Stowe and Sunshine!!!!!

Well - almost - it was sighted occasionally, but at least it did not rain on me.

I started the morning with one last circle through Oxford, past the Sheldonian Theatre, through the Bodleian Library Quadrangle, around the Radcliffe Camera, and past the church of St Mary the Virgin - so many spires indeed!!!! There really are students in gowns swooping by on bicycles, dons in full academic regalia seen only in Auckland ad graduations, and aged "scouts" in bowler hats guarding the doors of the colleges. Perhaps it is all just turned on for that film crew still ensonced in the Radcliffe Camera, and they all disappear after the fiming.

I then set off through assorted M and A roads, and gazillions of roundabouts to Stowe in Buckinghamshire, which is regarded as the greatest of the English landscape gardens. Capability Brown was gardener here for 10 years, and it truly an amazing place. It is rather a cross between the gardens at Stourhead and Blenheim Palace, with some of the extensive scope of Blenheim, and some of the intricately constructed woodland lanscapes of Stourhead. It takes hours to walk around, and even then I don't think I covered it all.

In the middle of the gardens is the massive Palladian mansion which was once the seat of the Duke of Buckinham, but has now become the prestigious boy's public school of Stowe. It looks an incredible environment for a school, and to cap it of there were assorted games of cricket goingon, with boys watching from the great steps in front of the house, over the velvet green of the cricket pitch - terribly English.....

Coming back I put petrol in the car - no pre-programmable pumps here!!! - then stopped off at a country pub for a beer, and to watch Tim Henman get put out of Wimbledon 3-2, after pulling back up from 2 sets down - terribly English also.....

Tomorrow is off to Germany, via the horrors of Heathrow.

Blenheim Palace and More Sogginess

Well my most useful travel item has been my collapsible umbrella - sunglasses are rather superfluous. Wilton House Garden was toured in the misty rain, Stourhead was 20% pouring rain, and today my Blenheim Palace garden meaderings were abbreviated by yeat another downpour - ho hum - English weather and all that.

However - back to the beginning.... Blenheim Palace house is a truly splendid place, on a par with Hampton Court in quality, though perhaps a bit smaller. A gift from Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough in thanks for his defeating the French, and setting the stage for the ascendancy of England, and the decline of France. The history of the family parallels English history with kingly alliances, leading up to the connections woth Winston Churchill, Antony Eden, and Lady Diana Spencer. Subsequent Dukes have developed the gardens, particularly with the help of Capability Brown, and they are HUGE!!!!!! Walking around each loop of the garden takes 30-45 minutes, with enormous lawns stretching forever, thousands of trees, and a mixture of natural woodland gardens, formal Italian gardens, and a beautiful water feature garden.

The interior of the house is fabulously decorated, with enormous tapestries commissioned on Belgium by the first Duke to commemorate the victory at Blenheim (hence the Palace's name). Later the ceilings have been lavishly glided with the help of Vanderbilt money after the 8th Duke married Consuelo Vanderbilt. (Her mother locked her in her bedroom for three days until she would agree to marry him - they had an unhappy 20+ years together before divorcing, but her dowry was very beneficial to Blenheim Palace, and her mother got a Duchess for a daughter, so there was some mutual benefit it seems.)

The house was the base for MI5 during the war, as Hilter planned to rule from there when he invaded England, so had instructed Goerring to spare it from bombing - a very handy protection for MI5, of course.

So I have now done three grand country houses and gardens, each beautiful in its own way. Wilton House had the amazing Cube Rooms and stunning, though smaller gardens; Stourhead had the most beautiful garden of them all, with an interesting, but lesser house, and Blenheim Palace is the grandest house of the three, with extrenely expansive gardens - even though the rain did limit my walking around them to only two hours!!! Tomorrow is Stowe, supposedly one of the greatest landscape gardens, then it will be beating my way back to Heathrow to catch the plane to Germany ...........

Driving has been rather a mission, as one rally needs a navigator to manage the multiplicity of roundabouts whcih seem to po0p up every few miles. Aucklanders crash their way around the Panmure roundabout, while English drivers manage similar roundabouts just to get to the supermarket. So far, other drivers are very courteous, and have only honked at me in anger a couple of times as I got confuse about which lane I needed for which exit. Getting into Heathrow should be fun, as it involves getting on and off the M25 ring-road rather quickly, then finding my way back to the rental depot - all in the fun of travelling....... (photos to follow)

Dreaming Spires, etc., etc.,

Jet lag has some compensations, so a 5.30 wake-up had me on the streets of Oxford by 7.00am. Oxonians are not early risers, so I had the place to myself for about a half hour, which made snapping easier without the ever-present hordes of tourists and crazy bike-riders. It was also icy cold, and an hour of ooh-aah over ancient stone colleges drove me into a cafe to thaw out. I have yet to see a glinpse of the endangered creature, the English summer, though I have mostly managed to dodge the major deluges that have hit the other parts of the country.

