"Brush up your Shakespeare, start quoting him now . . ."

After a week in London and a week in Kent, which is southeast of London, we headed for Shakespeare's home town, Stratford Upon Avon, in Warwickshire. Initially, we were planning to spend this third week in the Cotswolds, but decided to actually stay in Stratford to make it easier to go the Royal Shakespeare Company to see the two plays that they are performing during our stay, which are Henry IV, Part I and Part II.  Shakespeare doesn't get much better than the RSC.  Since we were here last, close to twenty years ago, the RSC has rebuilt the theatre and now it is a thrust stage which works very well.  

The rows are steeply raked, allowing everyone to have good sight lines.  On a rainy day this week, we returned to take the tour of the building.  Our timing was a bit off (we had not checked the schedule) and therefore, we missed the last tour of the day by 15 minutes.  Since the building is open for people to walk around by themselves, we took advantage of that and went to see the costumes that were out on display.

Some of them were just amazing, especially for the detail.

We've been going to more National Trust properties like this one:  Charlecote (pronounced "sharlcut").

It has lovely gardens that are being re-instated.  A lot of the gardens of these old homes have been dismantled over time because tastes change and flower gardens were not always in vogue.

This house, in sharp contrast to many houses, was wonderfully and lavishly furnished.  Here's a peek at the dining room and one of the sitting rooms.

Larry's favorite part of the estate was the carriage collection.

This was a wonderful house, just chock full of things.  The kitchens were massive and contained much of the equipment from the last family.  The array of copper pots was something to behold.

Juxtaposed to Charlecote, was Croome Court, no doubt one of my favorites so far. While all of the properties that we have visited seem to be under some type of maintenance or restoration work, Croome is definitely a work in progress.  The house has been stripped of most of its furniture, due to a series of owners, and the building is in great need of fixing up.  The paint is peeling in most places, floors need to be stabilized, railings replaced, etc.  

I just loved that we could see the "before" -- the condition that these great houses are in when acquired, when the last of the family finally has to sell the estate that they have owned for five or six hundred years.  Often, the exterior (at least from a short distance) looks majestic and in good condition, but the interior is just dreadful. Here's the great hall of Croome in the "before" stage:

The Trust has done a great job of explaining what they plan to do and how they are going to accomplish it.  It's positively unbelievable that the ceilings have held up in these old houses.

Another day, when it was raining, we altered our plan for an outdoor adventure and went instead to have lunch in a 600 year old pub.  It started out as a house and became a pub a bit later, still several hundred years ago.  The structure of the building was amazing.  The beams holding up the ceiling were bowed to the point that they looked like they would split in another hour.  All of the fireplaces were lit, providing the warmth for the building and welcome to the visitors.

Today we revisited a place that we saw in 1985 on my first trip to England. We went to Chedworth Roman Villa.  Since our last visit, the Trust has done a lot more research to determine the actual size of the ruins and to uncover more of the mosaics that originally covered the floors.  They have taken steps to more aggressively protect the exposed structures and they have trained their volunteer guides to give excellent presentations.

And then there are the quintessentially Cotswold villages, those of picture postcards and large format coffee table books, like Chipping Campden:

and Stow-on-the-Wold:

and this charming little village, Bilbury:

And also there are Burford, Moreton on the Marsh, and Fairford, and a few hundred others.  Some are a mere bend in the road, some a quarter mile long, and some actually have traffic lights, roundabouts and a church.  Almost all of them are photogenic in their own way.

There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover

We have been to England several times but had never been to Dover.  For some reason, I had it in my head that I really wanted to go there.  I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I'm glad that we took an excursion there from our cottage near Maidstone.  It was about an hour's drive, not much by US standards, but it seemed like quite a distance away probably because most of it was on small two lane roads. 

Quite the contrary to this sign, it was a rather gray, chilly, windy day.

The cliffs are most likely best viewed from the water.  I'm certain that they look very impressive and perhaps impenetrable from sea level.  Not having any reason to approach the cliffs by sea, we took our photos from the top, looking down.  

It is hard to grasp the height of the cliffs from a still photo.  Trust me that they are steep and sheer.  None the less, the British were in fear of attack so they built a fort on one of the lower levels of the cliffs.  Some of the foundations of the canon are still there.

While in London, we had seen a production of King Lear which ends in Dover, with the blinded Duke of Gloucester trying to end his life by jumping down over the cliff. He failed at that attempt and met up with Lear again in short order. I couldn't help but think of the play as I stood there on the cliffs.  The cliffs made for a good plot device.

