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Oxon-Hants-Wilts: A holy house and a giant stairway.

Oxon-Hants-Wilts: A holy house and a giant stairway.

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Day 2 – Monday 17th August 2009

The hotel didn’t serve meals in the evening on a Sunday (yesterday) so we bought a Chinese Take Away and ate it in our room.

We spent a good night in a very comfortable bed. There was no apparent noise except when the traffic started to move in the early morning and that was only an occasional vehicle.

Breakfast was available in a room opposite the bar which had been, at one time, a Pizza Bar and was apparently now used only for breakfast. It was a pleasant enough room with most food laid out buffet style except for the cooked part which was cooked to order. The cooked breakfast was actually very good with a wide choice of items. The buffet was also very good and included fruit juices, cereals, fruit and pastries.

It was becoming obvious by now that, generally, there was only one person on duty at a time and they were expected to serve breakfast and look after reception. However the staff were unfailingly pleasant and well trained.

We left the hotel after breakfast bound for Lacock in Wiltshire. The journey took about an hour and just before we reached Lacock we drove round a bend onto the edge of the high ground we’d been on and there was Lacock in the valley below. Luckily there was an empty layby which enabled us to stop to take this picture. Lacock village and abbey are immediately above the red brick house in the foreground.

We drove on to Lacock, parked in the National Trust car park (free to members) and walked into the village. The National Trust own both the village and the abbey.

When we started out from Andover the sky was covered in thin cloud with an occasional blue patch showing but now the cloud had thickened with no blue sky at all. That makes photographs look very gloomy as you can see from one of the first photographs I took in the village from the churchyard.

Whilst we were having lunch the cloud became much more broken and after lunch I took the same photograph again.

Doesn’t that look much nicer than the first?

For the time being we’ll go back to our cloudy morning. As well as looking round the village we wanted to see Laycock Abbey (National Trust). Photographs in the house are generally not permitted but in parts of the original abbey, such as the cloisters, photographs are permitted and it wouldn’t matter what the weather was like outside.

On the way to the abbey we went in to this 15th Century Tithe Barn in the village. Quite an impressive structure.

Lacock Abbey was founded in 1232 as a nunnery but was, of course, dissolved by Henry VIII and in 1539 it was sold and converted into a private home. The medieval cloisters were retained and, apparently, have been used in the Harry Potter films.

One of the most famous inhabitants of the abbey was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) inventor of the negative/positive photographic process. In 1835 he created the first known example of a photographic negative taken of an oriel window in the abbey. I wonder what he would have though of my digital single lens reflex?

This shows part of the south side of the abbey with the main entrance.

After looking around the abbey we went back to the village, now that the sun was out, where I was able to take some better photographs. If only all the streets were this clear of parked vehicles. Even this street was clogged with parked vehicles earlier in the day and just chanced to be clear on this occasion.

Most of the streets seem to be clogged with parked cars and vans most of the time. The village has been used many times in ‘period’ films at which time, so I understand, all the vehicles are cleared away. I wasn’t so lucky.

There are some nice old buildings here including this one behind the church which is now a pottery although I don’t know what it might have been earlier. This area is called the Tanyard which may give a clue as to its original use.

Having seen all that we thought we could see we started back for Andover but we intended to stop off just this side of Devizes to see something unusual.

This is part of the Kennet and Avon Canal and each of those little white footbridges delineates a lock – 16 in all in this giant stairway. On this stretch of the canal there are 29 locks in the space of two miles of which this section is the most impressive.

There is a car park at the top which is where we parked and I walked all the way down for this photograph and now I’m going to have to walk all the way back up. Part the way up I met some narrowboats coming down. This one is waiting for the water level to drop so that they can then move into the next lock down.

This narrowboat is moving out of one lock into the next. The process of negotiating all 16 locks in the stairway takes, I believe, two to three hours.

I rendered some slight assistance at one lock by opening one of the two gates. This is done by leaning back against the arm and pushing with one’s feet. The little radiused brick path has raised sections so that it’s possible to get a good grip with one’s feet. Having done my good deed for the day we continued onward and upward.

Just before we reached the top I spotted this heron perched on an inflatable barrier on one of the large side ponds. A very handy fishing platform.