A day was spent following the trail around the Old Sheldonian Theatre, the Radcliffe Camera (which was roped of for filming - tee hee - irony ...) and the multitudinous beautiful old colleges around every corner of cobbled streets and blackened stone walls. I did the usual tour of Christ Church College, and the "Harry Potter" dining Hall, and beautiful cathedral. Poor old Wolsey didn't do to well with his buildings - he lost Hampton Court to Henry when he fell out of favour, and Christ Church was going to be Cardinal College in honour of him too, until he proved rather hopeless at organising divorce-on-demand for Henry. So Henry took that over too....

The Ashmolean kept me busy for the afternoon, admiring such treasures as a Stradivarius violin AND guitar, plus the usual range of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities. And also, as soon as I can load the photo, I am sure I have found the inspiration for the gloriously tack Dodi-andDiana sculpture in Harrods - it is a Greek bronze with similar upstretched arms, and proably even less artfully draped clothing.

The evening was a little gem, as I attended evensong at Christ Church Cathedral - an hour of fabulous singing from the little and big boys of the cathedral choir. All quite beautiful - and free too!!!! After which I flopped into bed at Nic Smith's lovely little house right in the middle of Oxford - quite exhausting.... photos to follow when I am somewhere else other than the free hour at Oxford Library.

Old Stones and Stone Villages

On the road from Salisbury to Avebury to wander the old sarsen stone circle, the on to meander around the Costwold stone villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter, and the picture-book Stow-on-the-Wold.

Avebury is a very relaxed ruin site, with sheep munching around the ancient stones, and nimble feet needed to keep out of the extraordinaruly large sheep poos all around - they are not at all like the dainty little pellet-type I am used to, but large steaming piles!!! The stones are smaller than at Stonehenge, but the circle is much larger, involving clambering over stiles and through farm gates to complete the circle.

From there I headed for the Cotswold stone village area, and indeed they are a beautiful series of villages and towns of honey-coloured stone, ranging from tiny villages up one-way roads, to larger towns such as Stow and Burford, replete with a thousand tourist souvenir shops. The Slaughters look so perfect they seem like a movie set, and the people all look correspondingly affluent. I wonder where the postie manages to live?????

I am now ensconced in Nic Smith's little bijou house in the centre of Oxford, with spires all around, and bicycles everywhere. I am setting off today to immerse myself in the history - and my internet time has run out!!!

Stunning Stourhead

The gardens of Stourhead are like no others in England, or probably anywhere. Designed in the 1700s by Henry (The Magnificent) Hoare II, they are unique in that there is not a flowerbed to be seen - instead, they are designed to be a wonderful woodland walk, with entrancing vistas of lakes, lawns, follies, shrubs, bridges etc, opening out at different angles as you walk the two miles around the garden. Whereas yesterday I went dotty over thatched cottages, today it was snapping one beautiful chocolate box vista after another. The rain had come down again, but we managed to dodge the worst of it by breaking our walk midway in a pub for lunch, then wandering for a half hour of bright sunlight past a faux-Pantheon, a Palladian bridge, a huge grotto, all around a beautiful meandering path on the edge of the ornamental lake. More rain sent us scurrying for shelter, with umbrellas at the ready once more, but the misty version of the views had their own beauty. This garden is the beginning of the landscape architecture that was continued later by Capability Brown, as a break from the tradition of the formal French garden. It is maintained by 10 full-time gardeners and an "armada of volunteers" according to our very own volunteer guide who took us around.

The house at Stourhead has a great collection of Chippendal furniture, including a wonderful circular desk with individual locked drawers around the top for each tenant farmer's rent book and ledger. A Chippendale son lived at the house for some years making the furniture, so it is everywhere in the house, even including the Chippendale bench we sat on in the entrance hall to put little blue plastic bag covers over our shoes.

There is also a "Pope's Chest" which was apparently made for Pope Sixtus (??V or VI), which looks like an over-decorated baroque cathedral, covered in jewels and painting, with about 100 little drawers of various shapes and sizes making up the different parts of the "cathedral". Little treasures of painted miniatures were discovered in some stuck drawers, and there are still two little drawers that, tantalisingly, they cannot get unstuck.

The rain had not deterred other tourists either, it seems, as the car park was full as we left - obviously if we let the rain put us off, we would not get to see much of England!!!

Grand houses, thatched cottages, and ancient ruins

Wheww!!!! Much ground has been covered today as I roamed the country lanes around Salisbury. I was a caricature tourist for the first half hour, jumping out of the car to photograph the thatched cottages, until I realised there were an awful lot of them, and I did not actually have to photograph every one!!!! The country lanes have lived up to my expectations of hedgerows, and wandering streams and towering archways of green meeting overhead in a gorgeous green gloom. Getting lost a few times was even better, as I discovered little serendipitous treasures of fabulous villages straight off those chocolate boxes, with names to match. Teffont Magna, and Great Wishford were the two little gems of today, but there were several others of equal charm. (Photos to be attached shortly when my poor camera has recovered enough to upload some photos.)

