Shrewsbury -10 June 2007

While the morning was still cool, we did a walk that passed Haughmond Abbey and skirted round then over Haughmond Hill.

A short distance away was the site of a battle six centuries ago and immortalized by Shakespeare in Henry IV; an excuse for another short walk here, around the battlefield.

By this time the day was getting warm and we had a look around Shrewsbury, a very attractive town built inside the horseshoe shape of the River Severn. It is full of Tudor style buildings.

Our lunch stop was the equally attractive village of Much Wenlock.

Not far away is another town we would recommend: Bridgnorth. It also has a historical High Street, in the middle of which is the Town Hall - open to visitors. They claim to have the best Victorian stained glass windows in the country.

There was another reference to Shakespeare in one set of windows, and we even found New Zealand in a set of windows commemorating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Bridgnorth is made up of two towns: the High town with all the important buildings and the Low Town beside the River Severn. Linking the two is the oldest funicular railway in the country.

The final stop of the day was Dudmaston. This country house has an interesting collection of 20th century modern art, left to the National Trust along with the house by the last owner. The garden is lovely and spacious.

One of the families that previously owned Dudmaston was the Darbys, nicely rounding off the weekend that had started with the Ironbridge where Abraham Darby first used coke to make cast iron.

Ironbridge - 9 June 2007

Our previous visit to the Ironbridge UNESCO World Heritage Site, near Shrewsbury, was in June 2003. It has taken some time, but we finally returned to finish our visit. They sell ‘passports’ for all the attractions that do not expire and since some attractions were closed during our last visit we felt duty bound to go back and ‘collect the set’.

Ironbridge was the crucible of the industrial revolution, as it was here that that the technique of using coke instead of charcoal for making cast iron was invented, and here that the first 'iron bridge' was constructed in 1779. The bridge stands today, still proudly displaying the sign indicating that it was private property and that tolls applied to all; officers, serving soldiers and even the Royal Family.

We visited the Jackfield museum of tile making. Tiles were very popular in Victorian times and many of London's Tube Stations were lined with tiles made in the Ironbridge valley.

Next stop was the Tar Tunnel. Originally dug as a canal link the work was halted when they encountered a seam of natural bitumen so instead of using the tunnel for barges, the bitumen was sold and then the tunnel was abandoned and sealed off.

Finally, we visited the Broseley clay pipe factory; this was surprisingly interesting. The owners simply closed the doors 40 years ago and walked away, leaving all their machinery and paperwork. A self-confessed ‘anorak’ enthusiast was demonstrating the process of making clay pipes. He has a collection of 14,000 pipes. If you see an old clay pipe in a movie, (e.g. Amazing Grace) he probably made and supplied it.

A short drive took us to Acton Burnell. This small village has the ruins of a castle built in the 13th century. A walk through wheat and barley fields took us to another smaller ruined house.

We spotted a possible dinner venue on the way to Shrewsbury. Despite looking rather shabby in our walking clothes, we were given a lovely table by their open French doors, and enjoyed a lovely meal: a great find in rural Shropshire.

Ratty and Mole - 3 June 2007

The river level had dropped by the end of Saturday and the river was re-opened to navigation so we booked a small boat for the morning hire period: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The river was magical so early in the morning and, to start with, we had it entirely to ourselves. We passed two churches; right on the water's edge, and continued our journey to the sound of church bells.

We cruised down-river, all the way to St Ives, so were able to boat under the bridge we had walked over the day before. Three of the four locks on our journey were against us and the river was still running at higher than normal flow so we were half an hour late returning the boat, but the hire people kindly did not charge us extra. Given the queue of people standing in the boatyard, the hire people were probably overjoyed to have the boat back to satisfy another customer.

After lunch on the riverbank, we travelled south to Buckden. In this is a very attractive village we discovered Buckden Towers, a residence of the Bishops of Lincoln from 1186 to 1842. We were able to walk over the dry moat and look at the Tudor buildings around the courtyard.

The list of famous residents and visitors included Henrys III and VIII, James I, Edward I, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Wolsey, Catherine Howard and Catherine of Aragon, who was imprisoned here by her disgruntled hubby.

From there we wended our way to Little Paxton, where we did a walk around a nature reserve that has various lakes made from old gravel pits.

Down by the riverside - 2 June 2007

In contrast to the cold, miserable, wet weather we returned to last Monday, Saturday’s forecast was for a fabulous summer day, in fact the temperature rose over to 30 degrees.

