July 21 The 2 Arthurs- King and Uncle

Uppark House, Petersfield, East Tisted, Hinton Ampher, Winchester

There are rumours, apparently commenced by Malory (the author of  Le Morte d'Arthur not Mallory the former mountaineer - although the latter did go to Winchester School) that Winchester, our main objective on this day was the site of Camelot.  Consensus seems to be it was a totally fictional joint invented by folk telling a good yarn!  That is the King Arthur.

My Uncle Arthur was - in the 1950s and 60s - a blacksmith in East Tisted, which village I hope to visit today.

I woke early and by 5:30 was out on the seawall running East into a nippy wind.  The dog walking classes were not yet evident but a couple on interesting signs were read:

• Mulberry Harbour – a key part of D Day was built off Selsey and then floated across to Normandy;
• At the end of the track a sign announced that the view from that point across to Bognor inspired Eric Coates to pen a tune by the name of Sleepy Lagoon, used as the theme song for Desert Island Discs on the BBC.  (I am advised that cultural references are needed to appreciate the significance of this.)

Round about the time I got to the second of these signs I became very interested in finding a third sign announcing the presence of a khazi.  Unfortunately, when I did track one down, it also announced that it was locked overnight.  But wait! there's more: the ones about 1km down the track are opened 24/7.  Sorry, wrong: that facility was also locked.  Fortunately for the environment of West Sussex -possibly also East Sussex, most of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight -  this was only 200m from home and I made it.

Frances and I then went for a walk along the main road to the shingle to go further West.  This soon ran into private property so we wandered back through a residential area.  The houses were large 

and the cars all new (and needless to say mainly imported).  Selsey is not an impoverished area, but it did cause us to wonder what the folk did for a living: it is about 8 miles from the nearest large town and railway station and there doesn't seem to be any manufacturing here.

After breakfast (accompanied by a perusal of a copy of the Sunday Independent, acquired for £2.20 and worth about 15p) we headed off in the general direction of Winchester.  We had to pass through the edge of Chichester to do this and found a triathlon going on.  In fact the triathlon bike leg pretty much followed our route.  This made the driving rather dangerous as many of the competitors appeared to have little idea of road safety, and the roads were – this being England – narrow and twisty.  We didn't hit anyone but we wondered what the death toll was overall.  There was massive support effort with marshals at every intersection.  On the one long downhill there were lots of signs about danger and a marshal on every bend!

 We eventually ended up at Uppark House and Garden.  We got there before they opened at 11 and it was explained to us that the house didn't open until 12:30 but we could take a mini-tour starting at 11:10 where we could see a few rooms.  This seemed like the best of an average situation so we did as suggested.    While waiting for 11:10 to arrive we took the opportunity to look closely at one of the flint-studded walls common in the area.

This made it obvious that this was a traditional equivalent to brick veneer with the flints simply filling in the gaps between the timber frame members, and having no load bearing function.

The mini-tour was brilliant.  The guide was very knowledgeable and had a very good grasp of the story.  A main part of the recent history of the House was a huge fire in 1989 which effectively gutted the place.  (It seems this was started by contractors, but I'm not sure how.)  Anyway the firies were there within 15 minutes of the alarm being raised and decided quickly that the upper floor was a goner so ignored that and worked towards getting all the art and antiques out of the ground floor.  They did this very well indeed, apart from not knowing how to remove a few things:

•  the grand piano was covered by a carpet and lost (the carpet had a corner burnt off, which was repaired in Hungary, as no-one in England can hand knot carpet any more!); and
•  a large 4-poster bed was only removed – by NT - staff the next day and 15 minutes later the ceiling in that room came down.

The insurance on the property came up with £20m and the contractors were sued for another £1m so the NT didn't have to cough up anything.

The other story was the ownership of the house.  At a relatively recent point the then owner, aged in his 70s married his dairymaid and they lived there happily with the dairymaid getting very involved in running the place.  Eventually the old chap died and the estate passed to the dairymaid.  She invited her sister to join her and when the dairymaid died the house passed to the sister (the dairymaid not having fallen pregnant).  I think that they decided that when the sister died the house would pass to the son of a friend.  His descendants still live in houses on the estate and the restored upper floor of the House.

