Gaudi gazing - 25 February 2007

Barcelona's most famous architect is Antoni Gaudi (1856-1926). It is reported that his Professor said that he did not know if he was awarding a degree to a genius or a lunatic. We made an early start to the day at Parc Guell, which is well towards the lunatic end of the spectrum, and ended with the unfinished Cathedral, which is sheer engineering brilliance.

In between we visited an apartment building he designed and a building that he re-modeled, changing it extensively.

His work is full of ‘new’ ideas and concepts that he freely admitted he, with his keen sense of observation, stole from nature . Consequently the structures have a ‘flow’ and empathy to them that is not ‘natural’ in a building but is entirely ‘natural’.

Barcelona - 24 February 2007

After a rushed start to catch an early morning train, which never arrived, we reached our hotel in Barcelona late morning. The Ciutat Hotel in the centre of the historic area, is an excellent base for exploring Barcelona.

The nearby Gothic area has the Cathedral amid a maze of narrow streets encircled by the old Roman wall.

We then wandered down La Rambla, the ‘place’ you have to go to stroll. It is lined with Street ‘statue’ artists, buskers, pickpockets and the traditional areas for selling art, birds and flowers. Such is the significance of the street that there are two words coined in its honour; an adjective (ramblista) to describe those addicted to the act of the act of ramblejar (walking up and down La Rambla.)

La Rambla finishes at the waterfront with a column topped by Columbus pointing meaningfully out to sea (in the direction of Italy!). From there we explored the new bridge to a shopping mall, and ended at La Barceloneta – the old fishing village. After lunch, we walked along the beach and back through La Barceloneta and the old city to our hotel: twisting and turning in a rather random fashion to explore the old streets.

Girona - 23 February 2007

While in Morocco we met a gentleman from Gerona, as opposed to Two Gentlemen From Verona, and he highly recommended his hometown, especially the old city.

As it happened, we were planning to visit Barcelona and the cheap airline we used, fly passengers destined for Barcelona into Girona airport (which is closer to France than Barcelona) so we decided to squeeze a day in Girona (as they spell it) into the schedule.

After flying in late at night and finally getting off to sleep in twin beds, we were awakened at 8am next morning by a concrete mixer, right outside our first-floor hotel room window. It wasn't possible to block it out, so we emerged to find a beautiful day. (The concrete mixer stopped soon after and did not appear to be used any other time of the day when we were near the hotel!)

The most photographed sight in Girona is the old houses reflected in the river Onyar: they looked wonderful in the sunshine.

We toured the Cathedral, which has the widest Gothic vault over the nave, the Arab baths, then walked along the extensive, restored, ancient city walls: a trip which provides wonderful views back over the multi-coloured tile roofs back to the Cathedral that dominates the skyline.
After a delicious salad at the River Café at the foot of the stairs to the Church of Saint Feliu, we started our afternoon wander around the old Jewish quarter, with its narrow winding streets and stairs, and on to a tour of the Monastery of Saint Pere de Galligants.

Flash flushing - 18 February 2007

There are only two Grade 1 listed Industrial buildings in South London. One is a very well known, and much photographed, London icon (Tower Bridge) and the other is known to very few people, and given its location, seen and photographed by even fewer.

We had booked a tour of the Crossness Pumping Station for Sunday afternoon. This was a magnificent Victorian achievement, commissioned after the year of the ‘Great Stink' (1858) to deal with the problem of raw sewage in the Thames.

It was designed on a large and impressive scale. Not only was the machinery impressive, the building to house the 4 huge pumps, was named the Cathedral in the Marsh. The Victorians surely knew how to get things done. The station was commissioned in 1865, just 7 years after the ‘stink’ and in only three years, 318 million bricks had been used to make 82 miles of intercept sewers to divert flows from discharging into the Thames and re-route the sewage downstream to Crossness on the south bank and Abbey Mills on the north.

There, these huge pumps each lifted 100 tonnes of effluent per hour into a reservoir where it was held until the tide began to ebb and the gates were opened to discharge the raw sewage into the Thames.

Following its closure in 1956 it has lain abandoned and vandalized until restoration began in 1985. The restoration is a huge project, where you can see plenty of evidence of before and after and one that will keep the willing enthusiasts busy for years to come.

We intended to catch some of the Chinese New Year's celebrations both on the way in and way home, but managed to time it wrong both ways. However, we did enjoy the sense of humour displayed by the Metropolitan Police as they distributed hundreds of red balloons in honour of the Chinese year of the Pig.

Dulwich - 17 February 2007

A ‘Canaletto in England’ exhibition is currently on in Dulwich, so we decided to base our day in the Dulwich area.

We started the day with a look at the Horniman Museum. This is one of the many legacies left by wealthy Victorian merchants that people in the UK can enjoy today. The free museum is based upon a collection of items from his travels, but subsequently enhanced and expanded.

We followed this with a walk around Dulwich Park and College, passing the only remaining privately owned toll-gate in London. Since 1789, tolls have been collected on a road that runs through the grounds of Dulwich Public School and the proceeds are used to pay for the upkeep of the road.

We finished the walk at the Dulwich Picture Gallery where the Canaletto’s were being displayed, joining the queue just before they put up the 'sold out for the day' sign. While the English pictures are obviously Canaletto’s they don’t quite have the appeal of the Venetian scenes. (Not that we are ever likely to own either sort …)

Snowdrops - 11 February 2007

Sunday cleared to become a beautiful day and we focused on snowdrop gardens, exactly a year since we last went snowdrop 'hunting'.

Our first visit was to Easton Walled Gardens, which had the best snowdrops of the day. These were only opened a few years ago, after becoming totally overgrown, when the large house was pulled down in 1951. Photos of it show a beautiful, gracious house. In the 60 years from 1900 to 1960, over 1700 grand country houses were demolished. What a waste of British history: victims of high taxation post-war labour changes and shortages and, after WWII, shortages of building skills and materials. How much history over the years has been lost as a result of taxes designed to fleece the supposedly wealthy classes?

The second stop was to re-visit Anglesey Abbey Gardens, itself a victim some 500 years ago, under Henry VIII. They have a superb winter garden that features foliage and bark colours only seen in winter that is stunning both in concept and execution. It is such a dramatic feature that we cannot understand why every landscape park garden does not have one.

Finally, we stopped at Audley End House, which had special snowdrop open days. They planted 4,000 bulbs in 2004 and these are making a good show. The normally tranquil dammed river had flooded its banks and was flowing over the lawns even though the overflow channel was a raging torrent. This was, however, a bonus for photography: it is not often that one gets reflections from a lawn!

In stark contrast to the grandeur of Audley End House was Chestnut Cottage, one of the smallest houses in Britain it measures just 3m x 2.4m. We found it the village of Clavering, Essex, on our way home.

Peterborough - 10 February 2007

Peterborough is these days visited by people making in-person applications at the Passport Office, but originally was a religious centre with one of the country’s early Abbey's, dating from 650AD. The Abbey was sacked and rebuilt a couple of times and ultimately dissolved with all the rest by Henry VIII.

The cathedral, about 800 years old, is huge: an impressive statement of its time that, apart from the ‘new’ addition (15th C) at the eastern end is largely the same as it was when first built.

The vaulted ceilings in the ‘new’ addition were, apparently a trial run by the architect who perfected them in the fabulous chapel at King’s College, Cambridge. The wooden ceiling in the nave is original and unique in the UK. Only 3 others from this period (1250) survive in Europe.

The town centre is pedestrianised and consequently very pleasant to wander around.