Newbury - 8 & 9 April 2006

The Ridgeway is one of the many long distance footpaths in Britain. We explored a small section of it in glorious sunshine, the day before the south was once again unseasonably covered in snow.



Typical vistas are of large fields and a gently rolling landscape. Along the way we came across one of many burial barrows in the UK, Waylands Smithy. This one had already been looted when excavated in 1920. Further along the Ridgeway was one of the most stylised White Horses we've seen here. They also date from 1000BC and are stunning on the green hills, the shape revealing the horse in the white chalk beneath.

For the Kiwis, we found a replacement tree and obelisk for One Tree Hill!

The walk also included Ashdown House, built 1663 in a Dutch style for a sister of Charles I. The house contains her collection of family portraits. The amazing feature of the house is the huge wooden staircase that occupies 25% of the floor area of the building.

In spite of the recent discovery of bird-flu in the swan up north, we dined in the Swan down south. The staff at our accommodation made the recommendation, not difficult in a country teeming with picturesque pubs serving tasty food.

The Sunday weather forecast was for rain mid-afternoon, so we set out for a morning walk to beat the weather. The walk included several small Berkshire villages. We lunched at the final village - Brimpton Common in a pub called The Pineapple. Unlike our understanding of pineapples these days, the name refers to the fruit of a pine tree, which we know as a pine- cone. When pineapples did arrive here, they were exotic and only enjoyed by the rich. Not likely to be served at a pub.

We decided the rain wasn't about to arrive for a while and drove in lovely sunshine to look at Stonor House. By the time we parked, the sky had darkened & we just made it inside before the hail made it extremely cold and unpleasant. The house had an interesting history, as they all do! We saw a priest hole where, during the reign of Elizabeth I, a printing press was secreted in the roof space to publish Catholic literature. The printer was Edmund Campion: captured in 1581; sent to the Tower; tried then hung, drawn & quartered (nasty habit they had). In 1970 the Catholic Church made him a saint.

Kent - 1 & 2 April 2006

Kent in the spring proved to be a very interesting weekend. We started at Chilham, a village that is reportedly the most photographed village in England, and has been used in films (Moll Flanders) and TV series such as Miss Marple.
As we had a cup of tea in the very quaint tea-rooms, we watched with interest as people in unusual costumes kept arriving. We seemed to have picked a good day to visit, as they had displays of Morris dancing. We gathered that 1 April was a significant date in the Morris dancer calendar. (There were male groups and female groups. What does one call female Morris Men?) The leader of the Morris dancers had his face painted half green & half white to represent spring chasing winter away.

Lunch was a bowl of absolutely delicious, home made, parsnip apple & curry soup cooked by Lady Fitzwalter of Goodnestone, whose garden we visited.

Suitably refuelled we enjoyed a relaxing walk from Sandwich to the coast and back. Sandwich has a prestigious past as one of the original Cinque Ports and remains a very picturesque town, somewhat larger than Chilham.

Finally, we then visited two more picturesque villages - Elham & Hernhill, where we had an excellent dinner at a pub with the most popular name in England.

Sunday started with a visit to the St Augustine Abbey, part of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage site, which also includes the Cathedral and St Martin’s church – the oldest parish church in England. St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to re-establish Christianity in Britain. He was granted land to build an Abbey, of which only very small sections of ruins are left. Most of the visible remains are from the later (Norman) buildings.

Next stop was nearby Faversham, another old Cinque Port, and also a beautiful town, with over 500 listed buildings.

The season for visiting stately homes seems to have arrived with April, so we had a relaxing afternoon strolling around the lovely grounds of Belmont House. They will be stunning in the summer. We found the brilliant use of espalia type fruit trees very intriguing. This was the first time we had seen apples trained on such low wires, a system is called “step over” for quite obvious reasons. The conducted tour of the house gave a real insight into its history and furnished us with heaps of useless horological trivia as the penultimate resident Lord Harris amassed the world’s largest private clock collection.

Winchcombe - 25/26 March 2006

Winchcombe was once the capital of Mercia, and remains a very interesting town, full of beautiful buildings. There are many old pubs, cute rows of houses, and a splendid church.

Just outside the town is Sudeley Castle, which has an interesting history itself. It was once the home of Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's wives. She lived there after her second marriage to Thomas Seymour, and is buried there following her early death after childbirth.

We stayed two nights at the White Hart, a quaint old 16th century inn, right next door to the house John Wesley stayed at for two nights in the 1770s. As well as exploring the town and the castle, we did a walk from the town to Hailes Abbey and back through the tiny hamlet of Farmcote and the even smaller Little Farmcote. Farmcote had a small church, complete with what must definitely be the smallest church cross in Christendom. Despite being so small, the church still had a lovely marble tomb inside.