We then wandered around the gardens after watching a Red Kite patrolling the valley below.  I reported this to someone and they said that the birds are now regular.  There will be more about Red Kites in another post, but when I left the UK in 1970 they were still on the verge of extinction in the UK with a few pairs in Wales.  Now it seems they are are regularly observed over a fair part of England and wales.

We headed off towards Winchester.  A diversion occurred to visit the village of East Tisted where my uncle used to own (and operate) a smithy.  (As a total sidetrack, as I type this I was thinking about my visits there as a child and can suddenly smell the red hot shoes going on to the horses hooves.  Anyone who has attended such an event will know to what I refer, and that this is nothing to do with breakfast toast being created.)  The house it still called The Forge but the smithy – and the income supplementing petrol pumps – are no more (but the stable where my cousin kept her horse is still at the back).

We have just (2/2/2014) come across this old postcard of East Tisted which my Aunt sent me in July 1953.

The relatives house is the one at the RH end.

We went for a squiz at the excellently preserved church with good memorial plaques and admired some of the other houses in the village.

On, on towards Winchester with a swerve into Hinton Amper (and a few curses at the yokels with two tractors dragging hay along the road from East Tisted) .  The big deal here was the excellent garden.  

The ownership of the house was again interesting ending with a gent described as “a committed bachelor” - can the truth be a euphemism?- leaving the property to the NT.  

An interesting sidelight was a displayed letter, signed Elizabeth R, thanking the owner for his hospitality and an accompanying note from a member of the Royal Household saying that the handwriting of the letter was that of the Queen Mum but they had no record of the visit.  A guide explained that the interpretation of this was a comfort stop: public conveniences are not on the cards nor are convenient bushes (the problems being more than stinging nettles).

The NT shop here was selling local bottled produce which will be commented on later.  They also got some action from Frances who acquired a book about NT houses and another blanket.  A final comment is to note that a Classic Citroen Club was visiting the place with a lot of Maigret specials parked out the front of the house and attracting a lot of looks from the other visitors.

Leaving there we headed to Winchester and despite the efforts of the people who leave crucial information off signs made it into the city centre.  However there was no indication of where the Cathedral was so we didn't want to park and find we had to walk 2 miles.  I asked someone who looked like (and probably was) a local but they were in training for that oversubscribed occupation of village idiot and didn't know.  Interestingly that is the second time we have asked people for directions to physically massive and economically key sites and the locals haven't known.  After a very confusing lap of the city centre we arrived back where we started but having spotted the cathedral so knew to park there.  The car park was a tribute to incompetence (I'm not sure if it was the Council or the private sector):

•  despite all the signs about pay and display it turned out to be free on Sundays!
• the lifts didn't work (and hadn't done since about June 2012);
• we had gone up 2 levels but were on level 4 and then went down 1 level to the street.

 We got to the Cathedral and found Evensong about to kick off so wandered in to join the throng (thus not having to pay, and getting some music thrown in).  Frances really enjoyed the music but it wasn't to my taste: apparently it was quite modern and thus showed off the cleverness of the composer and singers.    I was intrigued by one of the Lessons which went on about defending the city from “ruthless aliens” - Anglicanism defined by the BNP? - and the modern language used which lost all the feel of the old prayers which I remembered (but were probably not understood by the MP3 generation).

Once the Service was over I was free to take photographs 

including some of the memorials around the building.  This extensive list is of members of the Royal Hampshire Regiment who have died on service.

This is a memorial to Sir John Campbell who died at Sebastopol in fighting during the Crimean War - not a conflict memorialised in Australia.

There were a lot of other military ones (including the men of the Pay Corps – I have never found one to the dunny builders of the Pioneer Corps) and a very large brass on the wall and flagstone in the floor for Jane Austen.  (She was about to get a lot of air-time as a result of being put on the 10 pound note!

