Day 5: Lanhydrock House and arrival in Cornwall

UK 2014 -- Day 5: Friday, June 27 (Lanhydrock House and arrival in Cornwall)

Coming into Cornwall today, driving through a tempestuous succession of weather events ("rainbow weather" one of the volunteers called it: Bright sun followed by dark clouds, catastrophic showers, then blue sky again) I felt a flush of the anticipation Woolf often notes in her letters or diary. A heightened awareness of changing flora, the signs of clay pits and tin smelters marking the land, a breathless waiting for the first glimpse of the sea across the rolling green hills, which are surreally modernized by the weird presence of giant white wind turbines, so huge they cast everything into some kind of post-modern, near-future science fiction movie, as if they are alien beings quietly guarding the fields.

We drove in thru Hayle, a town near St Ives recorded by Woolf as a destination for weekend walks. The "Hayleston Bog" where they searched for ferns has been partially drained, but a good deal has been saved in a nature preserve. We drove thru Penzance, where we stopped for more groceries at a Tesco, and then wound our way thru the small streets of Marizon,,, catching closer glimpses of St. michael's Mount, towering high above the estuary sands.

arrived at Ednovean House to find its situation and design even more breath- taking than the on-line photos. The super modern, glass-fronted house overlooks the whole bay, which offers a panorama of changing lights and shadows, both clouds and sky and the water shifting colors constantly.

The house is all white and glass, a complete opposite to where we were staying in Devon. there is a huge central kitchen stocked with every necessity-- an entire cupboard full of wine glasses, a wine fridge, two ovens and a microwave and a cook top which is nothing but a giant sheet of glass and buttons. We had to find an operating manual to turn it on. All white and glass, not a single handle anywhere. there is a blond ash wood or light oak table long enough to seat about twenty (a good six feet longer than sue and Neil's) looking out over the bay, encased on three sides with glass doors.

On the way here we stopped at Lanhydrock house, a kind of British Biltmore house, slightly smaller, but reeking of the same conspicuous consumption, horns and hunting trophies everywhere including Eland again and some rugs make of of colobus monkey skins, encased in gothic revival wood panels and Revival William Morris wallpaper. Trooped with dozens of other tourists up and down stairs into servants quarters, ladies' lounging rooms, children's nurseries etc. punctuated by thunder and torrential rain alternating with bright sun in about half hour intervals.

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Next morning. Woke to sun and bird song and gull cries, horses grazing in the field below the gardens, beyond the pine and palm trees, the Mount topped by its castle monastery surrounded by water that is currently a serene dark blue, broken by small breaks of waves on hidden rocks. The tide is in, so the causeway is mostly submerged. We are going to St. Ives today, to see the Bernard Leach Pottery and various museums. On Sunday I may hire a car to go see some particular places.

Exeter: Day 4

Day 4 Exeter (Thursday, June 26, 2014)

Ah. Back from a dreary day in Exeter and brewing a nice cup of wild orange tea to take the chill out of my bones. Our weather karma ran out wi a vengeance and it poured and poured, really pretty much all day. Abt 60 degrees, so pretty miserable. We started off with the cathedral, which is admittedly pretty impressive: the vault is the longest gothic stone ceiling in the world, that lovely fan gothic that looks like symmetrically arched tree branches, crowned with gilded roses. there all kinds of charming medieval carvings and gargoyles -- animals and other small tokens of individual imagination embellishing the received formulae with personal joy or wit. Wish I'd spent more time exploring the details, but once the bottom dropped out of the skies, I stayed where I was.

We had a lovely morning interlude with Jean's old professor, Bill, who took the group of us who didn't want to trek down to the quay to learn about the weaving and woolen trade, over to his funky run-down club for morning coffee/ tea. He is one of those wicked raconteurs whose eyes never stop twinkling with wicked stories, and when the sky fell down on the hydrangeas, beating them like carpets, we stayed on and exchanged stories until Mary came in to lay the tables for lunch.

We ventured out, taking nearly immediate refuge in the nearest Marks and Spencer's where I purchased a quite nice periwinkle lavender raincoat -- silly me to have believed those on-line forecasts for 10 days of sunshine. (I did get a 16-step set of instructions for resetting my wireless device and reprogramming all the security codes, so perhaps I will be able to solve my tech problems. However, the instructions are intimidating, and I might prefer better weather and less tech...)

Bill's Club

We had a lovely lunch in a natural food place where I got coronation chicken (oh bliss!) in a jacket potato. The rest of the day I made good choices for me, exploring the quirky local museum, --which had a hilarious exhibit of a recently declassified Victorian collection of multi-cultural sex toys, an entire room displaying an 18thC enthusiast's collection of Echinodermata, samples of all kinds of clothing and tools, a big screen movie of what Devon looked like from the Triassic to the present, a stuffed Eland (the animal in my profile picture which really is as big as I remember) -- instead of going on a walking tour of the city. Those who went for the tour got utterly drenched standing in the rain listening to the guide, a prospect I wanted to avoid. No point in getting a raging cold. Also skipped evensong and took a couple of others who wanted to get back to our warm, dry, country den home in a taxi. I just had this image of being soaking wet, huddled in a cold church. And as you all know, neither music nor churches are my thing.