From here we return to the Danebury Hotel in Andover where we are prepared to try one of their evening meals. I suppose it’s only an evening meal from our point of view as they appear to serve cooked food all day.

On our return we discovered that the only place we can eat is the Public Bar which we share with three coin-in-the-slot gaming machines covered in flashing lights, a giant television, a pool table, loudish ‘background’ music and numerous gentlemen with heavily tatooed bare arms.

Ah well it’s worth a try.  The food turned out to be pretty average and not as good as one might expect in many pubs these days. One of the men in the bar apologised for another’s bad language which neither of us actually noticed but thought it was a nice gesture.

Looking around at the various signs in the bar area it appears that they are catering specifically for the heavy drinking fraternity with such as ‘Buy two glasses of wine and get the whole bottle’ sort of thing. Their main trade is apparently on Friday and Saturday nights when, thankfully, we shall be long gone.

The meal passed uneventfully but we decided not to eat there on our third night.

Tomorrow we hope will be in-spiring.

An English Summer with a vengence

An English Summer with a vengence

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After last years excuse for a summer we were hoping for some drier settled weather this year especially as the Meteorological Office predicted a warmer drier summer this year. Since our last trip to Houghton at the beginning of the month we’ve been waiting for a weather forecast which would give us at least four to five days of reasonable weather (what the weather forecasters laughingly call ‘Sunny Spells’) and we’re still waiting. We have even reduced our requirements to three days (two nights away) and we’re still waiting.

We have had some sun – and cloud, and rain. The weather seems to be so unsettled and unpredictable with the weather forecasts changing even on the same day. Yesterday the weather was cloudy and rainy and today was forecast to be better with some sun and indeed when we woke up it was to a clear blue sky so we decided to have a short trip out.

When Marie was over here we went to Nayland and Stoke-by-Nayland for a brief visit at the end of one of the days and I had wanted to go back again to try and get some more photographs, particularly in Nayland, in the hope that some of the streets wouldn’t be quite so choked with park cars. That previous visit was on a Sunday and my reasoning was that more residents would be home at the weekend so more parked cars. Perhaps during the week when a lot of the residents would be at work there would be fewer parked cars? Wrong! In Nayland there were at least as many as before and possibly in some places even more so we didn’t stop but went on to Stoke-by-Nayland.

When we were in Stoke-by-Nayland before I was able to get a nice photograph of one of the ancient timber-framed buildings with the light being just right but I didn’t photograph the church because I would have been shooting directly towards the sun. This time, however, we arrived in the morning with the sun in a much better position.

So we get out of the car, the sun goes in and we feel a few spots of rain. We head for the church and arrive at the porch just in time to miss the start of a very heavy shower which then turned in to a thunderstorm. Looking out of the porch door towards the direction from which whis weather approached there are dark clouds as far as the eye can see with no sign of a break. However after about ten minutes there were signs of the clouds breaking up and soon I was able to get a good photograph of the church.

We headed further north for about a mile and a half to the village of Polstead which turned out to be a pleasant enough village but nothing special. Amanda wanted to look at the church before we moved on so we drove to a point nearby and walked up to the church gate. At first sight we both thought that it must be victorian because it was small and oddly proportioned with a very short tower surmounted by an odd little stone steeple.

Well we were both wrong and it turned out to be Norman! That was a surprise. There was quite a nice view from the churchyard with the tower of Stoke-by-Nayland church showing on the horizon to the right (you can just about see it).

This funny little church was built during the reign of Henry II around 1160 and there is a Norman archway to add to its authenticity.

Just as we were leaving we noticed that a number of sheep had gathered in the shade under a tree, laying on the grass, since we’d arrived. I don’t know why. It certainly wasn’t to shelter from the sun, it wasn’t especially warm, and it wasn’t raining. One of those mysteries of life.

Another four miles onward and we arrived in Boxford. A pleasant little village with a number of interesting buildings including these timber-framed houses stuffed into this narrow little lane called Butchers Lane.

Looking out of Butchers Lane we can see the church in the distance.

Quite an imposing church when seen up close and with an imposing South Porch.

From inside the churchyard, close to the porch, the ancient dark ochre coloured timber-framed house in Bridge Street shows up quite nicely.