 On home.   This was basically a blat for about an hour, interrupted by refueling on the outskirts of Chichester and finding we had averaged about 38mpg which is not too bad.  (From a comparison with later results this suggests the car wasn't exactly brim full when we picked it up, but also indicates the way travellng at motorway speed increases the fuel consumption.)

Evening libations for me were Arundel Sussex Gold Ale (very hoppy and refreshing) and, while waiting for our take-away fish and chips to be cooked at the Lifeboat pub, a slightly softer styled pint of St Austel Pride bitter.  The latter comes from Cornwall so wasn't really local but close enough when thirsty.  Frances partook of Tillingdon Hills cider purchased at the Co-op: she rated it as good  with a distinctive slightly herbal taste.

Bird of the Day: Red Kite

Building of the day: Winchester Cathedral

Garden of the Day: Hinton Ampher

Bad taste of the Day: the car park in Winchester

View of the Day: from the bedroom in Uppark House.

Back to the Index page

July 23 Old fogeys of the New Forest

Thorney Island, Lyndhurst, Beaulieu

Those of advanced years might note in the title a backhanded reference to the book "Children of the New Forest" which was very popular in my childhood despite being published in 1847.  I had thought this was due to Churchill and McMillan's interest in restoring a quasi-feudal society in the UK.  Rather than denying this theory, noting that the BBC last televised it in 1998 makes me reassess Tony Blair's intentions.

It appears that Ms Cambridge provided a third generation of succession about 4:30pm yesterday.  Sky News was full of it (idiomatically, Sky News is usually "full of it" but this was specific not a scatological geeralisation).  It would have been fun to see how conflicted they'd have become if the event had coincided with the finish of Le Tour!  The masses – OK a bit of a crowd – were gathered out the front of Buck House, presumably to read the notice because there was nothing else to see.  I have just watched a guy from a ceramics company talking about all the sales they are expecting.  Apparently it will take them 4 days to get all the stuff made and distributed with the name etc.  So we may be able to find the Engraved Gazunder before we leave

This morning I went for a run around the whole of Selsey.  (In a cryptic crossword, the word 'whole' would be preceded by “sounds like”.)  After getting up to the main street I took off to look at the holiday park area.  There are at least 4 Parks and the one I ran through (West Beach) seemed from a map to have some 1,000 chalets.  This makes sense of the information sign suggesting that the population of Selsey at 12,000 in Winter doubles in Summer.  While it is very much the sort of place we avoid like botulism (although I didn't find the mini-golf I am sure it was in there somewhere) there was at least a reasonable amount of turf between them, unlike the Butlins Camps of the 1950s and 60s which were modeled on 1940s camps (in Eastern Europe).

When having a whinge one should never reject targets because they are too easy.  Yes, I am going to give British Telecom a serve.  I looked up the phone book to find the overseas access code when calling from the UK.  I am told to check on line – great if I had internet access in this country (at less than the £4 a day which BT charge).  Then I could buy – like spoilt kids in Africa, telcos are always crying “Give us money” - a book!  Or I could ring them – at premium call rates to find out.  I took a guess at 0011.

The weather looked reasonable so we decided to:

1. go to the New Forest for a look round; and
2. do a load of washing.  

In fact we did 2 before 1 and while waiting for the machine to finish its stuff went and sat above the shingle.  We observed the meeting of the mass of dog owners 

which was most amusing: the owner of the fox terrier was heard to say that the way his dog pounces on its ball indoors has worn out the carpet.  Just imagine such behaviour from a small terrier.

Moving East to see if there were any interesting birds around we spotted this small trawler coming in.  

It would appear the fisherperson had been chucking guts etc overboard.  When he landed he had two largish boxes of skate bits, which I reckoned to be worth about £100.  Not a great return if he been far out or for very long.

Heading off we zipped along the A/M 27 and M271 and first stopped in Lyndhurst.  This is described as a pretty village in the Forest.  Which it is.  The only problem with this is that two A class roads meet there and as a result it is clogged with traffic.  

