Europe 2008 Part 10

 Cotswolds

 A few kilometres north of Bath the Cotswold Hills begin.

 

The Aquae Sulis staff recommended the village of Castle Combe as the best of the Cotswold villages.

 

 

 

 

So we drove there and spent a while walking around the village.

 

We recognised that we had seen it as the setting for historic events in films and TV.

 

 In the centre of the village is an ancient pub, and a more recent church, all carefully preserved. The photo above is of cottages right opposite the pub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We realised also that we had a jig-saw puzzle at home which showed this part of Castle Combe from a different angle, and had often admired the scene!

 

Then we set off northwards towards Gloucester,  

in search of the locality where the Gaze family lived and farmed in the 17th and 18th centuries, before they moved to Bristol in 1800 and then to London in 1807.

 

Hucclecote it is called, and is now a nondescript part of Gloucester City. Perhaps some day we may be able to visit again and learn a bit more about this locality.

 

So we turned around and headed south towards Hampshire, where we had friends who were expecting us.

 

 

Europe 2008 Part 9

Sightseeing in Bath 

  

We hopped on a tourist bus and were driven past all the notable tourist spots. What a great city - our favourite place (we said that when we were asked after our two weeks in Britain).

Here is the Royal Crescent, stamping grounds of the children of George III and their wealthy friends.

 

The weather was perfect so it was a great experience just wandering around this beautiful city exploring and enjoying being part of such an interesting place with so much history.

 

Bath has lots of attractive water features like this weir across the Avon River, and obvious signs of the influence of the Romans in its early history.

 

We also walked to the Pulteney Bridge over the river which has shops along both sides, like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and the nearby street of the same name which is an amazing precinct of preserved eighteenth century architecture.

We called in to this little baby/toddler shop, and went to see the Jane Austen Museum along the street, to inspect the collection of memorabilia, and watch a video about Jane's life.

 

Jane Austen lived several years in Bath, and we caught up with her again in Winchester, where she lived towards the end of her life.

 

 

 

Going to pubs for meals is such a common experience for the British so we joined them in a delightful little pub within walking distance of our Hotel..

This is the dining room at our hotel, where we had another first-class breakfast the next morning. Here's me, first at the table, but it soon filled up with lots of people all enthusiastic about getting into their day. The décor has been preserved in Edwardian style.

 

 

 

Europe 2008 Part 8

Northwards from Plymouth 

From there we drove north along the Devon coast through Teignmouth to Tor Bay, where we chuckled at the swimming machines lining the beach. We just had to take a photo, along with the millions of others who have taken photos of this exact spot over many years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then we carried on through "Fawlty Towers" country and joined up with the motorway north through Somerset and along the north coast, up the Severn River estuary, past Bristol and then down a few kilometres to Bath.

 

 

 We found a Public Relations Office in the square near the Abbey and Roman Baths, and they found us a room in a 100-year old hotel, called, after the city's Latin name, the "Aquae Sulis".

 

 

 

Here is the hotel with our black rental car parked in front on the left. Our room (called the Jane Austen Room) seemed to be the last in the city, so we had to put up with slightly cramped conditions but everything else was extremely luxurious, especially the bath and bathroom!

 

The breakfast next morning was great, and we caught the bus into town to inspect this historic city. Bath is high on our list of 'favourite places in England'.

 

 

Europe 2008 Part 7

More of Cornwall

It was about as far to our most distant stopping-place as it had been to each of the others. This time we reached Padstow, a fishing village near the mouth of the Camel estuary, where Rick Stein has his restaurants.

We settled for an ice-cream as we strolled along the quayside, looking at the boats, and the houses and the people as well as some high-quality art shops - very tempting!

 

Then we turned around and drove back, this time up the main road, to Okehampton and our hostel for another night.

 

Our plan had been to visit the Eden Project the next day, but we were running short of time for this leg of our journey, the weather was doubtful, and the Eden Project was quite a long way further.

 

So we changed our ideas and drove south through the countryside to Plymouth, where we sat on the waterfront beside the Hoe and ate our lunch. It looks rather a dismal day but there was no wind and the surroundings were so peaceful.

Here I am inspecting the Hoe, and thinking of all the historic associations it has.

 

We knew of Drake and Plymouth's development as a naval base, and the launching-place for the Mayflower journey to North America, and the emigrations to New Plymouth.

 

Many of our ancestors left England from this harbour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But Plymouth reminded us of somewhere like Sydney; either much of its expansion had happened at the same time as the growth of New South Wales, or much of it had been destroyed in the terrible bombings it received during the Second World War, and the rebuild since then made the city appear more recent than we expected. Here's Margaret sampling the coffee from a sea-side café.

