TimTams

We were recently sent two packets of TimTams (Thanks Emma) and they were most appreciated. Tom had one... and I had the remaining 19. Share and Enjoy!

Guess who's now 1?

Well, she can't walk yet but has an impressive vocabulary of farmyard animals and bath toys. And she can say 'cake'. What more could a girl want?

My Evening, November 5

As I leave the front door and begin to wind my way down into the town, I keep a sharp eye out around me.  All around are sprays of small lights in the sky, which appear and fade over a few seconds, punctuated by an occasional bright flash that lights the suburban landscape.  The air, merely overcast and threatening drizzle at sunset,  is now thick with smoke and the stink of gunpowder, and the sounds of explosions form an almost constant background.  The brightest flashes are followed by near-deafening cracks a second or so later, which invariably startle and cause me to glance sharply in their direction.  Gradually it settles down; there is a persistent crackle that sounds like small-arms fire around a mile in front of me, away to the north on the far side of the river valley, while down to my left and behind me, to the south-west, there is an irregular, less frequent, deeper thump of heavier shells.  To the south-east things are mostly quiet, though there is the odd whistle of a rocket being launched.  To the north-west, in the direction of the city centre, the low cloud reflects a bright orange glow, which seems to get brighter as the smoke thickens.

I walk quickly, as the night air is cold, and take a dark route, the better to see rather than be seen.  Walking along a length of road, I am passed by a rattly, battered ex-army jeep, but the streets are unusually empty tonight.

As I begin to descend into the heart of the town, there is a sudden erruption of sharp cracks that freezes me stock still.  At first it seems that it can only be yards away, but as I recover from the shock I realise that it must be several blocks away at least, if not near the edge of the town, and I continue on my way.  We have had some forewarning of this; for the past week there has been the occasional explosion heard after dark, but nothing has prepared us for the scale of tonight, when things have started in earnest.

Sound familiar?  It won't, not to Australians.  What God-forsaken war zone have I landed in?  Afghanistan?  Iraq?  No; nor is this a flight of fancy.  This is suburban South-West England, near Bristol, and the French have not invaded (nor anyone else, for that matter).  But tonight is bonfire night, or Guy Fawkes night, and the quantity of fireworks expended within sight of my house is deeply impressive.

For anyone who does not know the history, Guy Fawkes night celebrates the foiling of a Catholic plot to blow up the Protestant-majority parliament in the 17th century.  A fellow called Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster, trying to look casual as he said, "What pile of gunpowder?  Oh oh, oh, this pile of gunpowder!  No, dunno nuffin' about it."  Over the intervening centuries, the date has morphed from Let's celebrate our freedom from tyrrany etc etc to It is every Englishman's right to buy as much light explosive as he can carry and set it off on (or at least within a week of) November 5.

The display, as I have said, has been impressive.  We have impressive displays of fireworks in Australia, but they are always highly organized, orchestrated, expensive affairs that are planned, designed and generally over within ten minutes.  There is nothing organized or designed about this display.  Every man, his dog and his dog's tapeworm has been out and bought a selection of fireworks, ranging from a small display suitable for a five-minute garden entertainment for £3, up to a large set of display fireworks for around £50, and is setting them off as fast as his cider-addled state will allow.  There are, of course, a fair number who just can't wait for the night and have been setting them off for the last week, but tonight they are everywhere.

In Australia, of course, setting fireworks off willy-nilly is generally frowned on, as they tend to produce rather more wide-spread displays (ie fires) than the operator intended.  For most of my childhood, purchasing fireworks required an expensive commercial operator's license, and it is only in the last few years that individuals have been able to buy them.  Even then, you need a permit which specifies a particular time and place where you may set them off, and the penalties for breaching the conditions are stiff.

Not so in England; every supermarket sells fireworks, and everyone buys them.  The only restrictions are that you have to be over 18 and can only buy them at certain hours.

We have contributed in our small way, setting off a few small pyrotechnics in our back yard, ostensibly for Elizabeth's entertainment but actually for mine.  Elizabeth, for the most part, watched with a slightly puzzled frown, until one made some sharp cracks, and she got a bit upset.  We have some left for tomorrow night, so we can acclimatise her slowly.

Ee-i-ee-i-o!

This is the view of the valley that Tom walks past twice a day and I walk past whenever I go to the High Street. Lovely, huh? Of course, this photo was taken on a sunny summer's day, so to get an idea of what it's like now, take away the sun, add mud and reduce the temperature by 15C. Anyway, I digress. The real reason for this post is to submit a complaint about a song: Old MacDonald had a farm. I'm sick of singing it! Unfortunately, it is our daughter's favourite song and it is requested several times a day. Eliza sings along and suggests an animal for the farm. Initially, Old MacDonald had a farm solely consisting of pigs but he has branched out recently and now has a substantial duck farm. He also has the occasional sheep or cow (hence the photo.) I know babies love repetition but I think I need to change songs before I go ga-ga.

Warwick Castle pt 2

Having read Kylie's post about Warwick Castle, you will now be fully conversant with the wars of the roses and my dislike of high, old buildings. So, take your skun ferret and lower it slowly into the boiling pitch until... sorry, don't know where that came from.

Warwick Castle is really touristy. The building is very impressive, and they've gone to some lengths to try to educate people about some medieval things. But the result is that the whole thing feels a bit cheapened, and they neglect some of their best stuff.