In every couple's travel photos, there are photos of him standing somewhere and then there are photos of her standing there.  Our photos are just the same.  That is, until someone comes along and asks us to take their photo together and then by way of reciprocation, offer to take our photo.  Here we are, together, as taken by that friendly couple.

All along the edge of the cliff, there were no barriers at all.  I kept thinking that if this were in America, there would be large warning signs and strong barriers to keep people from falling over.  Here, I assume, it is expected that people accept some personal responsibility.  Just as well, because those barriers really detract from the view.

The pedestrian path along the ridge goes straight through a horse grazing pasture. Lucky for the pedestrians, the horses don't care to mingle and also they stay away from the footpath, so no droppings to watch out for.

We were amazed that Dover, which is a very small town, has a huge port for passenger ferries from Dunkirk, France and cargo ships and tankers from all over the world.  At one point, I saw every berth full with 10 ships waiting to enter.  The ferries docked, unloaded, reloaded and left in the space of about 45 minutes.  They must be well coordinated to get all of that done in such a short period of time. Seeing the cars lined up waiting their turn to drive onto the ferries reminded me of the many trips that we made to Nova Scotia by way of the Bluenose and the Prince of Fundy.

Also part of the national  park is a lighthouse owned by the National Trust.  It is currently undergoing a restoration expected to take at least a couple of years.  The process is basically to take off all of the plaster from the exterior and then the interior.  The plaster has encased the brick structure and restricts the brick's ability to breathe and dehumidify.  There is quite a program of monitoring the moisture levels going on, with measurements being taken at many points along the interior. 

We got to go up to the top of the tower and see the fresnel lens.  Our guide was a local Englishman with a bit of the raconteur about him.  It was a very enjoyable, but chilly and windy, visit.

Larry is quite taken with the idea of cream tea (scones with clotted cream and jam and a pot of tea) and he tries to have some every day.  On a brisk day like this, I couldn't blame him.  The lighthouse tea room was just the place.

It was like being in some Granny's front parlor.  The scones were delicious.

House of Broken Dreams

It seems to us that England is an unbelievably expensive place to visit, especially for six weeks.  Not only is the pound at about $1.67 to the US dollar, but generally prices in pounds are what we would expect to see in dollars.  In other words, the lunch that is 10.50 pounds is really almost $17, and that's for something rather ordinary.

Sites that we are interested in visiting are equally expensive.  For instance, last week when we were in Kent, Leeds Castle was just about 2-3 miles away from the cottage that we rented.  However, the admission would have been about $60 for the two of us.  As much as I would have liked to go there, the cost was just prohibitive.

Leeds is perhaps on the upper end of admission prices, but other sites can get pricey too, especially when parking is added to the cost.

How to survive financially and still see a lot of architecture, art and music? Well, in London, we took great advantage of the Royal Academy of Music for some very good concerts and, of course, the major museums are free (including the Tate, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, etc).  

To see castles, manor houses and other national treasures, we bought the American version of the National Trust membership. For Yanks, its called The Royal Oak Foundation, and it has paid for itself after only about 3 or 4 sites, and gives us free parking.  With these membership cards in hand, we feel as though we can go to any participating sites (about 350 of them) without a thought about dwindling our cash supply.  

Our first manor house was actually a place to spend some time while waiting for our cottage to be available.  Called Ightham Mote, it was (like a lot of these old houses) built in stages, starting at around the 14th century.

With five more weeks to go, and just beginning our castle tour, I managed to lose my membership card.  I thought for sure that I would then have to start paying for each admission and I would be restricted about where I could go. Oh, how I love the internet.  I contacted the organization and they emailed back with a temporary replacement card.  What a relief.

My temporary card is now getting well used, as we went the following day to a positively huge manor house called Petworth House.  This house is on the magnitude of Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey fans).  

This house, also built in stages, was the home of Harry Percy who really tried to take the crown away from Henry IV.  Yes, the very story that Shakespeare told in his Henry IV Part I and Part II.  He failed and amazingly his family was allowed to live in this magnificent house, which they did for roughly 600 years off and on.  In between it was usurped by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, then back to the family again.  

We also went to Sissinghurst Castle, home of Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson, both writers.  