So Exeter not a thrill for me. might have liked it more in sunlight, but I need some kind of literary or artistic association or at least immense natural beauty to engage my attention/ affection.

We leave for Cornwall tomorrow morning. Apparently weather prospects are not good, but rugged Cornwall is awesome in any weather, and drenched with literary allusions.

Hestercombe: Day 3

UK14--Day 3: Wednesday, June   HESTERCOMBE

I especially asked for this outing to one of the most fully restored of Gertrude Jekyll's gardens.

The thing that is striking me most forcefully right now is the astonishing determination, dedication, and creativity of the people we've been meeting-- each caught up in some life task of building, preserving, restoring, maintaining some special corner of life that they've claimed responsibility for. The swannery at Abbotsbury where the swans are so carefully tended; the immense labor of devotion involved in renovating and maintaining Fursdon House.

I felt the same kind of  admiration for Claire, the head gardener at Hestercombe, who I suspect of being The Patrick McMillan of that institution.  

That house and garden have been meticulously preserved in all its various temporal phases: there's a whole 17thC landscape sequence I didn't try to hike through because I was focused on the Edwardian garden built by Gertrude Jeykl and Edward Luytens.  

Map of Hestercombe Garden.  The Edwardian garden is at the bottom: the X with two Rills on either side plus a pergola at the bottom.  Immediately above it in front of the house is the Victorian Terrace (29). To the right of that (26) is the Orangery, and to the right of that (25) is the Dutch Garden.  These are the only parts planned by Lyutens and Jeykll.  Above stretches the Georgian Landscape garden.

The whole thing is quite spectacular.  To start with, the stonework has these beautiful circular and spiral patterns, incorporating mill wheels and a lovely design of concentric circles simply made by nesting terra cotta Pots and filling them up with mortar.

 The gardens are rather like Sissinghurst in that there's this intricate, geometrical hardscape filled to the bursting with floral excess.  The little chinks in the stairs are filled with tiny maiden-hair ferns and delicate vinous daisies, grey stems and flowers flushed soft pink at the edges. 

 There's a typical Jeykl "grey wall" in the background, planted with all kinds of silver and lavender flowers, including spiked, shiny sea holly and thistle which sometimes seem like wild aluminum sculptures punctuating the soft masses of old roses, heavy and drooping in all shades of blush imaginable.

I think my favorite parts might have been the rills, which run down each side of the main garden.  They are flat, rectangular gardens with a stone-paved waterway running down the center. 

At one end there is a large semi-circular grotto from which the stream emerges; planted with water loving plants like giant kamferie irises, it opens at regular intervals into small circles (currently planted with calla lilies) and then drops to a lotus pool with a wide panorama over the whole Somerset countryside.

At the top of the great square is a mediterranean garden, all soft greys and silver.

And at the bottom is a great long pergola

Perennial Border at Hestercombe

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After Hestercombe, we came back to Fursdon House (via a grocery store) and had a fascinating house tour. 

 The first house was built here in 1295; the "new wings" were added in 1815.  The family has lived here continuously for 23 generations!  I can only dimly imagine the restoration work that has gone into this place.  It's divided into suites; I'm in this spacious bedroom with a king sized bed and abt 12 ft ceilings, am currently writing in the window-seat of the sitting room looking up at a stack of mossy, lichen encrusted stone walls and stairs, topped on one side with various sizes of daisies, sprouting at wild angles from behind the slightly tilted head of a young woman attractively spotted with more lichen, and on the other side with a small massed symphony of mixed pink flowers: yummy dark puce purple roses and something lacy and spiky that comes in shades from white to rose to a dark fuchsia.  

At the bottom of the wall is a small cluster of fluorescently magenta cyclamens and a big patch of those purple striped ...mallows, geraniums? Something abt crows feet? only twice the size of what grows at home.

Temps are dropping now into the sixties, rather a relief after a very hot day at Lyme Regis. I'm trying to pace myself to take more quiet time to relish.  As you can tell from the above, as always I am just slayed by the colors.  I haven't even started on the greens!

Lyme Regis: Day 2 Tuesday, June

Day 2  (Tuesday, June 24)
Lyme Regis and Abbotsbury

Lyme Reis is a small tumble of a beach town, smaller than St. Ives and lacking the stretches of beach. 

 To the west there's a view of golden headlands (the soil is a ruddy yellowish red)  

and to the east is a view of the long cobb stretching out into the bay, a central location for both Jane Austen's Persuasion and John Fowles French Lieutenant's Woman. 

Our guide -- a graduate student of Steve Ellis's at Birmingham who had written her MA thesis on FLW -- took us on a long difficult climb through the town, along the course of the tiny Lyme river

pointing out all the places that weren't where various things happened in Jane Austen's life.  We did stop by the post office to visit the mail slot where she almost surely posted her letter to Fanny describing the town.