 

Europe 2008 Part 6

Family History

 

Our first call the next morning was to the Public Library at Okehampton to catch up on our emails. Then we headed out along the country lanes to the north-west in search of a little village on the Devon-Cornwall border called North Tamerton.

Here is the village church, now closed, with the village graves silent around it. This is where the Barriball family, Margaret's father's ancestors, lived in the middle of the nineteenth century before they left on the emigrant ship "Timandra" to sail to New Plymouth in 1841.

We could not find the family name in the graveyeard, so drove on down the lane to the main road and on to a group of five villages, including this one, built of stone, called Altarnun.

 

This is the church in Altarnun, which is the original home of Margaret's mother's family, the Burnards.

They emigrated to Motueka in the middle of the nineteenth century, where they built a ship and traded between that part of the South Island and Wanganui and Wellington.

This church has carved pew-ends. The antiquarians reckon they were carved in the sixteenth century. One of the nineteenth century Burnards was also a carver, this time in stone, and while still a teenager he carved this gravestone for one of the family, which is still in the Altarnun graveyard. He later established quite a reputation as a sculptor.

 

From Altarnun we went back to the main road and turned north towards Wadebridge and came to the village of Egloshale, which is a suburb of Wadebridge, and sits on the bank of the Camel River.

 

Egloshale was the home of my ancestors, the Tremains, before they left for Auckland like the others.

One of the things that was interesting to us was that these three villages were quite close to one another. It was only about 20 km from North Tamerton to Altarnun, and a similar distance from Altarnun to Egloshale - thus we realised that Margaret's ancestors and my ancestors were almost 'neighbours' - from a 'modern-day perspective' it only takes 10 minutes at the most to drive from one village to the next.

Again we could find no graves from the Tremain family, so we set off through Wadebridge along the western coast of the estuary.

On the way we passed close to St Mawgan, home of yet another family, the Olds. We have since learned that Olds still live there. Margaret's grandmother was a member of the Old family before she married grandfather, Frank (Pek) Barriball.

 

 

Sketching this week

More practice with 4B Pencil

 

Looking north-west, straight towards the sea, from our deck.

 

I have been reading Tom Wong's 35 year old book on pencil sketching, especially the chapter on vegetation.

 

Depicting different types of trees is quite a skill and mine needs lots more of this kind of practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So another day I walked around the corner and looked due south towards the mountain, which at this point was hidden by the hill and a bit of morning cloud.

 

This part of town is a historic precinct, known as the Hen and Chickens, because there is a block of five very old houses, built for five daughters of a family over 100 years ago, and the parents' house behind. All are painted white, with black highlights, and can't be altered without careful discussion with the heritage experts.

 

The house in the foreground of this sketch is the eastern chicken and you can just see the hen peeping through the trees behind. The prevailing westerly wind has shaped the two big trees, and others further west also have this effect.

 

 

 

 

Sundays we have been walking down to East End Beach, where a city café has established a summer branch in an old container, called Paris Plage. The coffee is good and the croissants are delicious.

 

There are umbrellas and comfy deck chairs, games for the children, and a collection of tents form a small weekly market.

 

Here is the view westwards from my deck-chair yesterday while we waited for our coffee and croissant to be ready.

 

Below is a sketch I made one evening from a photo.

 

It is of the Public Library in Shrewsbury. In the nineteenth century this building was the school, and it is where Charles Darwin began his education. His statue stands out in front behind the trees.

 

The view is from the grounds of the Castle, early in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Europe 2008 Part 5

Day Four 

  

 

Just to remind you that we are still in London at this stage, here is a shot of the Lord Mayor's Office Building from the river cruise. We do not know if Boris Johnston was in at the time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Greenwich Park we were delighted to find a fox strolling in the opposite direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Late Sunday afternoon we caught the bus along the road to

 Crystal Palace to see Sarah Boekman, the daughter of our friends Mary and Barry who have lived in Inglewood for almost 40 years. Sarah is an OT at one of the London Hospitals and lives in this house just off the park at Crystal Palace.

The Crystal Palace Park was where the building originally used for the 1851 Exhibition was later moved from its original site in Central London, until it was burnt down in a spectacular fire.

 

Then we walked and bussed back to East Dulwich.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Monday morning we said Goodbye to our hosts as they left for work, and walked the few yards to the Public Library where the bus stop for London City was.

It took an hour to get to Tower Bridge and that part of the City, and we were almost the only white people on the bus.

 

 We picked up our rental car, a black Mondeo, and headed out on the main  road to the south-west. We had booked a couple of nights at the Youth Hostel at Okehampton in Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor, and we drove straight there, with only a brief pause to see Stonehenge as we went past.

Once off the main roads, the country lanes were narrow and winding, and we found the Mondeo too big for them. This photo gives you an idea of the reason why.