To the tell the truth, I had never heard of Nicholson and I am not really familiar with the life and times of Sackville-West, but that there was something scandalous about her.  For some reason, I thought that she had something to do with the Gertrude Stein crowd in Paris.  I was obviously mistaken. Sackville-West was evidently the better known of the pair.  She came from a very wealthy family who owned a Highclere type house of their own.

Since the hereditary laws of England prevented her from inheriting the estate, she and Harold bought a smaller one nearby. The great house is no longer standing and overall I thought that the site was only moderately interesting.  I probably would have been enthralled if I were a fan of the writers.

Being Americans, we are somewhat hampered by not understanding English popular culture.  For instance we visited this really lovely old house, Scotney Castle.

I really liked this house a lot, probably because it was so livable.  And, in fact, it was lived in until fairly recently (well, recently is a relative term, but considering the scope of time that most of the places have been in existence, it was "recently"). The last owners were also a literary couple, though of a different sort.  The last private owner was Christopher Hussey (who inherited it) and his wife Elizabeth.  He was apparently very famous as the editor of Country Life Magazine, which is known to people in England but totally lost on us.  I'm guessing that he had the name recognition and social standing of, say, Anna Wintour or Tina Brown.


They used this house as the quintessential weekend country home and lived the rest of the time in London.  This is my favorite house so far.  It even has it's own 14th century castle which had been occupied until the early 1800's when the "new house" was built, at which time the owner of the moment purposely had the castle partially ruined so that it would become a "folly".  Follies are those architectural delights (some would say "eyesores") set out apart from the main house whose sole purpose is to be looked at. In this photo, you can see the part of the original castle --  on the right  -- that was ruined.

And, of course, it had its own moat.

By sharp contrast to these large to overwhelmingly huge houses and/or castles, we also visited a National Trust property that was rather humble.  It happened to be just about four or five miles from our cottage, so it made a good place to visit as we were leaving Kent for our next week.

This was Stoneacre Cottage.  It was no doubt rather fancy for the time that it was built, but by today's standards, it is simply a bit larger than a modern house.

It was Jacobean in the interior design and had a massive fireplace, which was lit and providing much appreciated warmth when we were there.

This house is one of the smaller properties and the amenities were in proportion. Normally, the National Trust properties have a sizable gift shop, a good sized tea shop and rest room facilities.  The caretakers and other employees often live in the servant quarters of the estate.  At Stoneacre, there was one youngish couple who were the live-in caretakers and the wife baked the sumptuous sweets for tea.  They were, by far, the best that we have had.  Tea was served in their kitchen.


My blog title this time? House of Broken Dreams, because all of these houses and castles were built with great dreams of hope, wealth, often political strength/supremacy.  But, in the end, all of them ended in the disappointment of the family not being able to maintain them.

Follow Downton Abbey for a personalized rendition of the failure of these great houses.  The lands became independent, no longer tenancies providing rent; inheritance taxes initiated in 1899 crippled the financial standing of families; and finally, the Great War decimated the service staff.  Young men left service to join the war effort.  If they survived and came back, suddenly they wanted something different than a further life of servitude.  The fabric of the upper class was also changed.  The younger family members no longer felt the need to follow in the footsteps of the previous generation(s).  Raised hemlines, short haircuts and private automobiles were just the outward signs of a cultural revolution taking place.

House of Broken Dreams indeed.

Canterbury Tales

After a little more than a week in London, we picked up our car and drove through many, many ex-urban areas of Greater London to finally pick up a motorway.  I can handle just about any type of traffic situation with relative ease. Exceptions to this would be:

1.  driving on long, high bridges with no solid walls between my car and the water below (the Brooklyn Bridge);

2.  clinging desperately to the side of a cliff on a one-car wide road, when faced with an oncoming truck who's driver is totally used to these roads (the mountains of Provence);

3.  driving in England.

So, driving on the left-hand side of the street, in a strange car, sitting in what to me should be the passenger's seat, managing a 6-speed manual transmission and all of this on roads that are precisely two-car-widths wide, plus about 3 inches, and usually no shoulder.  Did I mention that in England, cars park in both directions on each side of the street, and that they park half on the sidewalk and half in the street?  

Alright, so now we have a barely two-car-wide road, which is (due to ancient boundary lines) winding with blind curves and hedgerows, with cars parked half on/half off on both sides, when alas, what's coming in our direction but a garbage truck --  or a bus or an 18-wheeler.  Gee gosh, but this is fun.

The English are completely comfortable with these conditions, apparently, because they don't even blink as they zoom past.