Inside the church there were two, that we could see, medieval wall paintings of which this, above the Chancel Arch, was one.

We decided that it was now time for a ‘smackerel’ of something (apologies to Pooh Bear) and went into The Fleece for lunch. The Fleece is the cream coloured building just beyond the bright salmon pink building. Having had lunch, and bearing in mind that the weather forecast said that the weather would deteriorate this afternoon, we went home.

We are still waiting, and hoping, for at least three consecutive days with a good amount of sunshine (Sunny Spells remember?) and we may still be waiting at Christmas.

Yes and No

Yes and No

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Back from our recent trip the answer to the question in the title of the previous posting is ‘Yes and No’.

We were lucky in that it was sunny but unlucky because it was uncomfortably hot and humid. We were lucky to visit Houghton, Hemingford Grey and Hemingford Abbots but St. Ives was a bit of a disappointment but I’ll start at the beginning.

Wednesday 1st July

We drove to Houghton which lies between Huntingdon and St. Ives in Huntingdonshire and we were there by 11:30 in the morning. We parked the car in the Three Horseshoes Inn’s car park and announced our arrival although we didn’t go up to our room.

We wanted to look round Houghton village before we set off on our planned walk because it’s a pretty village with attractive old buildings and chocolate box cottages. We rather liked this display of Hollyhocks which is on the other side of the village square from the Three Horseshoes. The village square is called “The Green” and although it may have been green at some time in the past it certainly isn’t now.

Opposite the Hollyhocks is what is known locally as the crooked house. You can just see some of the Hollyhocks on the extreme left of the picture peeping out from behind a house.

We wandered down Mill Lane (We were now starting the route of our planned walk) passing this chocolate box cottage on the way. It just had to have roses along the front didn’t it?

At the end of Mill Lane there is, wait for it, a mill. Owned by the National Trust it is still in working order and in a lovely setting. The water wheel must be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, we have ever seen. We have mentioned this mill briefly before on our way up to Stamford.

From the mill we followed the path across the River Great Ouse to Hemingford Abbots. Hemingford Abbots, like its neighbour Hemingford Grey, is a curious village. Very attractive and well kept with a number of old buildings but the old buildings are easily outnumbered by large, relatively modern and very expensive looking houses. Although we enjoyed looking at the designs of the modern houses we were more interested in the older style buildings.

That phrase ‘Chocolate Box’ springs to mind again – I don’t know why. We soon reached the centre of the village and this view of their pub, the Axe and Compass, with the church in the background.

As Hemingford Abbots and Hemingford Grey are virtually touching it wasn’t long before we were on the outskirts of Hemingford Grey.

It didn’t take long to reach the centre of the village which is where this next picture was taken and the suspicious looking person lurking in the shadows is, of course, Amanda. On a day like this lurking in the shadows is the best place to be – it was sweltering!

Both the Hemingfords are close to the River Great Ouse and our path took us alongside the river on our way to Hemingford Grey Meadow with St. Ives beyond.

We weren’t really looking forward to the next section which would involve crossing the rather large Hemingford Grey Meadow because we thought that there may be no shade in which to to shelter for some time. One of the churches in St. Ives can be seen on the other side of the meadow together with a few other buildings.

Luckily there was a small water channel, running down one side of the meadow, which was lined with shrubs and trees and we were able to spend short periods going through shade.

St. Ives is an old town but as we approached all we could see on the outskirts were modern buildings – not an old building in sight. We entered the town near the old bridge and having soon passed the modern additions we arrived at the waterside.

This picture was taken from the old bridge which is unusual in that it has a small chapel in the centre which you can see here on the right as we cross the bridge into the main part of the town.

There was a tea shop on the other side with a river terrace where we stopped for a much needed drink and from where I took this photograph of the 15th century bridge.

The area around the bridge and river is very nice but the rest of the town has nothing for the tourist. It’s not an unpleasant place but just little else of interest to see. We weren’t particularly pleased after walking all that way on a very hot and humid day especially as we now had to walk back but that’s the luck of the draw.

We arrived back at the inn in time for a short rest, a shower and then dinner. According to my pedometer we walked exactly 11 miles today.

