‘The name’s Bond. Dennis Bond’. Mr Bond provided our rather grand lunch stop today. He constructed Grange Arch – a bizarre, Disneyfied ediface, to ‘close off the distant view’ at his country home, Creech Grange. Shame it wasn’t called Skyfall. That aside it was a perfect walk on a perfect day. We skirted around crumbling Corfe Castle, leaving it almost immediately behind and below as … Continue reading Perfect, Quintessential England.
The weather forecast promised a heatwave. Blinding sunshine, blue skies and temperatures soaring beyond the twenties to the low thirties. We got mist. A white-out. And a few spots of rain. I wanted to find an ichthyosaurus, a plesiosaurus, or a scelidosaurus. We’d got bad weather under the circumstances, but what we needed was really big, bad weather. Rain coming down by the bucketful, wind, … Continue reading In The Footsteps of Mary Anning.
There’s a great thing about walking in the English countryside. The tea-room. All good walks should begin or end at one. At Worth Matravers, deep in Dorset, next to the duck pond on the miniscule green is the quintessential, quaint English tea-shop. Full of antiques and mismatched china, embroidered knick-knacks, sugar basins with cubed sugar and tongs, old advertising posters, – and people. We could … Continue reading Dorset. Sea and Scones.
It was a complete gift. We knew nothing about it; on a whim decided to chance it, and then just fell head-over-heels in love with it. Poetry in stone. A beech-hedged drive. A sixteenth-century dovecote. A bridge over the river Wye. Turrets and battlements playing hide-and-seek with tree tops and the hall sitting on it’s limestone bluff above us. Past the Elizabethan stables, through the … Continue reading Haddon – a hall and a home.
An ordinary woman. An extraordinary woman. Miss Hilda Craven was born in 1892 and lived to the age of 102. She was ruled over by seven different British monarchs, and lived through two world wars. She saw the first step into space, the development of electricity, atomic power and the digital age. While the world was turning on it’s head and changing beyond recognition Hilda … Continue reading Mrs Smith.
The only thing Google came up with when I did a quick search of tourist attractions around Buntingford was Royston Cave. ‘Not interested’, I thought, and resigned myself to three weeks of reading books, sorting out Tokyo photos and playing catch up with blog writing. But after a week of damp, mist, and leaden skies I was going a little stir-crazy and suddenly a visit … Continue reading Royston Cave. One Of The Most Mysterious Places In England.
We recognised Henry Moore’s statues instantly – all those monumental curves and glistening bronzes – but we realised we knew nothing about Moore, the man. We would have been hard pushed to tell you what he looked like. So, our first stop at the Henry Moore Foundation was Hoglands, Moore’s home for half a century. Even today, Hoglands feels like it’s in the middle of … Continue reading Henry Moore And Intelligent Sheep.
We have just completed a house-sitting in the delightfully named Buntingford – it’s as if the flags are always out, and the town is in a permanent state of excitement – but, in spite of it’s name, we were not looking forward to our visit. Previously, Sophie and Bobby, our two Labrador charges, lived in the New Forest. (Out of Season. Out of Time.) When … Continue reading Buntingford.
How difficult it is to pick highlights out of a packed year. So many places big and small. Countless seemingly inconsequential moments of happiness. What I see is not a destination but a detail – a colour, a shape, an expression. Housesitting interspersed with trips to far flung lands. Animals. People. Friends. Food. Joy. Learning, always learning. I give thanks for it all. 2017 was … Continue reading Happy New Year.
Memories are made of this. It was all very Brief Encounter. Clouds of steam on a quaint platform. A whistle. A chug of the wheels and a prolonged hiss, as train 31806 came to a halt. I should have been wearing gloves and a hat. I was transported back to a time when travel was slow, genteel and convivial; shared flasks of hot tea, pork pies … Continue reading The Age Of Steam.
Wondering Woman 