Even though I'm getting better, I still instinctively tap the brakes when a car feels too close.  I still have the side mirrors in tact and have only put minor hedgerow scratches on the passenger side as I try to scootch over to avoid the presumed smash up.  

Many of the roads that connect one village to another are just one car wide and they run for a mile or two like that.  Naturally, there will be traffic in both directions, so one or both of the parties must give way, or one has to back up to the nearest "lay by".

Today, I saw what looked like the impossible:  a garbage truck and a bus trying to get past each other on a road built for wagons.  They made it and each went on its own way.  Nerve wracking, this English driving.  France is easier.  I can't read the signs in French, but at least I can drive on the proper side of the road. 

Here's a travel tip that I have figured out along the way:  if you are going to drive into a city, Sunday is the day to do it.  The parking lots are not full, traffic is at a minimum and it's easy in/easy out (sort of).  With this idea in mind, we went to Canterbury on Sunday.  

Our cottage host suggested a park and ride into the city because parking is severely restricted in the city, and many streets are pedestrian only.  One problem with this:  the car park is open only in the morning and cars are then locked in until the next morning when it opens again for commuters.  Luckily for us, someone in the car park explained this to us and we simply continued a couple of miles to the city itself and parked in a very accessible car park there.

As a city, Canterbury is more like a town.  It has an upscale, walkable, city center with lots of shops and places to eat of various price levels.  It's typically quaint.  Like a lot of old English towns, it almost seems like it was built as a fantasy town, but of course, this is actually the way it really is and has been for a few centuries.

This building is listing badly and in just a few more centuries will probably collapse.  For the time being, the owner has made amendments to take into consideration the reclining nature of the structure.  

I can only imagine the pitch of the floor!

Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Church of England, with the archbishop being the equivalent of the pope.  To reflect this importance, the cathedral is suitably big and fancy.

It has the requisite tombs of medieval lords and fallen heroes, some under the floor and some in elaborate stone sarcophagi.  It has more little chapels along the sides of the church than one can imagine.  It has an above-ground crypt (that's strange!).   It has glorious stained glass windows.

 But, to my mind, what it doesn't have is the grandeur of Westminster.  Or, maybe I'm partial to Westminster because Darwin is buried there.

Time after Time

On each trip to England, I've wanted to go to Greenwich to see the place that is so important to the keeping of time, and on this trip I finally went.  As is the case with so many places, this seemed like a simple little side trip from London.  That is, until we got there.  Had our legs been willing, we could have spent a very full day there.  

We totally skipped everything about the Royal Naval College which is located there (or, as the Brits would say, "sited there").  Our first stop was the National Maritime Museum.  

I wasn't expecting to like it because I just don't have an appreciation for maritime paintings.  I can appreciate a half dozen or so, and then my enthusiasm ebbs, so to speak.  How many clipper ships under full sail in breaking waves can you take at one time?  I usually find my limit fairly soon.  I have trouble discerning a bark from a brigantine, so perhaps I should spend a bit more time and patience to learn about them.  (or, not)

So, suffice it to say that I was surprised that I could have easily spent a couple of hours wandering around the Maritime Museum.   

Larry wanted to visit the museum because of the special exhibit of JMW Turner's sea paintings.  (Full disclosure:  I am not a fan of Turner.  Or, Constable, or Church, etc.  I don't care for genre painting.)  I felt as though I was merely tagging along, again.    

The paintings were just so-so, I thought, not worth the trip.  Larry liked them, so it was a wash.

What I liked was the rest of the museum.  Here's what I would have been transported in if I was royalty a couple of hundred years ago.

Let's just assume that I would have to save it for special occasions, not for going out to meet friends.  

There were many artifacts from the English's rich history of supremacy on the seas.  I could have wandered around for quite a while, but we needed to move on.

The park in which the museum resides is also the home to what I wanted to see:  the Royal Observatory.   

And so, Greenwich Mean Time!  I mistakenly thought that the time zone changed right there and that part of England would be on one time and the rest of England would be an hour ahead (or behind, depending upon your point of view).  It turns out that all of England is on the same time, yet Greenwich theoretically marks the demarcation between East and West -- right here.

Needless to say, just about everyone had their photo taken with them straddling the line.  Some folks chose to be immortalized pointing to their home city on the marker on the line in front of the sculpture.  As for me, I have great patience in waiting for everyone to leave so that I can take my photos totally devoid of other travelers.  