What it will be like in a couple of weeks when the holidaying hordes really kick in is beyond belief – and possibly beyond imagination.  From our view the best thing was grabbing some brochures about the area (noting how astonishing it was to have to pay for parking at the Information Centre) which suggested – as well as a lot of retail opportunities - a visit to the Church of St Michael and All Saints.

This pub sign on the way to the Church was the most amusing I noticed while in the UK:

There were two excellent + things about this church:

• Much of the design and glass were by prominent pre-Raphaelites (and I m sure you remember them from Brum);

• An Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) is buried there.  She was the catalyst for Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” and “Alice in Wonderland”.

As well as her grave – a simple monument made very picturesque by the rose bushes –

 I had already taken a photograph of this memorial plaque

not realising the guys commemorated were her sons.  She seems to have been a very active and respected member of the local community.

We then headed off towards Beaulieu to a birding spot recommended in my birding guide.  We were barely out of town before finding our first New Forest ponies.  

On my childhood visits, accompanied by an equiholic cousin, I seem to remember having great trouble finding any ponies.  Today they were everywhere, including the place we stopped to go for a walk: as they seemed to be looking longingly at our baguette we didn't get out until we had finished eating.  It was a lovely walk adding a few species of bird (including Stonechat) to the trip list and getting good snaps of a few of the flowers in the heath.

The forest was also very appealing.

 Here we have a carollic image including both holly and ivy!  Possibly they can be regarded as both well grown.

We then rumbled off to Beaulieu where handing over gelt seemed to be required to do anything. We didn't wish to go to the Motor Museum (a working racetrack, or display by a bunch of enthusiasts is one thing but handing out our hard-earned to look at a static collection is very different).  So we moved on, stopping briefly at a small church in Exbury which had a couple of interesting memorials.  We had never heard of this GG of Australia!

The kneelers were also interesting as the first example of this form of community art seen on this trip.

These ponies seemed undisturbed by the distant industry (nor by the dog being exercised in the background).   
I commented on our last trip that the definition of a National Park in the UK is very different to Australia: whole towns are within the Park as are farms and  recreational activities.  (I'd love to see the Head Canophobe from the NSW National Sparks and Wildfires Service react to a dog running around near iconic wildlife!  A defibrillator would be needed.)  Our final pause was a beach at Lepe where we took a hazy image – the camera doesn't lie – of the Isle of Wight.

We then headed off through some very, very confusing signs which I got wrong a couple of times, to the M27.  Our final destination for the day was a site marked as RSPB on our road atlas but try as we might we couldn't find the place.

So we went home for a cleansing Ale or, in Frances case, cider.  My ale was the third sample from Arundel the dark and stronger (5.5%) Old Knuckler: this was a very chewy and complex dark ale indeed.  Well done that brewer!  After this we toddled off to the Seal Pub (in the Good Beer Guide) for tea.

I was initially put off by being asked if we had a reservation, but then things settled down and we had an excellent locally caught crab salad, washed down with a pint of Hophead beer (from Brighton, so nearly local).  It was quite obvious why it is called HOPhead!

Bird of the Day:  Stonechat

Building of the day: Church of St Michael and All Saints

Garden of the Day:  Alice in Wonderland's grave

Bad taste of the Day: The traffic in Lyndhurst

View of the Day: Most parts of the New Forest

Back to the Index page

July 26 Sel-see you later?

Head for Shropshire.  After Worcester go to Brockhampton Estate.  Note that we will NOT be following the Google maps route: after Worcester their instructions got rather like like pace notes for a car rally in a dense pine forest.  An alternate route using A-roads looked far more appealing (this judgement was confirmed by our host at Tugford).  

Last evening I went out to the garbage bin beside the front gate and found it empty!  We knew the truck had been by but were surprised to find they had grabbed it.  Perhaps this is because there is no pavement at the Cottage?  While thinking domestically I will comment on the cistern design in the downstairs dunny here.  It is set up with a basin on top and when you flush the water runs into the basin: thus the water with which you wash your hands becomes the next flush!  A great water saving idea.

Review of dog poo signs.

There have been various approaches to fishing noted around the area.  The beach/recreational folk all seem to use this tripod approach to cope with the shingle.  