As Kylie has outlined, the castle started as a fairly significant fortification in the history of Norman England. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English were a bit less worried about the hordes of marauding vikings / saxons / poor people / traitors / distant relatives who might try to come and burn your castle down, and a bit less confident about using castles against them if they did come. So the Earls of Warwick turned the castle into a fairly comfortable Victorian gentleman's house, which also happened to have a big wall around it.

The contrast is quite bizarre. Outside: Medieval castle. Inside: Comfortable house, with oak-panneled rooms, fine furniture etc. Odd.

The inside is set up to try to show you what a weekend party at the house might have looked like in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Winston Churchill figures, as he was apparently a regular guest, as were the dukes of Devonshire and Marlborough and the Prince of Wales. On the whole, they were a fairly immoral lot.

Outside, medieval rules. There were quite good displays of falconing, and, of course, the firing of the grand trebuchet. This was a singular disappointment. Here you have a weapon capable of flinging some quite interesting things, like furniture, pianos or small cars, some considerable distance, and what do they do with it? They fling a 15kg rock. Alright, they doused it in pitch and set it on fire first, but it was still a small rock.

Back inside, I was quite disappointed that they didn't make more of their collections. They actually have some quite good artwork, including a number of van Dyke studio portraits, one or two by van Dyke himself, several by Sir Joshua Reynolds and more by his studio, and one quite unique painting of Henrietta Maria which was first painted by van Dyke's studio as a half-height portrait and then extended to its full height by Sir Joshua. They make nothing of them. I only found out about them because I recognized a van Dyke and asked one of the staff about it. He turned out to be extremely knowledgable on the subject, and very helpful and happy to talk for a long time. But if you didn't ask, you would know nothing about it. The one upside is that, because they make nothing of them, you can walk right up to the paintings. You could easily damage or destroy them if you chose to. In other stately homes, the paintings are kept roped off and you can't get near them. At Warwick, you can study them very close up.

They also have a quite extraordinary collection of weaponry, ranging from Norman times through to the 18th century. Again, they make nothing of it. It's like someone found it all in a crate and said, "What'll we do with all this old junk?" "I dunno, just hang some one the walls where it might look nice. Spread it around a bit, you know?" The crowning piece is, of course, the trebuchet, and they make a great deal of that, but on everything else they are silent.

The best thing about Warwick castle was getting in free. We were lined up behind a coach party. The driver came down distributing tickets, and when he got to the end of the line he asked us, "Have you paid?" We said no, and he said, "Well, here, have these tickets, they're spare." Beauty.

Verdict: A good family day out, but could be better.

Oh, and several people have asked what is a Motte and what is a Bailey. A motte is a kind of pile of dirt, useful to be on if you are trying to hurl rocks at someone else's head, or if you want to see a long way, and a bailey is a wall that you put around the motte, to keep people from trying to put a sword in your head (or assorted other disfiguring operations).

Airports

Airports are always odd places. No-one is ever themselves in an airport. The majority of people are families or retired couples on holiday; they are either bubbly and excited or tired and frayed, depending on which end of the holiday they are at. Some sit around drinking coffee until you can see the tension in them. Others take to stronger drink, and either talk randomly and loudly to the people near them or fall asleep. Even the people who work there look like they put on a full body mask early in the morning and then take it off again at the end of the day to go home. Personally, I like to get there early, sit and read until the last possible moment to board, then be first off the airplane, through the airport and out as fast as possible, to be the first to the taxi queue. This requires some careful planning to make sure your hand luggage is as portable as possible.

But Glasgow airport is easily the oddest I have seen yet. The building is, on the whole, long and thin, with gate lounges scattered along it on both levels. They have taken some care to make sure that people departing take a different route between the gate and the front door to those arriving. The result of this is that, to get from the gate to the door, you have to wind your way along, up and down, around, under and over and it is very easy to get lost.

The contrast between the two routes is quite amazing. When departing, you walk along shiny, tiled walkways, where everything is glass and stainless steel. You walk through various glitzy shops and cafes. The staff are all smartly dressed. When arriving, you walk on aged carpet. The fittings are bare, functional, even slightly shabby. This impression was not improved by the concrete cutter operating in a bit of the building that was screened off. The staff wear old-looking yellow reflective security vests.

The security operation here is immense. It was, of course, the scene of a slightly bizarre terrorist attack which somehow only managed to injure the terrorists when someone drove a car through the front window and set fire to it a couple of years ago. Somehow the risk of people driving through the windows has led to an enormous upgrade in body scanners which will, erm, I dunno, scare the cars off. Some sort of fire alarm went off just as I arrived, which prevented people from leaving the baggage reclaim room; this made for a very crowded and uncomfortable twenty minutes.

I was in Glasgow for the day for work. It meant an early start and an even later finish. Bristol to Glasgow for a day trip is a bit like Adelaide to Melbourne; doable, but long. I didn't look out the car window almost the whole way from airport to office and back, so I can't tell you much about it.

Warwick Castle: the Wars of the Roses and a tour of the ramparts

This is Kylie writing, just to clarify any confusion over authorship. :-)

This is Warwick Castle on a rare sunny day. Warwick Castle is in the town of Warwick, in the county of Warwickshire (Shakespeare's county, according to the sign posts). It sits on a cliff right next to a bend in the River Avon. It is big. It is old. It is a major tourist attraction.