On to the third and last site of the day, the famous Cutty Sark which was, at the time that it was built, the fastest ship in the world.  It was first engaged in the tea trade, shipping English goods to the Far East and shipping tea back to England.

The ship was sold a few times over the nearly two hundred years of its existence, each time being retrofitted for the next use.  After the tea trade, it was used to transport sheep's wool, then general cargo.  Finally it was purchased for the purpose of becoming a museum, which of course, it is today.  It is now in dry dock, safely restored and open to the public.

It has a collection of maritime objects, the most interesting of which (to me) was the collection of ship's figureheads, all restored and brightly painted.  Not all of them were lovely to behold, but they were all wonderful to look at.

 This ship must have been very impressive when under sail.

In fact, it was pretty impressive when just sitting there.  

By the time that we had our afternoon tea, the ship's museum was about to close.  Back to our flat for dinner.

In Foggy London Town

London

Oh, jet lag.  After an unremarkable plane ride, we had a massive case of jet lag and nearly slept away not only our first day but also all of the morning of our second day.  Eventually, we woke up and started to enjoy this wonderful city.

And, contrary to the title of this blog post, London was not foggy at all.  In fact, the whole southern part of the country is enjoying unusually warm spring weather. Attentive readers of my travel blogs will recognize that most post titles are, in fact, song lyrics.  Thus, Foggy London Town (can't you just hear Sinatra?  No?  Well I do).

We rented a basement flat in S. Kensington, a very upscale neighborhood.  It faced on a private garden for residents of the square.  Here's a view from inside of the garden, with lots of lovely flowers in bloom.

In spite of our fatigue, we went to a fun concert at the Royal Academy of Music, presented by the student jazz band.  It was an exuberant program of Harlem jazz from the 20's through the 40's.  It was loud and fun.  I loved it. Amazingly, they played songs that I had never heard before.  This is the lovely room where the concert was performed.  The pipe organ in the background is of a modern design and was a gift of Elton John.

Naturally, we spent quite a bit of time at the museums, which are not only world class, but also have the distinct advantage of being free admission. Out in front of the National Gallery, looking out onto Trafalgar Square, was this new, colorful resident in town which roosted in front of Canada House.

On Sunday, we went to Kensington Garden because I really like to go there. In the past, on Sunday afternoons some of the local gentlemen take their radio controlled little boats and have a regatta in the pond.  It's a lot of fun to watch. Alas, this time, the pond and surrounding areas are under repair, so the pond was fenced off, not open to boating on this lovely spring afternoon. But there were lots and lots of people taking advantage of the sunny warm weather.  Lots of picnics going on.

We certainly couldn't go to the Garden without stopping to see the Palace as well, though in my opinion, it really doesn't much look like a "palace"; more like a large apartment complex.

A couple of months ago, Larry had purchased tickets to a play which was presented in a reconstruction of the Globe, but built inside so that plays could be done all year instead of just summer (the other reconstructed Globe in London is open air, as was the custom).  As you can see, the theater was lit with candles.  During interval ("intermission" to Americans), the stagehands lowered the lights and trimmed the wicks, then relit the candles and raised them up again.  

We saw a play by Beaumont, a playwright who was a generation younger than Shakespeare. I can't say that I was terribly excited about seeing it, but I'm glad that we went.  It turned out to be hilarious.

We walked back to the tube station over the pedestrian bridge and Larry got this great shot of the London Eye.  

One day we did a bit of shopping, something that we rarely do while traveling, because think about it: you have to carry all that stuff back home  -- where are you going to put it?  But we did succumb to some fun things for gifts.  One of the stores that I particularly wanted to see is this one, Liberty of London, the one place where one would shop for top of the line home accessories.  I went in search of their famous fabrics.  Wow, pricey!  They were the equivalent of about $36/yard.  I comforted myself with some notions instead.  It was a fun place to go.  One can dream, right?

We finished up the week in London with a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, a favorite of mine.  We were staying just a short walk from the V&A, so for once, no underground necessary.  This is one of my favorite rooms, the sculpture court.

Museum cafes are often stuck in the basement, or even in an added on glass enclosure from part of the former parking lot, but the cafe at the V&A is just lovely.  Take a look.

Eight days in London is never enough, but we did a lot.  Three concerts, two plays (the other one was Lear at the National Theatre), a trip to Greenwich, four museums and a visit to the home of painter Frederick Leighton (what a great, quirky place).

I would say, a week well done.

Then, we picked up our car and I had the thrill of driving through London on the left hand side.