Thursday 2nd July

After our St. Ives experience we decided to drive through Huntingdon first to assess the place and didn’t really see much there of interest either so drove on to Godmanchester. That didn’t hold our interest either so it was on to Plan B.

We pass close to Cambridge on our route to and from Houghton so we had thought that if we had time, which we now have, we might vist Anglesey Abbey. Now you may think that that would be a gargantuan detour but Anglesey Abbey is not on Anglesey in North Wales it is just a few miles north of Cambridge and is owned by the National Trust.

So it was that we arrived at Anglesey Abbey and gardens just as it was about to open at 10:30 AM. Walking through the gardens we had a bit of a surprise when we came upon this grove of trees.

Each one of those tree trunks is silvery white and the bark is quite hard and shiny. They are a form of Silver Birch which come from the Chinese side of the Himalaya. They gave a really ethereal atmosphere like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

A little further on we arrived at Lode Mill which is a rather cute little watermill and is now part of Anglesey Abbey grounds. We were going to have a look round the inside but the mill wasn’t open today because of a shortage of volunteers. The mill site is described in the Domesday Book although the building will have been replaced, possibly a number of times, since then.

From the mill we found our way to the Herbaceous Garden. Now that’s what I call a herbaceous border and it goes all the way round this large area. Keep that lot clear of weeds if you can.

After leaving the Herbaceous Garden we followed a not so obvious path and eventually stumbled upon the house. Even with a plan of the garden showing the paths it’s easy to get slightly lost in this place. Not a bad country cottage is it? Although the name of the property is Anglesey Abbey it is actually a country house.

Walking past the house, through the Rose Garden, we managed to find the Formal Garden where Amanda took this picture of me trying to run off with one of the stone vases. This may be a formal garden but dress is informal.

The gardens are very large covering around 114 acres most of which is parkland like this.

There is a lot that we didn’t see but Anglesey Abbey is only about an hours drive from us so we will probably return at different times of the year to see the changes.

That was the end of our current trip.

  • Like the curate’s egg it was good in parts.
  • Better luck next time
  • Can’t win ’em all.

You know the sort of thing. :mrgreen:

Six tired legs.

Six tired legs.

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Marie and Lisa’s trip to Great Britain didn’t go according to plan. A short while before departure Lisa contracted an infection but decided she was well enough to go and they both arrived in Colchester on Wednesday 1st April as planned.

On Thursday Amanda and I travelled to Colchester and all four of us walked round Colchester and saw the castle, Timperley’s, the Balkerne Gate and the roman wall, the timber-framed cottages by the river and Castle Park. Our final location was the ruins of St. Botolph’s Priory. I haven’t included photographs of the places that we visited as they can be seen on the web site Colchester pages however just to prove that Marie and Lisa were really there I’ve included this picture.


We arrived in Colchester next morning, Friday, expecting to take them both out for the day only to find that Lisa’s infection had flared up again and she’d had very little sleep. She had decided to go back home the following day, Saturday, and to stay in their rented cottage while we took Marie out. It was such a shame that, having come all that way, she was having to go home because of some rotten ole bacteria.

We took Marie to Finchingfield and Thaxted and tomorrow, Saturday, she was going to London with Lisa and was going to do some shopping before returning to Colchester. We arranged to take Marie to Dedham Vale on Sunday.

We heard that Lisa arrived home without problems and is, apparently, on the mend. The three of us went off to Dedham on Sunday, walked to  Flatford then up to East Bergholt and back to Dedham. As we had some time to spare we decided to explore the nearby villages of Stoke-by-Nayland and Nayland and both turned out to be picturesque little villages with some very interesting old buildings including this one in Stoke-by-Nayland.

After looking around Stoke-by-Nayland we moved on to Nayland.

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That person on the pavement desperately trying to look like a local and failing dismally is, of course, Marie. After leaving Nayland we took Marie back to Colchester and Marie decided that tomorrow she’d like to see Cambridge.

On Monday we collected Marie and drove to one of the Park & Ride sites around Cambridge. They do have a very well organised Park & Ride service in Cambridge with buses leaving the car parks very frequently.

