Full Circle

Our European Adventure Spring 2017 started at Monet's Garden in Giverny.  The trip ended in London. One day, while wandering around the Tate Britain in London I came across this painting.

Monet Painting at Giverny, by John Singer Sargeant

The journey for me ended where it began - contemplating beautiful gardens.

Agressive Tourists Needing Vacation

On the train from St Austelle in Cornwall to London Taylor sat by a man who turned out to be a tour guide for Road Scholar.  I idly listened as they chatted and I overheard Taylor use the term "aggressive tourists" to describe us. Taylor's seatmate expressed surprise at the term.  Hmmm.  I considered the words, and silently agreed with Taylor.

To describe ourselves as "aggressive tourists" means that we are busy.  We get up early and  are constantly on the move with places to go, things to see.  We can go quite a while without tiring, but eventually our pace catches up with me (I'm not speaking for Taylor).

Fortunately,  we headed off to visit Taylor's friends Sam and Uschie. On a previous trip we had dinner with Sam in their lovely London home. Now we were off to their home in the Cotswolds. As I got to the little village of Bledington, and settled into Sam and Uschie's country home, I realized that I was running out of steam and what I needed was a few relaxing days in the country.

Bledington has a population of about 500, and Uschie can tell you everyone's name. We reached Bledington by taking the train to Kingham from Paddington Station.  Sam picked us up and drove us a very short distance to Uschie's home.  The village is classic Cotswolds  - just like in TV shows.  It is so far off the beaten path that there are no tourist facilities, so no tourists would even know to go there.  It was just the thing to renew our energies for our final few days in London. As far as I could tell the only  business in town is a pub.  Of course, there is also a church.

We walked to the pub for lunch on the main road going through town. One of the first sights was this thatched roof cottage. Look closely at the roofline.  There are straw ducks and ducklings!!!

 After a delicious pub lunch we walked to Uschie's home through the back streets.  We passed another thatched roof cottage, and a row of smaller connected home known as the Four Bells.  They have the name because they are across the street from the church and the residents always hear the church bells.

A second thatched roof cottage.

This is an entire row of 4  connected cottages, called The Four Bells..  This particular one's owner certainly works on curb appeal.

St Leonard's Church dates from about 1170-1175.

We passed the church and got onto a public footpath that eventually led to a pasture or two and back to Uschie's house. There is a hedge dividing Uchie's main property from the sheep pasture.  She has cut windows and a door into the hedge.  We walked through the door to get back to the house.

I took this photo from the sheep pasture.  Euschie's yard is just beyond.

We walked through the gate and were back home.

To help with dinner preparations I volunteered to walk to the veg patch to harvest some asparagus.  This is the view I had walking back to the house.  Notice the second door cut into the hedge.

The back of the house.  I never got around to taking a photo of the front.  It is also lovely.

Here's our lovely hostess Uschie ready to serve us a wonderful leg of lamb (from a lamb raised in the pasture behind the hedge) and fresh asparagus for dinner.

It wasn't until we were leaving that I realized how much I needed this country break.  Spending two days relaxing in the country was a little slice of heaven.  We have been so fortunate during this European adventure to spend time with two sets of people we knew, and in their own homes.  It helps me feel like I understand the particular countries a little more when I see it through the eyes of people who live here.  Taylor and I are so lucky.

Better Homes and Gardens Out of Cornwall

I think Taylor secretly hoped that once we left Cornwall we would be done with Better Homes & Gardens.  We pretty much were done with the homes.  When we got to London we found lots of things to keep us busy and only a few of them involved gardens.  Here are a few highlights.

Globe Theater
We've been attending plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon for the last five years.  Since we were in London we thought, why not visit the Globe Theatre and see Romeo and Juliet?  We toured the theatre in the morning and then came back for the play which was spectacular.  Our take way is that OSF is definitely holding its own in the world of theatre. We have seen plays equally amazing in Ashland.

We took a tour of the theatre in the morning before the performance.  Stage hands were getting the stage ready, and we saw a bit of the understudies practicing.  The surprising fact for me about The Globe is that is was built in in the 1990s.  No kidding.  The original was built in 1599. It burned and a second theatre was built but in 1644 it was pulled down to build tenements. The current Globe is near the second location and built to resemble the original.  We both enjoyed learning about theatre in Shakespeare's age, and attending a theatre run pretty much the way it was run in the days of yore.  We even had to pay extra to get seat cushions for our wooden backless bench seats.

Borough Market
Who doesn't love a market?  We went here after our tour of the Globe and before Romeo and Juliet.

Jersey Royals from the Isle of Jersey.  We saw these being grown and we ate them in Jersey a few years back.

Kew Gardens
We took the underground out to Kew Gardens which is in a suburb of London.  Wow!  It is spectacular. It is a huge botanic garden, founded in 1840.

I have never seen such an extravaganza of allium.  Wow.

This orchid blooms once a year and is pollinated by bats.  It's color is much more pale turquoise than my photo shows.

The Handkerchief Tree.  How I love it.

Oxford
Oxford is about 2 hours by train from London.  We know it, of course, from the TV shows Morse,  Lewis and Endeavor.  Being the home of University of Oxford I felt my IQ grew just by being there. I think it is prettier in person than it is on the TV shows.

The colleges were not open for tourists so we had to be satisfied with looking through the gates.

We had our lunch at The Bear.

Oxford Botanic Garden
It was lovely walking through Oxford.  But, it was also lovely walking through The University of Oxford Botanic Garden. It is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. I think Taylor kind of liked the medicinal aspect of the gardens.  I loved all of it.

I enjoyed seeing the University buildings behind the plantings.

Kensington Palace

Kensington Palace was walking distance from our flat.  I walked over there one day.  I didn't go in, but I did check out one of the gardens.  The gardeners were replanting it in a "white" theme in memory the Princess Diana.

The palace is big, but not all that remarkable from the outside.  It was over run with tourists.

Queen Victoria lived there.

Hyde Park
Hyde Park is nestled next to Kensington Palace, and it too was walking distance from our flat. It's a lovely city park.

This city park has a lot of wildlife.  There were heron, swans and parrots.

Peter Pan.

Victoria's monument to Prince Albert is so enormous I couldn't even get it all in the pictures.

This is one corner of Albert's memorial.  I think it represents Britain's colonization of India.

We were busy when we toured Cornwall, and as I look back at our time in London I see that we were even busier.  London is a wonderful city.