The photo below is the initial view of the castle keep as you walk up the winding drive. From left to right: Caesar's tower, barbican and gatehouse, and Guy's tower. There are a couple of smaller towers (Clarence and Bear) to the right, but we don't appear to have any photos of them: in the one photo that is in the right direction, they are obscured by a tree. This part of the keep dates from the 14th century. There was originally another keep in the same location that dated from the time of Henry II (1154-89).


There is still an even older ruin of an earlier castle. Somewhere on the mound is the ruins of the wooden motte-and-bailey castle established by William the Conqueror in 1068. It sits on a hill called Ethelfleda's mound. Ethelfleda was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and legend has it that it was she who instigated the construction of an even earlier Anglo-Saxon fortification there to defend Mercia from the Danes. The mound was landscaped in the 17th century.


I feel as though I need to get my head around the history of the place so, at the risk of boring you to tears, here is a summarised history from what I can glean from the fount of all knowledge and of many more wild inaccuracies:

Anglo-Saxon times: an Anglo-Saxon burh is constructed on a mound to protect Mercia from the Danes; no traces remain visible
1068: William the Conqueror establishes a motte-and-bailey castle on mound, appoints Henry de Beaumont to act as constable.
1088: Henry de Beaumont made first Earl of Warwick.
1153: wife of 2nd Earl is tricked into thinking her husband is dead; hands castle over to Henry of Anjou (who becomes Henry II a year later); 2nd Earl dies on hearing the news.
1154-89: Reign of Henry II. Builds keep and, at some point gives the castle back to Earls of Warwick because they had been loyal to his mother, Matilda.
1242: 6th Earl of Warwick dies without issue, title passes to sister, who also ends up dying without issue (in 1253). Title passes to cousin, William Maudit (8th Earl).
1260: Stone replaces wood in the castle's construction.
1267: Death of 8th Earl, title inherited by nephew, William de Beauchamp. Title remains in de Beauchamp family for 7 generations (180 years); most of the additions to the keep made in this time, the money for these coming from the spoils of various battles.
1449: Once Anne de Beauchamp, 15th Countess of Warwick (the men are Earls, the women are Countesses) died at age 5, things became bloody (and complicated!) The title was inherited by her Aunt's husband, Richard Neville (also known as "Warwick the Kingmaker"), a cousin of Edward IV. Richard Neville had two daughters, Isabel and Anne, and they married two younger brothers of King Edward IV. He was also responsible for making Edward IV king in the first place whilst Henry VI and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, were busy campaigning in the north.

Now, as far as I can work out, there are three sides in this phase of the Wars of the Roses: Henry VI (Lancaster), Edward IV (York), and Warwick the Kingmaker, who at first supported Edward, then became jealous when Edward married Elizabeth Woodville (due to a combination of embarrassment and receding influence) and so supported himself, and then, when that didn't work, decided that Henry VI wasn't so bad after all. His son-in-law (married to Isabel), George Plantagenet (Duke of Clarence) seems just as confused in his allegience: he supported Edward IV at first, then became jealous of his brother being King when he wasn't and so supported Warwick, then realised that Warwick wasn't going to make him king either and so supported Henry VI, and then when Henry VI was murdered, decided that being the King's brother wasn't so bad after all. France and Burgundy also rate a mention as places to flee to or to fight against. France was on Henry VI's side; Burgundy was on the side of Edward IV.

Continuing with the timeline...

1469: Richard Neville (Warwick the Kingmaker) rebels against King Edward IV and imprisons him at Warwick Castle; George Plantagenet assists. The aim is to get Edward declared illegitimate so George will become king. Edward IV receives aid from younger brother Richard and many other nobles. Richard arrives at Warwick castle with a large army and liberates Edward IV.
1470: Richard Neville and George Plantagenet flee to France. An alliance is formed with Henry VI. Richard Neville's daughter Anne marries Henry VI's son, Edward; George Plantagenet is named next in line to the throne after Edward. Richard Neville invades England; Edward IV and brother Richard flee to Burgundy. Henry VI restored to the throne of England
1471: Richard Neville plans to invade Burgundy and, instead, Burgundy assists Edward IV to invade England. Richard Neville is killed in the Battle of Barnet fighting against King Edward VI (but on the side of Henry VI); his title is inherited by George Plantagenet. Henry VI's son, Edward, is killed at the battle of Tewkesbury, Henry VI is murdered shortly thereafter.
1478: George Plantagenet is executed for treason; his son, Edward, is only 2 years old when he inherits so The Crown takes custody of the lands. Edward is cared for by his aunt, Anne Neville who, by this time, has married Richard Plantagenet (Edward IV's brother).
1483: Edward IV dies. Richard acts as regent for Edward IV's son, Edward. Richard imprisons both Edward and his brother Richard (this is all rather confusing with them all using the same names) in the Tower of London and becomes Richard III.
1484: Richard III's son dies, and Edward earl of Warwick is named his heir... for as long as his Aunt is alive (a matter of months) and then he is also imprisoned in the Tower of London.
1485: Richard III is killed at the battle of Bosworth. Henry VII takes the throne. The earl of Warwick is left imprisoned and is eventually beheaded for treason in 1499. No more Earls of Warwick for the time being.

Let's take a break from history.