We had accommodation booked at Huntingdon, so decided to hire a boat to cruise the River Great Ouse. We couldn’t believe it when we arrived at the boat yard in glorious sunshine to be told the river was in flood and closed to navigation. This was the second time we had visited this area hoping to hire a boat; the situation was identical first time around.

Instead we explored, on foot, some of the towns that we had hoped to boat through.

Huntingdon itself has a nice market square, but most interesting was the Cromwell Museum. Oliver Cromwell was born here, grew up and had his schooling in this town.

Downstream we re-visited Houghton Mill and ate our picnic lunch by river overlooking the mill, a great spot on a summer’s day.

Next stop was St Ives of “when I was going to St Ives” fame. This is very picturesque and the bridge, built in 1426 is one of four “Chapel” bridges surviving in Britain. The pilgrim chapel is at the centre pier.







Further downstream is Holywell: an ancient ring village. This lovely quiet town has a number of beautiful thatched cottages along the river. Because of the high water level, the road outside the thatched pub was under water.
Enough driving, it was time for a walk. There are many circular walks along the length of the River Great Ouse. We chose a 4.5 mile walk taking in two towns and a stretch along the riverside, which fortunately was along a stop-bank as either side of us we could see extensive flooding.

Start and stop point was the small town of Bluntisham where they have a weather station recording temperature and barometric pressure. The graph was visible through the glass case and although the barometer seemed to be dipping slightly, the temperature was rising through 32 degrees.

We finished the day with a picnic dessert at Godmanchester, another extremely charming riverside town.

Time for a final town or two - 28 May 2007

The disadvantage of spending a night in a small, cosy, farmyard is that the animals like to greet the morning early.

After a rustic breakfast, we set out for Brežice, which has an attractive town centre, complete with castle and stunning towers on the church that gleamed in the sunlight.

En-route, at Kostanjevica na Krki, we detoured to view a monastery now converted into an art gallery with an impressive array of huge wooden sculptures in grounds outside. The twin pink and white guardhouses (from the days of the Turkish attacks) look like something from Disneyland. We poked our noses through the archway to have a look at one of the largest Renaissance courtyards in Europe, and left.

After Brežice we took the scenic route along the Croatian border. This is lovely countryside with yet another distinctly different look-and-feel to the villages and architecture.

Another short detour off our route took us to the spa town of Rogaška Slatina where Liszt once played his waltzes in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel.

We figured that we had time for one more stop before having to head back west to the airport so drove on to Slovenske Konjice, which the guidebook accurately described as “absurdly twee” with its pastel colours and stream gurgling down the main street, crossed by little toy bridges.

On the way, we had to make a stop as we finally saw a stork and nest. Although common in Slovenia we had only seen one other pair and then at a distance.

It is a delightful country to drive through, but our time was running out, so we set off for the airport, taking the scenic route over the Kozjak Pass to finish our 4000km loop through Slovenia and Croatia.

Final Slovenian impression: The houses dotted all over the hillsides: they have ranged from ‘Mediterranean’ to ‘Swiss/Austrian’ and what I guess is ‘Slovenian’.

Hidden Gems - 27 May 2007

We set out to find the only remaining headquarters of a European resistance movement from WWII. The drive was through an area of forest described as remote and beautiful. The various factions fighting the Nazis, somehow managed to co-exist in this remote spot, and when one reads the list it is amazing what a common enemy can unite: Liberation Front Executive Committee; Supreme Council of the Liberation Front; Communist Party Central Committee; Propaganda and Agitation Commission; editors of different partisan newspapers and publications; Antifascist Council of Yugoslav National Liberation; The Protection Battalion fighters; as well as Allied advisors.

In spite of diligent searches, the Nazis never found the camp, and we began to wonder if we would either. The tourist map indicated it was about halfway between Kočevje and Podturn. All lies! The road from Kočevje quickly became an unsealed, single-lane, forest track which probably would have been OK had it been adequately sign posted. It was too late when we realised that the kilometre markers denoting that we were following Route 917 were no longer popping up every 0.5km. Bravely we pressed on and more by good luck than good management rejoined the 917 after making a detour of indeterminate length and duration. After a few more torturous kilometres we eventually found Baza 20 and discovered that the ‘super-highway’ in from the other end was not only sealed and two-lanes wide but hardly any distance. Tip to fellow explorers: Approach from the north!

Twenty-six huts hidden in the forest still survive. There was amazing feeling of history and an understanding of the hardship that the fighters had been through to construct the camp, carrying everything they needed in on foot, kept the location secret, printed propaganda that they then had to carry out on their backs and survived through 3 snowy winters in these unheated huts.

