The Hundred Acre Wood

For day 25 of #blogjune, in which our plans are put off for another day… and just as well

When planning our trip through England I had booked a three night stay at the garden studio of Monk’s House in the village of Rodmell near Lewes. The studio is set in the garden of Virginia Woolf’s country retreat, Monk’s House, and I’d discovered it while looking for a base to visit Brighton and Sissinghurst. In the end we had to shorten our trip a little and so a stay at Monk’s House has been put off for another time.

(Also, in one of those Monopoly “Bank error in your favour” moments in life, due to the Australian dollar improving in value against the pound, when I cancelled our booking with the National Trust I made a small profit even after paying the cancellation fee. Score!)

It was while exploring the area around Monk’s House that I thought of a little day trip to the Ashdown Forest, the real place that served as inspiration for the magical world inhabited by Pooh, Piglet and their friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.

(Pooh and Piglet aren’t there any more but you can visit them at the New York Public Library.)

I didn’t think much more about this little part of our trip until I spotted this wonderful book at Kinokuniya in Singapore on the way home. The Natural world of Winnie the Pooh, by Kathryn Aalto is wonderful – a must for any Pooh (or Piglet) fan!

I’m now pretty glad that we didn’t get to stay at the Monk’s House, at least just yet, because a visit to the Hundred Acre Wood will be much more special after reading this lovely book.

 

Another white horse

For day 24 of #blogjune, another white horse

White horses were a theme of our holiday. We stayed at White Horses Cottage at Portmeirion, and then we saw a little pamphlet of the Wiltshire white horses in the village shop in Avebury. There was also a story on the television news of a white horse at Westbury being cleaned as part of the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations.

We checked the white horses pamphlet and found that there was one not far away from Avebury, along the road to Devizes…

From Wikipedia:

The figure at Cherhill was first cut in 1780 by a Dr Christopher Alsop, of Calne, and was created by stripping away the turf to expose the chalk hillside beneath… Dr Alsop, who was Guild Steward of the Borough of Calne, has been called “the mad doctor”, and is reported to have directed the making of the horse from a distance, shouting through a megaphone from below Labour-in-Vain Hill. 

Bath day

For day 23 of #blogjune, a daytrip to Bath

Avebury turned out to be a perfect base for exploring south-west England with so many day trips to choose from. On our last full day, under overcast skies, we headed towards the beautiful city of Bath.

The Park & Ride facilities in British towns are pretty neat for keeping the town centres free of traffic. We’d used the Park & Ride in Oxford, although a mistake in entering the postcode sent us off towards Woodstock before we realised something was wrong. We got the right postcode for Bath but the GPS sent us through the centre of town – but we got there in the end. At Bath the car park was free and we just paid for the bus ticket, and got the couples discount, and also the world’s friendliest bus driver on the return trip.

And, although it was grey and drizzly through most of our little visit, we did get a spot of blue sky in the afternoon…

 

 

 

 

Avebury Manor

For day 22 of #blogjune, part 2 of our stay in Avebury…

By staying at a National Trust cottage we got free admission to Avebury Manor, and they threw in a beautiful day with clear blue skies to enjoy the gardens as well.

I’d known of Avebury Manor long before our visit from having watched the BBC television show about its restoration, hosted by Penelope Keith.

(…and I’ve loved Penelope Keith since her role as the appalling but wonderful Margot in The Good Life back in the 1970s. In a another bit of The Good Life synchronicity, we later saw spotted Felicity Kendall having tea in the Bibendum Cafe in London.)

In another connection with yesterday’s post and Alexander Keiller and his marmalade fortune, Keiller procured a lease on Avebury Manor in the 1930s and one of the rooms there has now been restored in art deco style.

Hello?

The other rooms have all been decorated in a variety of styles to reflect Avebury’s history over the years, some of it was a bit controversial – which you’ll know if you’ve watched the TV series – and some of it isn’t very successful, such as the “marbled” bedroom. But overall it’s a lovely experience, all the more so having seen how it was created.

 

 

 

 

 

Walking amongst the stones

For day 21 of #blogjune, we get to walk around the ancient stone circle

While our first day in Avebury was so wet and gloomy that we fled to Oxford, our second day was glorious with bright blue skies, perfect for a walk amongst the ancient stones. To begin though, it was a very frosty view out of our front door.

The stones were erected between 4500-5000 years ago and stood here in Wiltshire for thousands of years, until the Middle Ages when the Christian Church ordered them to be removed. Luckily, and probably because removing them would have been too difficult, the villagers buried most of the stones rather than removing them, although later some were broken up and used in buildings.

The stones are reputed to have mystical properties, and the Red Lion pub, in the photo below, is reputed to be one of the most haunted in Britain.

Alexander Keiller was a pioneering archaeologist, also heir to a fabulous marmalade fortune (true story!), who came to Avebury in the 1920s and set to work excavating many of the stones. This marmalade connection also led to my most favourite Tripadvisor review of all time, of the National Trust Tea Room at Avebury Manor:

Enjoyed two cream teas at the tea room but to my absolute chagrin, they have no marmalade.

A raised circular bank runs along the south-east and north-east quadrants with lovely views towards Avebury village. That’s our little cottage at the far left in the photo below.

On our last night we went for a spooky night time walk around the stones – it was quite peaceful actually.

 

Arriving in Avebury

For day 20 of #blogjune, we travel to Avebury and then to Oxford…

Not far from Stonehenge is a less well known stone circle, which contains within it the small English village of Avebury. We stayed here for four nights at Fishlock’s Cottage on the edge of the village but within the ancient stone circle.