By the time she led us out onto the quay, where it was roasting hot with no shade, many of us were no longer up for what looked like a half-mile hike out to the cobb, itself quite a long cobblestone ordeal.  When I started feeling my skin prickling in preparation for a sunburn (thank goodness I was at least wearing a hat) I bailed and went to find those who had already been overdone by the long climb.  We had a lovely, civilized lunch, sitting in a breezy bay window, overlooking the street below.  I finally got some British money and went to do a little shopping for fossil ammonites, a major feature of what they call the "Jurassic Coast."

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We met back in the center of town at about 1:00 and set off for the swannery at Abbottsbury, near Chessil Beach.

Chessil Beach is the long golden strand below

The swannery at Abbotsbury is like a small version of the Botanical Garden. (And like the Garden was almost completely washed out by floods this winter) Everything is done with such care. They grow tons of eel grass which is woven into various structures and also sold to local thatchers. The swans are carefully managed: we met a pair of tenders who were setting up hurdles to limit the territory of a particularly aggressive male and heard how they watch for cygnets and inexperienced parents who don't bond properly and foster the cygnets with more experienced pairs.

Lagoon of eel grass with thatched cottage in background; eel grass is used for thatch.

Swans nesting on Chessil Beach

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Next we went to the small town of Abbotsbury which has an immense Tithe House, once part of a large abbey complex but now turned into a children's attraction, complete with petting zoo and a jumping castle inside the tithe barn.

Devon: Day 1

UK14 -- Day 1: June 22-24 (Sunday/Monday)

Sitting on my gigantic bed in the Garden wing at Fursdon House, watching the sky change colors from pink to lavender into blue through the wavy old glass of a window overlooking a rose trellis, air heavy with that English mix of roses, lavender, and horse manure.  Just returned from a quiet walk through various gardens, ripe with lavender and roses and euphorbia, geraniums, peonies. Breath-taking views over the steep rounded hills of Devon. "Everything in Devon's on angle" seems pretty true, the fields so steep you wonder why the cows don't topple off them, and the gardens terraced with stones stairways with treads like ladders. The ride down to the local pub for dinner was a breakneck hurtle between dense hedgerows so narrow they nearly touched both sides of the van. Sudden curves outward to vistas of green checker-boarded fields as lumpy as roller coasters, an occasional old oak or tattered cyprus poised lonely again the sky.

Waxing lyric because I'm almost overwhelmed wi exhaustion...barely any sleep for 36 hours. But pleasantly replete with Pimms, followed by ok pub food, served by a host/ chief who wrote everyone's name down next to their order, "So I'll know you if you come again."  

How tired we are. Pimms after being up for 30+ hours

Flight was okay; so was long ride to Devon, mostly freeway, so not as much sense of being in England except for dizzying, sleep-deprived disorientation of traffic turning in the wrong directions.  Had the first of several tech glitches at airport where the dongle I'd rented wouldn't work.  when the tech guy got there, we tried 5 others, none of which was functional, and two of which had notes in the cases complaining they didn't work.  The one that worked in the airport worked for about an hour on the road and hasn't worked since.  It's charging so I can pop the battery and reset again, but have had to depend on the house wifi, which works only near open windows, and only on the left side of my giant bed.  So that's why I've been posting only once a day and not texting much, if any.

Quaint thatch in nearby village of Thorveton

I've decided to give up on the tech and just enjoy, taking pictures and writing.  Actually feels good to disengage.  Unfortunately my wireless camera doesn't want (so far) to synch with house wireless, so those pics won't get added to blog until later.  And after only about 25 pictures total in its whole silly life, the battery ran out on picture two today.  It's charging too.

Sunset in Thorverton churchyard

Sorry to be so whiny.   Luxury grade problems, and I'm willing to trade tech karma for weather karma.

Anyway, the place we are staying is an enchanting 17thC country house and farm, with sheep and horses and quite nice gardens.  I'll report more on it after our house tour tomorrow on Wednesday.

As I write this, it's actually the end of Tuesday, day two, spent in Lyme Regis and a little village called Abbotsbury where there is one of the three biggest Swaneries (swan nesting grounds) in England.  Lots to talk about, but it's 10:30 already and we have to be on the bus for Hestercombe at 9:15 tomorrow morning.  I broke 10,000 steps today ( 5.58 miles) but feel only the kind of healthy tired you'd expect from a day strolling in the sun.  Definitely picked up some color today -- Lyme Regis was downright hot and I forwent the walk to and out on the Cobb as much because my skin was beginning to sizzle as because my knees were aching.

Tomorrow is a much easier day, and I'm hoping to catch up a bit -- on writing and thinking and labeling pictures. And just absorbing all I've been seeing, especially the flowers which as always ravish me with color and texture and smell.

Having a pretty good time with the people on the tour, though some of them are republicans, but so far the jokes have been fairly gentle.  You'd be quite amazed at how much I'm holding my tongue, not difficult in this group which often sounds like a flock of excited starlings.

Itinerary