On the way home on Sunday, we visited two picturesque villages. The first was Ilmington. On our walk, we visited the local church that has carved, in various places throughout, 11 mice. They are most entertaining, and a neighbourhood cat posed very thoughtfully for us to take a photograph of one, on the door post.

The second village of Warmington was reached just as the rain was starting, so we left a proper exploration to the next time we are in the area.
Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

Hampshire - 18/19 March 2006

En route to our Saturday walk we stopped of in the delightful village of Chiddingford. The info said it had a rare high coffin rest in the church lych-gate and that coffin rests were the original reason for the covered lych-gates that are such an attractive feature of English country churches. However, it did not say why. Fortunately the web tells all and it seems that back in the days when the dead may have had to have been carried a reasonable distance to the church, the pallbearers placed the coffin on the coffin rest and sat on the benches either side of the lych-gate to regain their breath and composure before carrying the departed into the church with due decorum. After all, it would not do for the pallbearers to be huffing and puffing up the aisle. Neither would they want to arrive all wet and bedraggled, hence the roof over the lych-gate.

Having seen our first coffin rest, we went for a walk from Cowdray Park to Lickfold and back again.

Sunday’s village of note was Selborne where the attraction was a zig-zag path cut by naturalist Gilbert White up the steep escarpment, Selborne Hanger, behind the village. The 29 switchbacks allowed us to climb quickly for sweeping views over the village and surrounds.

We then motored a little way north to Oakhanger and walked from there to Wyck and back. As we returned to Oakhanger we passed a couple of cottages that were among the best we have seen in terms of embodying all that is quintessentially olde English cottage architecture.


Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

Wales - 11/12 March 2006

Our weekend trips away have begun now that winter has been declared ‘officially finished’. So, we set off to visit the National Botanical Gardens of Wales, naturally, this entailed a trip to Wales. The gardens were only opened in 2000 and so still need some time to develop and mature but nevertheless were worth the visit and will merit a return visit in the summer when more plants are at their best.

The glasshouse (biggest single span glasshouse in the world) is visually stunning both inside and out.

The gardens are on the site of a ‘great house’ (burnt down in 1931) owned in 1700’s by William Paxton, who also built a tower overlooking the area so it was the tower we visited next.

After checking in to our accommodation we cast about on the map and saw an Abbey not far away so set out to visit Talley Abbey, passing through an attractive town, Llandeilo.


The weather forecast indicated that there would be overnight snow in the area of Wales that we would be journeying through to return to London. As we neared Cardiff it was indeed an attractive vista along the motorway sides. Having visited Castell Coch previously we suspected that is would look good with a dusting of snow so detoured off the motorway to check it out.

The next detour off our homeward route was to Caerwent, an ancient Roman town where the remains of the Roman walls still encircle most of the village, in places up to 5m high. We walked around the walls and then visited the church porch where, in a example of modern ecumenicalism, there is displayed a Roman altar to the god Mars Ocelus originally erected by one Aelius Augustinus who ‘willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow.’

By the time we reached the Severn River there was no evidence of a snow to be seen. However, the snow we did enjoy was the tail-end of a storm which caused havoc in Scotland and the north of England so perhaps our official declaration of winter’s end was a little premature.

Roydon - 5 March 2006

Sunday was another fabulous day so we thought we would return to the Lee River area that we enjoyed last weekend.

We could not find a suitable circular walk so created our own courtesy of the Ordnance Survey website maps. It turned out to be just over 10 miles.

Leaving Stanstead Abbotts we walked along the Lee Navigation to the point where it joins the Stort Navigation which we followed as far as Roydon.

Leaving the route briefly we detoured to a pub for lunch and to look at the original lock-up and stocks opposite the village green which, until 1840, every parish had to provide to accommodate criminals before they went to court.

There were three ‘firsts’ on this walk. The first Pike we had seen caught, the first time we had seen a narrow-boat in the role of an icebreaker and the first deer that stood still long enough to be photographed.



Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

Quainton - 4 March 2006

Our Saturday walk was a little over 10 miles and took in 4 villages in the Vale of Aylesbury starting from Quainton. While Quainton is a quaint to’n that is not the reason for the name: it is, instead, a corruption of old English Cwene-tun or Queen’s Manor. Quainton’s claim to fame is the tallest windmill in the county and the remains of a C15th preaching cross.

The walk description said “indistinct field paths” and they certainly were. Most paths here, if not very well defined, are at least discernable; but for most of this walk we had no indication that anyone had ever passed that way before.

After a midday snack in a pub in the pretty village of Whitchurch we made our way back to Quainton.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.