One of the things that you can do at Warwick Castle is climb the ramparts. You start the climb by climbing up to the Clarence and Bear towers, then climb all the way up to the top of Guy's tower (39 metres), down and then along to the gatehouse, and then finally up Caesar's tower. Climbing up Guy's tower was hard work! The winding staircase was steep and narrow; Tom couldn't see where to put his feet because he had Eliza in a baby carrier. We have no idea how the woman in front of him managed the climb - she was wearing 4-inch stilettos. Actually, I still have no idea how she managed to walk in them for the entire day - ouch! Anyway, so when we'd finally go to the top, I was prepared to take my time and enjoy myself. Here I am enjoying the view.


And here is the view from the other side. Nice, huh? The building on the right is part of the actual living quarters.

I ended up taking most of the photos because, it turned out, I was the only one enjoying the view. This is where Tom stayed.


Why (I hear you ask)? Is he afraid of heights? No, not exactly. The engineer in him is... concerned that the structure might fall down, particularly the bits with overhang. Here's another photo of Guy's tower.


See how it overhangs at the top? See the person looking out? That's where I was standing earlier. There are even little grates where you can look down and see the ground. It's really cool! (I would have taken a photo but I didn't think it would focus properly.) However, apparently, even though the tower has been around since 1395, it might fall down, or the top part might fall off or... something. It's not worth risking life and limb by standing too close to the tower wall.

Anyway, we eventually climbed down Guy's tower and continued along the ramparts. I'll leave you with a couple more photos: Tom and Eliza in the gatehouse looking back to Guy's tower; and the view from Caesar's tower of the River Avon and the giant trebuchet.

Authorship: part 2

I'd just like to clarify any confusion over the authorship of the post titled 'Authorship'. That post was not written by Tom as claimed.

Authorship

I'd just like to clarify any confusion over authorship of the last post. I started the post, but the bulk of it was written by Tom... as you may have gathered. This post is somewhat shorter and contains less random photographs.

Blenheim Palace: commemorating the victory at Blenheim

When talking to a certain Australian friend (Mike, you know who you are), we mentioned that we'd recently been to Chatsworth and how much we'd enjoyed it. His response was that Chatsworth was good but Blenheim Palace was better. And so for our next holiday we included a trip to Blenheim Palace.

If you've been following our adventures, you'll have already met a couple of the great English families, and you'll have discovered that their backgrounds are not that great, after all. There was the Legh family, of Lyme Park, who cut off a Frenchman's arm at some highly significant battle which no-one has heard of. There were the Dukes of Devonshire, who bought their title and then improved it through a spot of creative treason, er, I mean patriotic revolution. But at Blenheim Palace we meet a family of a different sort, the Dukes of Marlborough. Their fame began with John Churchill, who began life as a page in the court of Charles II. He was essentially a military genius, and was quickly promoted. He rescued the Austrians from disaster in the war of the Spanish Succession and then won the utterly memorable battle of Blindheim, or Blenheim, knocking the French out of the war (which is, of course, the aim of all wars up to 1910).

Until this point, the war had been looking rather bleak for England, and so Churchill was rather a popular sort of fellow. He was made the Duke of Marlborough (he had, admittedly, been made Earl of Marlborough for supporting the Dutch Orange). It was thought that probably his flat in Kensington, nice though it was, was not a iftting residence for a Duke, so Queen Anne decided to build Blenheim Palace for him instead, as a home for a hero and as a monument to commemorate the victory at Blenheim. It shows. By the time it was three-quarters done, the Duke was not quite so popular with the Queen, and in fact she stopped paying the builders, leaving the Duke with a £60,000 bill to finish it. The poor fellow, only getting £240,000 from the taxpayer for his house. For reference, that's somewhere well over £100,000,000 today, the poor sod, I dunno how he coped.

Anyhow, the family has continued to produce some highlights, including Lord Randolph Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and, of course, Sir Winston Churchill, also premier of these islands, and smoker of enormous cigars, who was in fact born at Blenheim Palace.

Take a first look at the place, as you drive up the carriageway* to the front door:

Good, isn't it? It's big; that commemorates the victory at Blenheim. See the baroque ornamentation? That commemorates the victory at Blenheim. The symmetrical perfection of it? It commemorates the victory at Blenheim. The solid immovability of it? That, also, commemorates the victory at Blenheim. The house was designed to overshadow Versailles in a "blaze of architectural glory" (according to the guide book) and that, of course, commemorates the victory at Blenheim. Lions are, of course, very noble, courageous beasts, and the miniature statues of them scattered around the grounds commemorate the victory at Blenheim.


Cannons are very military things, and there are some of them scattered around to commemorate the victory at Blenheim.


The first Duke was a soldier, and there are lots of statues of soldiers, typically with not much in the way of clothing, kicking around to commemorate the victory at Blenheim:


They have quite a good maze... in the shape of the Duke's banners and trumpets, commemorating the victory at Blenheim:


And when you reach the middle, you find B L E N H E I M spelt out, to, erm, commemorate the victory at Blenheim:


While it's not exactly in Trafalgar Square, like that uppity sod Nelson's column, it is still a big column, and certainly commemorates the victory at Blenheim:

Whether or not the sheep are, in some way, commemorative, remains unclear. This is Gladys (modeled on the ninth Duke's second wife), and she, also, commemorates the victory at Blenheim.

Even that "heroic Grand Bridge" you can see at the top of this post, which was built before there was a lake for it to cross, by the way, commemorates the victory at Blenheim.

Perhaps you get the picture.