Wilton House was the next stop, with the wonderful Inigo Jones Cube Room and Double Cube Room. I was the first person there for the day, so I was pounced on by eager guides who wished to give me a personalised tour to break their tedium. A huge Van Dyck larger than my house adorned one end of the Double Cube Room, and had been brought down from the Earl of Wilton's London town house on an open cart!! The grounds were stunning, with a beautiful Japanese-inspired water garden.

My umbrella began the first of its regular subsequent outings at this point, as the English summer weather demonstrated the reason for the lovvely greenery everywhere. Glastonbury is on this weekend nearby, so I imagine it wll be the usual mud-bath there as well.

After Wilton house I headed through an enchanting country lane route towards Stonehenge. Crossing the solid traffic jam headed to Glastonbury, I arrived at the Stonehenge parking lot in time for a parade of Druids leaving the site, draped in white robes and assorted other strange paraphernalia. The effect was somewhat dampened however, as they all gathered under a Warehouse-style gazebo in the parking lot, and all handed over their white Druid robes to be packed up into Warehouse-style plastic boxes for loading into the back ofa very non-Druid white panel van. They all looked like slightly tatty supermarket shoppers, rather than mystical priests and priestesses.Stonehenge itself was suitably amazing, and it is a very evocative place, high on the windswept plains with panoramic views of the surroungding countryside. The Summer Solstice the previous day had had the sun rising through the most northerly arch, and it would then start to travel back along the arches to the Winter Solstice.

Old Sarum was next on the list, so I again struck an eager-beaver guide who took two of us on an exhaustive and exhausting tour of the ramparts and rooms of the old Sarum fort. They have only excavated down as far as the Norman ruins - the Roman ruins of Sorviodunum are 17ft further down, and the Iron Age ones are deeper down again. The ourline of the cathedral which preceded the Salisbury Cathedral can also still be seen.

So at this stage I crawled back to Salisbury, to succeed in getting myself lost for hald an hour driving around the one-way streets, overshooting where I needed to go, and getting stuck in places I couldn't get out of. A kind lady took pity on me, and told me to follow her car to lead me to the entrance to Mary's street - there are lovely people everywhere when you need them!!

So I have done country lanes, thatched cottages and villages, stately homes, prehistoric ruins, and a Norman fort all in one day - hence the exhaustion...... Tomorrow is Stourhead.

First Stop Salisbury

The usual delight of a 25-hour trip landed me safely at Heathrow where I was extremely glad to tbe met by Mary Thoreau. She drove my little jet-lagged self in my rental car to Salisbury, safely negotiating all the M5/M3/Mgazillion motorways necessary. We passed Stonehenge coming in to Salisbury, but for some bizarre reason, it being the Summer Solstice, it was closed off to traffic by several million orange traffic cones. I wold have thought it would have been the exact day that all would-beDruids would have headed there to prance naked at dawn. There were assorted hipp-type characters hitching rides on the road-side, so perhaps their Druid aspirations had been foiled.

Salisbury is an attractive town whcih we wandered through on our way to lunch at the Debenham's Cafe, according to instructions from Kath and Dave who had discovered this little piece of ancient building tucked at the back of a department store, and converted into a cafe. The usual fare of paninis and latte was available, with thankfully no ancient food on display. After lunch was the first dose of tourist-mania, with a visit to Salisbury Cathedral which truly deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful cathedrals. It is nearly 800 years old, and was built in the "amazingly short time of 38 years", which is of course amazing when one considers the prinitive tools and engineering equipment available for the constructon of the soaring vault. Apparently cathedrals under construction at the time regularly fell down, as they learned along the way how to make them stand up!!!

Crowning the cathedral is a fabulous spire, but it also nearly caused major disaster. The cathedral was not designed for a spire, but some queen commented that it really looked like it should have one, so 7000 tons of stone were duly plonked on top of the roof to make one. Unsurprisingly the beautiful soaring marble pillars inside developed an alarming bend in them over the next hundred years. Sir Christopher Wren was called in about the problem, for which he suggested a solution of a band of steel around the spire. This seems to have solved the problem for the last five hundred years or so, but our little group of tourists all still looked a bit edgy and shifted nervously out of the way, when we gazed up at the gentle curve of said pillars!! The cathedral is not one of the biggest around, but it has truly beautiful proportions and stunning sight lines down the nave. The Chapter house next door also holds one of the four copies of the Magna Carta, written in amazingly tiny script on vellum.

Today will eb Wilton House and off into the English countryside.

More later.