Arriving in the early evening, we thought the cottage was idyllic until we realised there was a problem with the boiler and there was no heating or hot water. We tried calling the National Trust’s toll-free accommodation helpline but there was a technical fault with the system. Wondering if it might have been our mobile phones, I even walked down to the village shop which had an old fashioned red phone box out the front but we still couldn’t get through.

After over an hour of fiddling with the settings, Wayne got the boiler working so we thankfully didn’t have to face a freezing night or a cold shower in the morning. Hurrah!

The next morning was gloomy and rainy so, rather than go for a walk around the stone circle, we headed instead to Oxford which was about an hour’s drive away. Lovely Oxford is beautiful even on the greyest and rainiest of days.

We sheltered in the covered market until the worst of the rain passed, where we found a very excellent lunch at a pie shop called the Pie Minister – who could resist?

… and then the rains cleared and we spent the afternoon wandering around lovely Oxford.

 

 

 

The Welsh Route 66

For day 19 of #blogjune we hit the road

On our last day in Wales we bid farewell to White Horses and headed south down the A470, which I had read is considered the “Route 66 of Wales” – which tells you quite a lot about main roads in Wales. It’s a fairly narrow two lane road which is at least fairly straight, and we didn’t see a petrol station until we got to England. I have no photos of the beautiful scenery because there was nowhere to stop the car on the narrow road.

Being a librarian, I had done my research into lunch spots along the way and settled on the Herb Garden, a vegetarian cafe in Llandrindod Wells about half way to our destination Avebury in Wiltshire.

The Herb Garden Cafe is an old school vegetarian cafe, and I mean that as the highest compliment! It reminded me of all the veggie cook books I used to collect in my university student days, by English cookery writers such as Rose Elliot.

There were two specials on and we ordered one each, Roasted Vegetable Lasagne for Wayne and Parsnip and Cashew Sausages with mash and gravy for me. The cafe owner said they came with a small salad but we could add a side order of the three special salads for 99p – why not! It all turned out to be delicious, quite a bargain and very filling – sadly, no room left for any of the delicious looking cakes.

Suitably fortified, we hit the road again turning off towards Hereford and crossing the border into England. The scenery changed markedly as soon as we crossed the border, much more gentle, much less dramatic. We also stopped seeing the wonderful Welsh road signs – this is still my favourite.

 

By the seaside

Continuing along the coast for day 18 of #blogjune

Llandudno is a perfectly charming seaside town, just along the coast from my home town of Colwyn Bay, but luckily spared the indignity of having a motorway ploughed through it. Even the weather improved as we approached Llandudno, grey clouds giving way to gentle blue skies.

The “Queen of the Welsh Resorts” sits on a lovely crescent bay lined with smart mid-Victorian hotels and houses. It has a pier with some small amusements, and you can take the tram up the Great Orme for views over the town and bay.

We had one other low key seaside visit, to the little village and beach at Borth-Y-Gest near Porthmadog which was recommended to us by the friendly lady at the Caernarfon chip shop. We looked across the estuary trying to see if we could spot White Horses, but Portmeirion was tucked away behind the peninsula.

 

Sometimes you shouldn’t go home

For day 17 of #blogjune, going home…

I think it was our second day in Wales when we decided to drive from Portmeirion north through the mountains to visit Colwyn Bay, the town I was born in.

We migrated to Australia when I was just a few months old (which is why, I regret to say, I don’t have a Welsh accent) but we went back for a family holiday when I was aged seven and I still have strong memories of riding on double decker buses on the narrow roads, playing in the penny arcade , and buying Galaxy chocolate bars at the Woolworths store in town.

Sadly the town today is quite, well, sad. A motorway has been ploughed through cutting off the town from the coastline – we tried to walk to the beach to find the pier and gave up. The town itself is lively enough, but a bit forlorn compared with its neighbour Llandudno just up the coast. In need of a toilet, we ended up in a depressing shopping centre full of bargain shops. My souvenir of Colwyn Bay was a packet of zip bags from Pound Stretcher – to be fair, they were actually quite good zip bags.

I was looking through my photos when I got home and wondered what this was, and then realised it’s the only picture I took of the town where I was born – the street sign from where we parked the car in case we got lost.

 

White Horses

For day 16 of #blogjune, a stay at White Horses…

When I was organising our stay at Portmeirion we knew we wanted to stay at White Horses cottage and I stalked the booking web site for days until I got us in. While Portmeirion is set away from the humdrum world overlooking its lovely estuary, White Horses cottage is even more removed, sitting on its own at the very edge of the village overlooking the water.

The name, of course, comes from the waves which sometimes do more than gently lap at the cottage and in years past have flooded it. The cottage is now protected by a flood proof wall and beautifully renovated.

The original little fisherman’s cottage has quite a history…

White Horses (part C18, extended 1966; listed Grade II 1971) was originally a fisherman’s cottage. The old part is a single storey stone building with central chimney stack of traditional Welsh pattern. Clough’s addition links the Observatory Tower to the old cottage. It is constructed on arches over the path which overlooks an inset anchorage for boats. The cottage was inhabited for a time by Thomas Edwards, an infamous South Walian better known locally as yr Hwntw Mawr who worked as a labourer for William Maddocks on the Porthmadog embankment. In 1813 he was publicly hanged at Dolgellau for the murder during a robbery of Mary Jones, the maid at Penrhyn Isaf farm close to Portmeirion.

I had read stories that the cottage might be haunted but we never felt anything – it was perfectly peaceful.

The original cottage was first expanded with the building of the Observatory Tower, and in 1966 with the addition of a second floor and two bedrooms built on arches over the path that leads to the “Lighthouse” at the farthest edge of the village.

Patrick McGoohan stayed at White Horses when he was filming The Prisoner and there’s a plaque commemorating him on the cottage wall.

We also had our own personal statue of Lord Nelson …