There were less people here than at Chatsworth, and we had better weather. This was not a reflection on either Chatsworth or Blenheim, just that we'd gone to Blenheim during the week and Chatsworth on a public holiday. And as for the English weather...!!! Well for a summer that never happened, it was nice to see the sun during our holiday.

Chatsworth and Blenheim are different. The gardens at Chatsworth are so huge that we didn't have time to see the surrounding park whereas at Blenheim we spent most of our time in the park and pleasure gardens. In Chatsworth House we were allowed to take photos, but in Blenheim Palace we weren't. So the available photos aren't going to give you a good comparison but I hope you like them.

The gardens at Chatsworth are more formal, with more features and works of art scattered around. You feel like you move from one set piece to the next, even the ones that are supposed to look natural. Blenheim subscribes more fully to the landscape garden theory, that it should be constructed in a way that looks like it wasn't. There are a couple of formal gardens around the house, and a kitchen garden some distance away, but the rest looks like it might have just happened that way, albeit with some regular mowing.

See this lovely, natural-looking lake? Man made.


And this lovely, natural-looking waterfall? Man made.


And this lovely, natural-looking butterfly? Alright, not manmade, but I needed to get the butterfly house in somewhere.


These things may or may not commemorate the victory at Blenheim; the guide book is silent on this point. They also have this gate, which doesn't look natural but rather took my fancy nonetheless. I duly walked through it and shut it again, though Kylie laughed at me.


There are formal gardens, too, although about half of them are private. Here's a sample:


We don't have any photos of the inside, as we weren't allowed to take any, but it's no real loss; we could only see a few rooms, the state rooms, and they were generally so ridiculously over-ornamented that they don't really impress any more; they end up looking gaudy, or all just blending into each other.

All in all, it is well worth a visit and comes highly recommended, with one minor word of caution: Getting in cost us a shade under 40 quid, including the guide book, which is a bit steep as days out go. This is nearly two thirds of our national trust membership, which gets us into 300 different stately homes around the UK for a year, which you would have to say is a better deal.

I will leave you with a selection of views from Blenheim. Alright, more views from Blenheim.









* Of course, us plebs don't get to drive up this way, we come in by the back entrance.

Oxford: an expensive city

I have one piece of advice to start this post: do not drive in the city of Oxford! You have been warned. Parking is difficult to find, and when you eventually find a spot, any spot (you've spent well over half an hour looking for a place to park, vainly following road signs that seem to suggest that parking is this way, although you are sure that you're driving around in circles), parking turns out to be very expensive.

A family from church had (very generously) loaned us their car for a few days so, armed with our sat nav, we set off for Oxfordshire. Our plan was to spend the afternoon in Oxford and I'd compiled a list of things to see whilst we were there. On the way there, we saw signs recommending the use of the Park 'n' Ride facilities (park your car outside the city; catch a bus in) and, in hindsight, that's what we should have done. The bus would have dropped us off in the centre of town, we could of called in at the information centre for a map, and spent the rest of the day wandering. Instead, we followed our sat nav's instructions, which directed us to the centre of town right where roads had been blocked off and, more importantly, there was no parking. What followed was a rather random series of turns in an overcast, unfamiliar city. We saw Magdalen College (on my list) through the car window. That was where Tom had to reverse down a narrow road because there was a truck blocking our way. Meanwhile, we were going to have to make a decision when we finally found a park whether we found a place to buy lunch or whether we actually saw something in this famous university city.

It was by pure coincidence that we managed to find a park near something we wanted to see. We were madly following the signs towards parking spaces when, hey, there's the museum of natural history, and here's a spare park. £3 for two hours. Oh well! I hope the museum has a cafe, because we have three hungry people here and one is making an awful fuss.


The museum did not have a cafe, but it did have dinosaurs and dodos, so one hour and one KitKat later, we were on the move again in search of Christ Church College. Now, this is when things started to get really expensive.

This time we actually managed to find a pay and display car park (£3 for 2 hours) and so decided to park the car and head off in the direction that the sat nav had suggested. It was a round-about route, and took us over twice as long as if we'd actually known where to go, but we arrived and it was beautiful.



Unfortunately, it was just after I took this photo that other camera lens fell out of the camera bag. Ouch! Something expensive is broken inside it and we're not sure whether to get it fixed or buy a new lens. However, we continued to look around Christ Church College. There are all sorts of famous alumni, but the only one I can think of is John Wesley. What interested me more was that the staircase leading to the dining hall (which we saw) and the dining hall (which we didn't see as there was a function on) were used as locations for the Harry Potter films. This next photo was taken in the Cloisters.



After exploring Christ Church College, which included going in to the chapel, we headed down the road to climb one of the towers to get a good view of the city. The first tower we came to was the tallest but, unfortunately, was too steep and windy and refused admittance to children under 5. So we settled for the oldest tower: the tower of St. Michael at North Gate. The church dates from c. 1000-50, and is mentioned in the Domesday book. As with all old buildings that claim to be of a certain period, only part of the church dates from that period but, in this case, it is the tower (the rest of the church was rebuilt in the 13th century.)

Halfway up the tower is a door.


This was the door to the Bocardo prison, behind which were held Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer. Obviously, the prison wasn't located halfway up an old church tower, but the door has been moved here and stuck to a wall.