Our second visit of the day also had a real sense of history. We did a tour of the Stična Monastery. Except for the period between 1784, when Joseph II dissolved the monasteries, and 1898, when the monks finally returned, Cistercian monks have lived, worked and prayed here from the time the monastery was founded in 1132, just 34 years after the Cistercian Order was founded in France.

Leaving 780 years of history behind the monastery walls we continued on to Novo Mesto.

As we walked into town, we could hear singing and music: it sounded great, and we expected traditional costumes but although there was some form of local festival in progress the singers were definitely not in local costume – skirts too high and bodices too low!

We were not sure if we were a little early or too late as there were masses of unoccupied chairs and tables set out by the food and wine stalls. Regardless, we relaxed and enjoyed the music as sipped a glass of the local drink: Cviček wine, a low alcohol mixture of red and white wines.

We decided to spend the night at another tourist farm. Last evening the emphasis was on ‘tourist’, tonight the emphasis was definitely on ‘farm’. Outside the window was the barn where the herd of 10 milk cows, 4 heifers, 4 yearlings and 2 calves was put to bed for the night. The next shed held the rooster and hens, around the corner was the pig and across the road was the duck or goose farm. We looked forward to the prospect of a great night’s sleep!

Today's Slovenian impression: The wonderful variety in the scenery.

The Dance Macabre - 26 May 2007

Words cannot do justice to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Hrastovlje. Completely enclosed in high, stone, walls to provide protection from the Ottoman Turks, this tiny church has a Tardis-like quality in that it seems much bigger inside than out.

Almost every internal surface is covered with frescoes from 1490, a wall-to-wall, Gothic picture-book paupers’ Bible. These frescoes in lichen and red-wine pigments survived under layers of whitewash until the 1950s. There are cartoons of the Creation and the Passion; an Adoration of the Magi; pictures of the Apostles; the Annunciation; and a calendar of monthly tasks. But the showstopper is the Dance Macabre.
This fresco, running the full length of one wall shows Death (skeletons) leading a 15th century pecking order of pope, king, queen, cardinal, bishop, monk, doctor, moneylender, soldier, cripple and baby to confront their mortality in a stark reminder that before God we are all equal and there will be no A-list celebrity preferences when we die. This is further emphasized by the moneylender who is offering his accompanying skeleton money, in an attempt to alter his destiny.

The guidebook was absolutely correct: “The church is, quite simply a gem: as tiny as a matchbox, as atmospheric as a cathedral.”

Not quite so accurately described is Vipava, dubbed the “Slovene Venice” as it is built around the springs which form the delta source of the Vipava River and, consequently, it has numerous bridges. However, any Venetian allusions are entirely in the minds of the PR and marketing writers! Nevertheless we explored the different springs that give the Vipava River it’s claim to fame as the only European river that begins with a delta.

The nearby, protected, town of Goče really is worth a detour. The scrape marks on the walls of the narrow streets bear testimony to the narrowness of the streets and alleyways. It looks as though progress has entirely passed it by, leaving it with a timeless Mediterranean feel.

While there, a milk tanker came to collect the milk stored in a vat by the town square. The vat was possibly 200 litres, a far cry from the size of the vats NZ farmers store milk in while waiting for the tanker collection.

However, NZ cannot compete in the castle stakes: Predjama Castle is big and impressive, built into a natural cave and with an interesting history of withstanding sieges. One besieged occupant discovered a “back door” through the limestone caverns and taunted his enemies by presenting them with roast bullock and freshly picked cherries during the year-long siege. His downfall was a treacherous servant who colluded with the enemy.

En-route to our final destination, we detoured through the Rakov Škojan Regional Park, and did a short walk to a natural limestone bridge. The word karst, referring to the remarkable surface and underground forms, created as a result of the action of water on permeable limestone comes from the Karst area of Slovenia, so this is the ‘home’ of caves, dripstone formations, natural bridges and sinkholes.

One natural phenomenon, in this area, which ‘sinks’ is Lake Cerknica: depending on the time of year and recent rainfall, this area can be a lake, a wetland or pasture; we saw it at the wetland stage.

Being Saturday, we decided to look for accommodation earlier than usual. A nearby ‘Tourist Farm’ provided bed, breakfast and, for a small extra charge, home cooked dinner, so we decided on another new experience.
The village was intriguing: quite different architecture to what we had seen previously. The houses were long and thin, close together along the road and each house had, attached at the rear, a barn with the animals.

Next Slovenian impression: impossibly small land-holdings. The farm sizes were 3 to 5 hectares and the fields all seemed to be long and thin strips, a patch-work quilt of land use, with no fences.