Most of the places we visited are listed on the Cambridge page but one view that isn’t listed is this one:

A spy-in-the-sky view of Marie and I taken by Amanda from the top of the tower of St. Mary’s Church. We were all quite tired by the end of the afternoon and had agreed that Marie would come over from Colchester by bus to our house to do a little local sightseeing on her final day in England.

On her last day, Tuesday, Marie came over to us and we all walked on public footpaths to Layer Marney Tower. On the way we saw a lot of Wood Anemonies in flower and heard a Skylark in the distance. After looking at Layer Marney Tower and exploring the local Tudor church we came back to our house for lunch and then, after lunch, we drove the short distance to Tollesbury.

I’ll leave you with this picture of Amanda and Marie about to be run down by a very large lightship.

That was our last day with Marie, leaving 3 pairs of very tired legs, after which she went back to Colchester on the bus and left for home the next day. She arrived home without problems albeit after a long and tiring journey.

The Chilterns: A beacon in an ancient landscape – Day 1

The Chilterns: A beacon in an ancient landscape – Day 1

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The view from the top of Ivinghoe Beacon wasn’t as good as it could have been. We had just walked a short stretch of The Ridgeway, an ancient path that goes back to Avebury times, having arrived at our hotel just an hour previously after an uneventful drive of about an hour and a half.

But back to the view. It was a balmy spring day but there was quite a thick haze which prevented us seeing very far.

We had started from a car park down by the road from Aldbury and walked the one and a half miles to the top of the beacon.

This is where our walk started showing The Ridgeway stretching out in front and Amanda making her way along the path.

The Ridgeway starts from Avebury, Wiltshire and finishes on the top of Ivinghoe Beacon here in Buckinghamshire. The high ground on the left is the top of Ivinghoe Beacon.

Finally, with much puffing and blowing after a winter of sitting around and generally getting unfit, we arrive at the top. You can see how murky the view looked which was a pity as on a clear day it must be fantastic.

Amanda’s foot behaved much better than we thought it would and gave her no trouble at all. Looks promising.

After coming down from Ivinghoe Beacon we drove the very short distance to the village of Ivinghoe from which the beacon gets its name. First stop was Pitstone Windmill on the outskirts of the village and is the oldest windmill in the county

You should be able to see, to the left of the mill, the tower and spire of Ivinghoe Church and here is that same church close up.

We stopped, on the way back to our hotel, in Aldbury. An attractive little village sitting at the foot of the high ridge of which Ivinghoe Beacon is just a part in the area known as the Chilterns.

After that it was back to our hotel after our first half-day until tomorrow.

A Door into History

A Door into History

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When we visited Saffron Walden in the north-west corner of Essex we also called in to a few ‘extra’ villages one of which was Hadstock. This is just a few miles north of Saffron Walden and very near the Cambridgeshire border. Hadstock is a picturesque little village although would not be considered as extra special.

Hadstock Village

Well – nothing extra special except for St. Botolph’s Church.

Hadstock Church

It does look, at first glance, like a fairly ordinary village chuch. Most of what you see was built by the Normans but it appears that they incorporated some parts of the previous church which was Saxon and dates from about 1020.

Church Door

This is the entrance door as seen from inside the church porch and both the stone archway and the door are Saxon. That makes this door the oldest door (around 1000 years old) still in use in Great Britain and has been there since it was first hung on its hinges by the Saxon builders.

Carving on Capital

On the picture above there is some interesting Saxon carved decoration on the doorway column’s Capital and just below it.

Inside there is further evidence of the Saxon church as seen in the next picture.

Column base

This is a cruciform church and these stone bases were probably intended to support a central tower which was never built and now helps to support part of the Norman structure.

It is suggested that this is King Canute’s ‘Mynster’ church which he had built in 1020 to commemorate victory over Edmond Ironside at Assandun.

An amazing piece of history for such a small village.

A book cover village

A book cover village

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Yesterday we drove to Kent, near Rochester, to visit two friends and, naturally, the weather was dismal. Low cloud with rain most of the time. We had a very pleasant pub lunch in a nearby village and on the way back to our friends house we went through the village of Aylesford. A view of this village appears on the cover of a book we have which is a Shell guide to England so, although it was raining, we stopped for me to take this picture.

Aylesford

Pretty ain’t it?