Once at the top of the tower, there was plenty of room to see a skyline that was, frankly, disappointing. Tom took enough photos to get a panorama and this is the best view of the bunch. Looking at it now, it doesn't look too bad, but at the time I was struck by how dirty and cluttered it was. At street level, the main streets have some impressive looking buildings; but up high you can see all the ugly buildings that are tucked away, that many buildings only have an impressive-looking facade, and that the dominant structure on the skyline is a crane. Tom and I were struck by how we are spoiled, living so close to Bath. Oxford has many heritage-listed buildings, but Bath is a heritage-listed city.


It was at this point that the other expensive thing happened. We'd given ourselves enough time to get back to the car (this time in a direct route,) only to find that we'd misread the parking fee. It was £3.50 for two hours. As we'd paid £3, we only one hour of parking (for which the fee was £2) and a parking fine... for £100. Sigh! Do not drive in the city of Oxford!

England: Land of green fields and bloody narrow roads (Derbyshire Pt 3)

This is a post that I started a long time ago and never got around to finishing. I just found it in the list of unpublished posts, and this is what I'd written:

Following

So I think that leaves plenty of scope to change what I was going to write.

We have already written about the two great houses we saw in Derbyshire, Chatsworth and Lyme Park. But we spent several days in the county, and saw some other things, too.

This was the first time we'd really travelled in England. We have spent varying amounts of time in London, and lots of time in our little corner of the world, mostly Bath and Bristol, but this was the first time we've set out just to visit and look. We saw.

If you are bored by long discussions of road quality, skip over the next... well, quite a bit.

Firstly, England has three types of road. One is called a motorway; anyone who has traveled in Germany will recognise these as Autobahn with speed limits (70 miles per hour). They are wonderful, except when traffic gets heavy and they slow to a crawl. This hasn't happened to us much yet, though. On a side note, traffic authorities here have discovered the curious fact that, when heavy traffic slows a motorway down, lowering the speed limit will improve the average speed of traffic. There is a reason, but this is not the place to explain it.

So. The motorways are excellent. Well maintained, uniformly three lanes wide, fast and if you break down you just sit in your car and wait for the free tow to come along. At the other end are most of the other roads in England. These look like they were widened around the time walking was invented, to cope with the increased traffic, and since then have just been resurfaced (mostly). There are no line markings. There are either hedges (not so bad) or stone walls (terrible) on either side, and there is no verge. They are often barely wide enough to get one car down, with the occasional gateway or similar where two cars can pass. What I hope will be the most terrifying experience of my life was a 5AM taxi ride to Bristol airport after heavy rain; the taxi driver knew his own route through the back lanes to the airport, and we had had over an inch of rain the night before, which created numerous puddles of anything up to thirty feet length covering the entire road to up to a foot deep. Slowing down is a foreign concept, of course.

When I am driving on such roads, forty miles an hour is about the most I do (the limit is sixty), and there are frequent periods of twenty. And I am not noted as a slow, cautious driver (just ask my father).

In between these are the 'A' roads, which are generally one lane in either direction, of good quality but sometimes heavy traffic. Sixty is the limit, and you can usually do it. The main road between Bath and Bristol is one of these; during rush hour it is quicker to walk. We generally avoid the rush times and do OK. But there are not that many of them...

We took the motorway to Derbyshire. We hired some sort of Honda which was nice but a touch on the expensive side. It was a four-door made to look like a two-door.

We first went to Ilam Park (no, I don't know how to pronounce it, either). This is a lovely, big old house, but we could only see the grounds because the house is now... a youth hostel. Honestly, it's like turning the houses of parliament into a refuge for dogs caught in the financial downturn. There is a lovely walk from the house down through the village and along the stream, and this is where we first noted something odd about English tourism. Everywhere you go in England, there are 'foreigners'. 'Foreigner' is a curious English concept which means everyone (a) who doesn't speak English natively, or (b) doesn't look English, or (c) is American. It's not talked about much, but the prejudice against such people runs deep, especially in rural areas. Anyway. Everywhere you go, there they are. Australians don't count as foreigners (apart from the fact I can generally pass myself off as English anyway) nor do South Africans, New Zealanders etc. So, white people of English descent are English, Australians / South Africans / New Zealanders etc are deep down English, and everyone else is a foreigner.

Anyway. What we noticed is this: The people who go walking in the countryside, who go walking in the grounds of the great houses, who visit obscure but lovely places, are almost overwhelmingly English. There are almost no foreigners to be seen; they all visit the famous cities and palaces. Walking along the banks of whatever stream it was in Derbyshire we were surrounded by a pleasant chatter of finely spoken English; everywhere were friendly, English faces; everyone was buying ice creams and not worrying too much about getting their feet wet crossing the stream on the stepping stones. It was very pleasant. I felt like people relaxed and became more English. Not sure how to explain that.

Looking back over my photos, here's the best I've got of the house:

It was not our first introduction to the stunning green of England, but we got some good photos of it:

English people might read that (if any of them read this at all) and think, 'Stunning? He means nice-looking.' But to Australian eyes, the green of England does stun for a fraction of a second. I just look at it and wonder that anywhere can be so green.

We stayed in a pub in the village of Chelmorton. It is tiny; there are perhaps two dozen houses, which is tiny by English standards (hi to anyone from Brentwood, SA, you win). The pub is a lovely old building which has been refurbished very well; all the timberwork has been replaced so it looks exactly like it did when it was first built and otherwise left alone. Not cheap though; £70 per night for a double room + breakfast, nearly three times what we'd pay in a motel in country Australia.

