy and would rather have a lazy day. We did manage a walk into town and went into Waitrose to pick up a few things. When we got to the checkout we discovered they were having the day from hell as their tills were not talking to Visa, contactless payments wouldn't work at all, and card payments were being very erratic. I normally pay using Apple Pay on my phone or watch, but for once I had actually put a card in my pocket, but the machine refused to accept it. A helpful but frazzled member of staff tried various things, but in the end we had to go and find an ATM and withdraw some cash. After we got home I spent a couple of hours relaxing in the hammock in the garden. After the miserable May weather I am so enjoying being able to spend time outdoors.

Back to Brighton

Back in the depths of the miserable winter we booked a couple of nights in Brighton during the summer half term break to give ourselves something to look forward to - at least we hoped so, as there was no telling when things would be likely to reopen. Fortunately the gamble paid off, as hotels were allowed to reopen for leisure travel two weeks ago. 

We hit very lucky with the weather, apart from a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoon when it clouded over and tried (but mostly failed) to rain. The journey down wasn't fun. We have been to Brighton quite a few times, but always by train. This time we decided to drive, which meant the M25 (London orbital) motorway, which is always a bit of a gamble. There was a lot of traffic and what should have taken just over two hours took nearly four, with one short stop for coffee and something to eat. When we arrived we got stuck in more traffic near the sea front, and then struggled to find a parking space in the hotel car park.  We finally made it to the beach and did all the  proper seaside things - sitting on the beach watching the sea and enjoying the sun, strolling on the pier, eating ice creams and so on - then went out to a Greek restaurant for dinner in the evening.

Monday had been a public holiday, and when we arrived on Tuesday the beach was still very busy, with most people apparently behaving as if the pandemic was a thing of the past. The number of cases has gone up quite a bit over the last week and I can see why - however, it seems mostly to be spreading among younger, unvaccinated (or partially vaccinated) people, and so far isn't causing hospitalisations to rise too much. Whether it will stay that way is hard to tell. The new "delta" variant is driving faster transmission, but the vaccines seem to be working against it, so for the next month or two it looks as though we will be in a race between the virus and the vaccines to get to herd immunity. Fortunately vaccine take up is very high here - over 75% of adults so far has had at least one dose, and it hasn't been offered to under 30s yet. 

On Wednesday morning we walked a couple of miles along the sea front to Brighton marina, which we had never visited before. There are a lot of shops, bars and restaurants, and lots of sea front apartments. An old school friend of mine lives in Brighton, and she managed to take a break from work and meet us at a cafe for lunch. I haven't seen her properly for over 40 years, apart from briefly at a school reunion, so it was lovely to have the chance to catch up. 

After lunch we walked back, then played a game of pirate themed mini golf, which M won despite TG managing a couple of holes in one. TG, who is usually fairly cautious about the more adventurous fairground and theme park rides, decided that a trip to Brighton was not complete without a ride on the pier and surprised me by deciding that we should try out the Air Race which billed itself as an opportunity to experience "mid-air fighter pilot thrills". M does not do rides because of his back issues - and in any case can think of few things he would like less! - sat and relaxed on the pier while we queued and were then tossed and spun around for a while. Fortunately I *do* like roller coasters and so on, although I was probably at least double the age of anyone else daft enough to go on it! 

After being flung around we decided a trip back to the same ice cream stall as the day before was called for. Mine was vegan ginger nut, TG had mint choc chip and M had his usual plain vanilla. After all the walking we collapsed in our hotel room for a while, then went out to eat chicken at Nandos - vegan "chicken" for me and the real thing for the others. 

We had some supermarket club card vouchers to spend so had used those to book tickets for the Sea Life Centre for Thursday morning. We have been to Sea Life at Weymouth many times - all the girls went through stages of deciding that it was a not-to-be-missed holiday ritual - but never to Brighton. I had no idea that it was the latest reincarnation of what was originally a Victorian aquarium, complete with mock Gothic architecture. Combined with 21st century lighting effects it was quite spectacular. 

Afterwards we decided we should have another stroll along the pier. TG was then seduced by the fact that there were no queues for the end of the pier rides and asked if we could go on Air Race again. We then started dithering between Air Race and the Crazy Mouse coaster, so ended up going on both. Before leaving for home we bought fish and chips to eat on the beach - another of those things that just has to be done! On the way back the M25 was jammed up again and it took us four hours to get home. Lesson learned - we will stick to the train in future. All in all it was a short break but a good one, and although we got home tired from walking and the long drive, it recharged both physical and mental batteries.