The boat fisherman was lifting his crab pots.

 At Nutbourne (see below)  it was more like hunting – possibly worms?

A quick walk around the Bill produced Mediterranean Gulls – as soon as spotted one, quickly picked about 6 together with 20+ turnstones.

Pack up and nick off.  I tried to buy fuel at Selsey, as I knew service stations were scarce on the A/M27.  Half of the pumps not working and the folk at others all seem to be in shop, possibly buying stuff, possibly just yacking.  Pass, as I was sure we had enough to get somewhere willing to sell us petrol in less time than a glacial epoch.  Head off on A259 to a birding spot marked in our road atlas.  This was the  local Reserve of Nutborne Marsh.  There was much exposed mud!

If we had had more time and didn't mind getting mucky quite a few waders were visible in the distance.  However they stayed unidentifiable, but I did tick a Linnet beside the seawall.

Back to A27/M27 wherethe traffic was rather heavy.  Get to M3 and very very busy: I began to regret not getting somewhat more expensive fuel along the A259.  Turn off at Eastleigh and find fuel – very good price at a Tesco station.  The trouble is the place is also a mini-Tesco so punters buying stuff block pumps and then chat with check-out chicks.  Grr!  However, it was a long way to the next on-highway servo so I was glad we'd filled up when we did.

Back to the M3.  This was stop-start all the way (about 3 miles)  to the junction with the A34 which was completely clagged.  It appears this was due to an unnecessary cut down to one lane for a turn off to Basingstoke.  

However it then cleared up and it was flat as a maggot up towards the M4.  That lasted until more chaos due to a guy with tractor converting it to 1 lane by filling the kerbside lane at 30mph.  According to our host at Tugford the law is to pull over if have 10 behind you, which is fair enough: however this dude was mucking up 2-300 cars at least.  I presume if he'd driven out of the way on the shoulder Mr Plod would have been unhappy: just one more example of the country being beyond its design capacity.

M4 to Swindon was fine. The  A419 was also fine for many miles then suddenly it was cut down to 1 lane at Cowley and chaos resulted for the next 6 miles at 20mph.  We discussed who was to blame for these innane capacity changes and concluded that the problem is no-one is responsible: it is a worst case situation of mismanagement by committee.  Then onto to M5 which was very busy but OK to Worcester.  

This City began with briliant directions into the Cathedral and nearby parking.  Whoever is in charge of traffic planning in Worcester should run courses for just about every other city in the country.  

They also have a fabulous cathedral. 

It was holding a festival of young singers who were rehearsing when we arrived.  There were at least 300 of them being directed unto doing bell imitations.  Unlike many other places they still let punters in and the kids were doing a great job.

The stained glass was great.  

Here are a few other views of elements of the cathedral.

There were many war memorials (see thematic page for images of those I found more interesting).  Having taken many photos and forming a view that this was just about the best cathedral I've been in, I decided I should get a photo permit.  This cost £3 – as good a value as the Selsey bakery!  I also donated another £2 – they are doing a brilliant job.  

Their (quite restrained compared to many religious places) signs requesting donations said that it cost £3500 a day to maintain the place.  (They also said £5 a visitor, so on average they get 700 visitors a day – I need to think about whether this is a bigger number than I would have expected or not.)  I started to take note of the per capita costs listed in other churches etc: they are wildly variable!

They also had a memorial to Edward Elgar in the Cathedral but I took this photo of his statue in the square outside instead.  He is a big item around Worcester.

We found our way on to A49 (getting out of the city was not as easy as getting in but still much better signposted than many places: Lewes, East Sussex, I am looking at you!).  Hmm not exactly big road, but a lot bigger than the country lanes Google Maps suggested.  We didn't call in at Elgar's house Museum as we still had a way to go and some planned stops. 

We did call in to Brockhampton Estate (NT place). 

Very pleasant in a low key way.  1700 acres of tenanted land including lots of woodland

which we didn't have, nor feel like finding, the time to walk round.. 