One thing English pubs know how to do very well is breakfast. Breakfast here consited of cereal followed by eggs, bacon, sausages, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, toast, fried bread and... black pudding. Yes, the very same with which Bill Oddie thwacked people over the head. It is made thus: Take a big pot of blood, boil and add a little flour, let it cool and congeal and then put it in a sausage skin. Boil or fry as you see fit.

The publican (lovely youngish Derbyshire chap called Justin) came around the tables to take orders for breakfast. At the first table he asked if the man of the family wanted black pudding with his breakfast. "Oh yes, I love it!" he responded. "Orrh yerrs, sorrts out the men frrrom the boyrrrs, that doers," drawls the publican. Then he came to our table, at which point I dare not refuse it. Actually, it is quite tasty, if you can forget what it is you are eating. Possibly the English learned this principle of food from the French, or vice versa, or something.

All in all, a lovely place to stay. Chelmorton's main claim to fame is that its surrounding fields look pretty much exactly as they did >1000 years ago; they are divided into long, thin, terraced strips with un-mortared stone walls around them. This satellite picture shows it up nicely. Idylic and rural.

We also went for a general drive around the Peak District. It is nice scenery, without any really devastatingly breathtaking scenery. Very English. I have possibly used this photo before, but it rather took my fancy:

Scenic, non? We found, and climbed, Mam Tor, where some earthworks from an iron-age hill fort can still be seen. For those who, like me, aren't sure if the iron age ended last Thursday or Wednesday, in Britain it started around 800 BC and lasted until the Roman invasion, or around 500AD in bits the Romans forgot to vici, but only venied and vedied. The Tor sits on the end of a ridge that stretches for some miles (I don't know how far, we walked about a mile along it but it went much further). Very sound militarily, and scenic, too. The ridge-top has a lovely paved path that looks ancientish but was laid after 1970. After walking a mile along the ridge-top we took a small, earth footpath down the side of the ridge and back to the car. It was both steep and muddy, and I slipped and fell, with Elizabeth strapped to my front. I managed to catch us and prevent any serious injury, but my trousers were not the same afterwards.

One last adventure in Derbyshire to relate. We have purchased a TomTom (a small satellite navigation computer, not a new nicname), despite not owning a car. It is generally very useful; we say, "Take me to Horsington!" and it will tell you how to get there (nb. we have not been to Horsington). It failed us though; we said, "Take me to Lyme Park!" and forgot to specify, "...by a road that doesn't drag our gearbox along a row of sharp stones." We ended up flying quite fast off a bitumen road and onto a deeply rutted track that did indeed scrape our transmission along a row of stones. It made a frightful noise, and even worse backing out again. We turned the TomTom off and followed our noses, which led us, by complete chance, directly to the front gate of Lyme Park. We have Learned Our Lesson.

Milkies

This morning our milk deliveries started. I have been almost childishly excited about this for some reason. Not only can you get milk delivered, but we also have an order in for bacon and eggs to turn up on our doorstep each Saturday. Bliss.

Except that, displaying exactly the efficiency, thoroughness and dedication to service for which the English are noted throughout the world, the delivery didn't turn up. Sigh. No breakfast for me.

Derbyshire Pt 2: Chatsworth House

You might recall Kylie telling you that the Legh family (later to become the Lords Newton, now extinct) of Lyme Park were granted their land because of heroism in cutting off the arms of Frenchmen in historically significant battles (Crecy was about as significant as Agincourt, but not as well known).

Not so the Dukes of Devonshire. In the 16th century, one of their ancestors had a spare £10,000 lying around (at a rough estimate, this is about £400 million today) and said, "Well, I could buy that house in France, but the title Earl of Devonshire is up for sale. I think that has a nice ring to it; what do you think, dear?"

This seems to have been the last imaginative spark in the family tree, as the first four Earls of Devonshire and the seven Dukes of Devonshire who followed them were all called William Cavendish. Either that, or the same man impersonated his own offspring for a long time.

In 1688, King James II was a rather unpopular fellow on account of not believing in the Book of Common Prayer or Parliament, so a bunch of nobles, including William Cavendish, the fourth Earl of Devonshire, invited his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William, to come and put together a little coup d'etat, er, I mean, Glorious Revolution.

This was, of course, technically treason, but it turns out that treason is only illegal when it doesn't work. In that case, you get hung until only moderately uncomfortable, cut down, castrated, disemboweled and cut in pieces - without anesthetic! Imagine the risk of gangrene! If the treason works, though, you get promoted from Earl of Devonshire to Duke of Devonshire, which presumably gets you a better quality cream on your Devonshire Tea.

All this while, the Earls and Dukes of Devonshire must have been rather confused. Not only do they not live in Devonshire, but rather a similar-sounding place called Derbyshire, when they get around to looking into it, it turns out that there is no such place as Devonshire, as any resident of Devon will tell you. It all makes you wonder if they originally bought the title from one of those online Colleges of Heraldry. One day an email popped up; "Congratulations! You have been referred to us as someone of specially noble countenance and, after a careful review of your CV, we can confirm that you qualify for the title of Earl of Devonshire. All you need to do to secure this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is to send £10,000 to the address below..."

Anyhow, apart from organised treason, what the Lords of Devonshire have spent most of their time on for four hundred years is their house, Chatsworth, and it shows. The place is huge, ornate and, well, huge. After the Glorious Coup, William was so grateful he promised to come and stay with the now-Dukes of Devonshire, so they had an enormous set of rooms constructed for him to stay in. Either the weather didn't suit, or there was a Catholic conspiracy to crush, or something, because he never came, and the rooms were not used until George V came to stay - in 1930.

It is mostly these state rooms that you tour through when you visit as a tourist, or 'bloody poor person' as they are known in the stately home trade. And really you couldn't take much more in; they are astonishing. For Australians, it is hard to get your head around the idea that this is someone's house. For starters, as I think I have already said, it is huge. Lyme Park, while no doubt a worthy Pemberley, is positively poky by comparison. And, while the Lords Newton donated Lyme Park to the National Trust a long time ago, consigning it to years of 'preservation in its original state,' ie. deterioration, Chatsworth is still owned by the Devonshire/Cavendish family and maintained by them. Think the biggest Australian art gallery you've ever seen, then a bit bigger and with better artworks.

We spent three hours in the gardens and two in the house; most of the house you don't get to see, just the state rooms. Walking around, you realise that it would be impossible for someone to construct something like this today. It takes four hundred years of building, buying and collecting to produce something of this sort. Each new Duke must have dreaded assuming the title; "Oh, blast, Dad added the North wing to the house; what am I going to do to top that?" It didn't stop them trying. Consider this:

You might look at this image and think, "Hmmm, nice house; I like the neo-classical lines in particular." You would be wrong, though; this is the stables. The Dukes are enormous patrons of the arts, and the gardens have a large collection of sculpture, including this rather impressive unit:

It just sits there, powered by the water flowing out the top, opening and shutting. It is about eight feet high, and is one of those pointless but beautiful things that make life interesting. There is also this slightly odd specimen:

The gardens are just full of amazing things. There is the Grand Cascade, clearly visible on Google Maps (the dark brown thing running east-west in the bottom right):

Also clearly visible on the satellite view is the replacement great conservatory, which we didn't actually see (yes, the garden is that big), which brings me to a rather nice story connected with the house. In the mid-19th century, one of the Dukes of Devonshire was terribly worried about how he was going to beat his father in the household renovation stakes. He looked out of his window in his London residence, Devonshire House, and noticed that the gardens next door had a certain flair to them. He sent one of his flunkies to find out who it was with all these great gardening ideas, and promptly head-hunted him; his name was Joseph Paxton. For a number of years, Paxton was given a blank cheque, to, "I dunno, build some nice stuff in my garden," and most of the more ambitious bits of the garden, ie. most of the garden, were designed by Paxton. Eventually this culminated in the great conservatory, which I haven't a photo of because it isn't there any more. Wiki has a photo of it. Just after this was finished, Queen Victoria dropped in for tea and took a turn about the garden. She asked who had built that rather fetching conservatory, and promptly head-hunted him. He went on the design the Crystal Palace, which also isn't there any more. For this effort he was knighted, and became a member of parliament. Not bad for a gardener. The conservatory was coal-heated, requiring 300 tons of coal a year to produce a tropical climate for growing, I dunno, flowers and stuff.

The first Duke had a more indoorsy bent, and was responsible for the state rooms. The first of these that you see is, surprisingly enough, the entrance hall. Once again, they found an artist and said, "Look, we kind of like the Sistine Chapel, but we don't want to be quite so grand with the subject. How about... I dunno, scenes from the life of Julius Caesar? Perhaps with a ceiling showing him being made a god or something. Let yourself go." Here's an attempt at showing the result:

It hasn't turned out terribly well (the ceiling is actually rectangular, as was the fashion then) but taking photographs of large murals painted on the ceiling is harder than it looks. This is only one of six scenes from the "life" of Caesar depicted, though somehow they didn't think to make his murder one of them. Perhaps it would be too depressing for the guests; the weather does that well enough already.

I walked into this entrance hall and though, "Wow! I've got to get photos of this; surely the best of the house." Terribly naive, I'm afraid. As you walk from room to room, you become rather numb. All of the state rooms have ceilings by the same artist. Sometimes they seem to be really digging for ideas; one Duke grabbed his interior designer and said, "Look, I don't like that door. Do something to it, like, I dunno, stick a violin on it or something."

Chandeliers are positively common-place:

Kylie gets credit for that photo. Stair-cases are there only partly as a way of getting from one level to another, but mostly as a place to put the works of art that didn't fit anywhere else:

This is one of five libraries in the house:

The formal dining room:
A slightly more successful panorama, though not entirely so. It was just too big to take with the lens I have on my camera. The portraits are, by the way, a selection by Anthony van Dyck and Thomas Gainsborough. So there; where's your Gainsborough on the dining-room wall, then, eh?

It just goes on and on. In the end I felt a bit shell-shocked; it seems obscene that one family should have so much wealth. But then, if they didn't, we wouldn't have this fabulous collection of works of art or this beautiful house to put them in, would we? Of course, a large number of the art works were collected (ie. stolen from people who were too poor to matter) overseas (so they were foreigners, too, serves 'em right), and if they hadn't collected them, where would they be now? stuck in some moldy tomb or temple or museum or something.

For me, the best bit came at the end of the tour; one of the recent dukes, I forget which, thought neo-classical sculpture was nice and bought most of it:

Alright, I don't know what the fan from a jet engine is doing in a gallery of neo-classical sculpture, either.