On to Ludlow. A quick swing into Tescos  where the biggest surprise was all the vouchers we were given for future visits.  I managed to use these later in the trip saving (from memory) about £6.50. We then headed off into the lanes to the farm.  The most surprising aspect of this was the start of the B3465 which appears to go across the Ludlow race track: by this I mean that when a race was on the horses go across the road, which is presumably shut for the duration of the event!)

We met our hosts who seem most excellent people.  We also met their small dogs who are also excellent, despite being Jack Russells rather than Tenterfields.

Tonights Beer:  Malvern Hills Brewery Black Pear Premium Bitter.  Yep, that covers it rather well.  The hops end up sitting very nicely on the palate.  Another good beer!

I thought I would finish with some reflections on how Australian roads would be classified in the UK:

• The Hume Highway: definitely a Motorway when no at grade intersections.  Otherwise a 70 mph limited A road.
• The Kings Highway (Queanbeyan to Batemans Bay): definitely an A road.
• Captains Flat Rd:: well up to the standard of many A roads we found on this trip and with 1% of the traffic.
• Widgiewa and Whiskers Creek Rds: Both good B roads (higher capacity and better condition than the only road linking Selsey to the A27 or the one from Craven Arms to Bridgnorth.).
• I cannot think of an Australian road equivalent to the lanes around Tugford.  Some forest fire trails are as narrow but they are dirt surfaced.

Bird of the Day: Mediterranean Gull

Building of the day:  Worcester cathedral

Garden of the Day:  The avenue in Brockhampton Estate

Bad taste of the Day: Design of the intersection of the A34 and the M3

View of the Day: Nutborne Marsh. Tidal mud at its most magnificent

Back to the Index page

July 28 Three March towns

Ludlow, Leominster and Hereford.  I had hoped to go to Brecon as well but due to the Black Mountains getting in the way that looked like too long a drive.  Looking  back, as will be evident from today's report that view was spot on the money.

The rain stopped sometime during the night and I had a good nights kip.  When I woke I decided to watch the BBC News and was just in time to cop the Sports news.  This started off with a track meet where Jessica Ennis (if you can remember who she is I suspect you're English) finished the race.  She got interviewed extensively, while Sally Pearson (if you can remember who she is I suspect you're Australian) who won, didn't even get shown crossing the line.  Usain Bolt (you don't have to be Jamaican to know who he is) running in a relay race got less coverage that Sir Bradley Wiggins did for finishing in the peleton in the first stage of the tour of Poland (run in Italy for goodness sake).

They then moved on to the weather.  Some places on the East Coast had scored 3” overnight, .  The forecast for the rest of the week sounded typical of an English Summer: sunny spells with scattered thundery showers.  (I've just realised this is my first reference to the weather, a remarkable outcome from spending a week in the UK.  This probably reflects it being beautiful weather all the time we were in Selsey.)

The basic plan today was to go down to Hereford about 25 miles (ie 40 km) South, check that out and comeback North calling in at Leominster, Berrington Hall and Ludlow en route.  That is pretty much what happened.  Again putting in a parenthesis, I will offer a few comments about the official view of driving in the UK:

• there are many, many signs about speed cameras.  Possibly 25% of these seem to be associated with actual cameras, the rest are just propaganda.  However I take note of them and drop to the speed limit unlike other folk who scream past.  Today we went past a camera and the guy who had just overtaken me must have been doing at least 10mph over the limit, but he didn't even brake. 
• That caused me to think of stats from our last visit that >50% of speeding fines, license withdrawals are ignored.
• There are a lot of other signs exhorting one to slow down (for an intersection, a crest, a case of indigestion).  Obviously they have never read the story of the boy who called wolf!
• At one point today I was doing 50, overtaking someone doing 35 in an unlimited area, when a sign flashed “Slow Down”at me as they had an advisory (I think) 40 limit for an upcoming bend.  Distracting garbage!

 We started by looking at the old church in Tugford.

A simple building but with some charms.  I noted that they had deliberately only mowed half the graveyard allowing the remainder to be 'natural'.  A few cemetery trusts in Australia could learn from this. The main war memorials are in that thematic page, but this manuscript appealed . 

So did these old fertility symbols: only 2 others known in Shropshire!

We basically hammered down the road to Hereford, and into the free TESCO parking lot, to get to the cathedral before the 11am Matins.   This was obviously a well known ploy as they had started business with a Eucharist at 10am.  The singing was quite good so at 10:15 we sat in the pew until we realised at about 10:30, on page 3 of 9 in the Order of Service, that this was going to be a long service so wandered off.  Like many towns in the area Hereford was well served with planter boxes.

We started with the museum where a roman pavement was mounted on the wall

and spoke to some folk who gave us a small, but very useful, map and told us how to get to the River Wye and pointed out that en route we'd pass the site of Nell Gwynn's house.  The plaque their made no reference to her involvement in the citrus trade, nor who sired the first Duke of St Albans. 

We crossed the River Wye and reconnected with Edward Elgar due to an episode - in some way incorporated in the Enigma Variations - with a friend's bulldog jumping in the River. 

Some Mute swans were sunning themselves on the banks of the Wye,

Back to the Cathedral and quickly in between the Eucharist finishing at about 11:15 and Matins kicking off at 11:30.  An excellent cathedral – not quite up to Worcester standards but with much good glass

The second image is of the "Thomas Denny Windows".  The artist responsible for this appears to have started his career in glass more or less by accident in 1983 and now has windows in 30+ churches across the UK.   There were also many interesting memorials sampled in the appropriate post.

After this we wandered around Hereford finding several interesting items.  I have restricted my burden on your download limit to this, reflecting the origin of my favourite breed of beef in this County.

Back to Leominster where there seemed to be two specially interesting buildings according to the guidebook.  In fact it was a bit better than that with a good mural 

titled "The Friendship Tree" painted by Sally Johnson and Mike Johnson..   The Priory Church was interesting for having a Norman/Romanesque old bit and a later addition heading towards a Perpendicular/Gothic feel.  A service was just finishing but a nice lady still welcomed us (while her male colleague turned off all the lights)!  Here is an image.

The other officially interesting building was the Guildhall.  The image would reflect the level of  interest better if the gardener's truck wasn't in the way (but they were working on a Sunday so lets not be too hard on them).

Then to the NT's Berrington Hall. 

A very interesting building with park grounds in which Capability Brown had been involved: towards the end of our visit I inspected the haha  (which by definition is invisible from the house but is indicated by the faint line on this side of the foreground tuft of grass).

Looking at the depth of this effort I decided that the Pratchett character “Bloody Stupid Johnstone” (whose hahas killed many people by excessive depth) was not a great deal away from the reality of the better known Mr Brown. 

On the next stretch of the drive I noticed my first dead badger of the trip.  I presume it was a road fatality not part of the cull being taken to reduce a claimed TB situation.  On the last trip the roads around Bristol had basically been surfaced with dead badgers but they have been less evident this trip (so far).  

Ludlow then got looked at and rated as a very nice town.  

The Church of St Lawrence was mind-boggling, especially when 'only' a Parish Church.  I have no objection to the view of the church architecture person who described it as the Cathedral of the Marches.

There were many very interesting war memorials in this church and they are all ....  I will also show this sample of the workings of a carillion (of interest to me because I had never realised how they worked in the past).

Then, tired but happy, we wandered home, attempting to buy some stuff from the Ludlow Brewery but no-one was interested in serving me.

Tonight's beer was BV Stout from Mayfields Brewery in Herefordshire.  A good stout even if named after Black Vaughn who seems to have been a very naughty boy in 1469 (and later, when his ghost wreaked havoc).  It did a good job of settling my digestion down before asking it to deal with an excellent pork pie, courtesy of – wait for it – Tescoes.

Bird of the Day: Nuthatch seen at Tugford

Building of the day: St Lawrence Church in Ludlow but Hereford Cathedral had put in a big effort in the final quarter and only missed out narrowly.

Garden of the Day:  Walled garden at Berrington Hall

Bad taste of the Day:  poor service at the Ludlow Brewery

View of the Day:  The parkland at Berrigton.

Back to the Index page