Borde Hill Garden 9 July 2016

In July I continued my travels and spent a lovely weekend with Matt and Dayne in West Sussex.  On a pleasant Saturday afternoon Dayne and I took ourselves off to the Borde Hill Gardens which is really close to Haywards Heath.  It's a private home and only the gardens are open to the public. Lunch first!

Then into the gardens.  With full summer coming on eventually, there are flowers everywhere - to be expected in a garden I suppose, but still, there are a lot so I've done collages again - too much of a good thing and you'd all be wandering off.

These must be the saddest red hot pokers I've seen - I think they need sun!

The garden was created in the early 1900s and Colonel Robert Stephenson Clarke was the first owner to plant the gardens and woodlands.  Plants were gathered by plant collectors from their travels to China, Burma, the Himalayas, Tasmania and the Andes.  Someone must have been to Africa too.

There are various "rooms" which take you into completely different worlds.  This is the Italian Garden.

There is also a sculpture exhibition in the garden.

This next room is called "the potting room"

Around the next corner we came in sight of the manor house.  The first record of the estate dates back to 1534 and the house was originally constructed by Stephen Borde in 1598.

Beyond the house, a tea garden!  Very welcome.

Refreshed we continued walking.  There are lovely (but hazy on this day) views out over the fields from the back of the house and of the Ouse Valley Viaduct.  One of these days I'll get close enough to take some better pictures.

Do you think Dayne looks a bit bored here?  Sight seeing is not her favorite activity on a Saturday afternoon, she often has to be bribed.

Sheep and deer - entirely appropriate to the setting.

The fat lady having a nap, so no singing yet.

The Rose Garden!  The fragances!  These bear no relationship to those poor cousins you buy in the supermarket - these are magnificant.

Then, before rebellion set in completely we went home to put our feet up with a glass of wine.

Tintern village 2 July 2016

The sun was out!  An incentive to explore the village.  We had noticed that there was a bookshop and really, who can resist a bookshop?  And what a setting!  Almost as good as Kalk Bay Books.

Stella & Rose's Books - rare and out of print books is how they market themselves.

A place you could spend hours browsing ..

But after weeks of rain - actually I don't think it was weeks, it just felt like it - it was lovely to be outside.

There was a fete in town - in the open grounds around the Abbey.  It was like every fete you've ever read about if you were brought up on Enid Blyton.

An archery competition ...

A brass band, a tea garden, tombola, forest people with giant bubbles.  Everything changes, and nothing changes - quite comforting.

Tintern Abbey 1 July 2016

Finally, we got to visit the Abbey.

The monks of the Cistercian order settled in this area from France in 1131.  The Abbey was founded by Walter fitz Richard de Clare - lord of Chepstow - in what was then an isolated part of Wales. He gifted the land to the monks who established themselves as an agrarian order. This complex of buildings was started during the 1200's and consecrated in 1301.

What is must have been like in it's heyday I can only imagine.  As a ruin it is so imposing but also so beautiful and eerily atmospheric. The site is managed by Cymru, the Welsh National Trust organisation.

A busload of tourists arrived at the same time as we did, but once you were through the gate, you hardly noticed them, not something you can usually say about bus tours.

Back to the history - after the Black Death in 1348 - 1349, the numbers of monks dropped dramatically and by the end of that century there were only 15 living in the Abbey.  Even so, they maintained there faith and lifestyle until Henry VIII dissolved all the monastaries of England and Wales between 1536 and 1540.  The roofs were removed, the buildings stripped of all valuable materials and the site abandoned and allowed to fall into decay.

And there it lay, almost forgotten, until the late eighteenth century when it was rediscovered by artists, poets and tourists brought in by a new road and then the railway in 1876.

The Abbey was purchased by the Crown for the nation in 1901.

We spent a couple of hours just ambling around, gawking at the immensity of the walls and sitting in the sun which had eventually come out.  It is a place that invites contemplation, even all these hundreds of years after it was first built.

Forest walk 30 June 2016

Awake at the crack of dawn, as usual, I decided this morning to take a walk further up the hill to see what there was to be seen. The hills are heavily forested around Tintern and I think this area is part of the Forest of Dean - a very ancient Woodland.

I found a forest road leading into the forest alongside the Scout Camp. It was still quite early so no one around and very peaceful.  The mud was something to behold!

Trying to keep to the side was sometimes difficult but I still managed to go quite far in.  There had been a vehicle through there - I can't imagine trying to drive in that mud.

So many different shades of green.

Admitting defeat I headed back to the road and walked alongside the strongly running stream back to the house.

These flowers and leaves in the garden look jewel-like.

Wales and newly discovered family June 2016

Ann is the historian and the researcher in our family, so when she said that she had been in touch with our cousin Ruth and was going to Wales to meet up with my mother's sister Beth, I was really keen to join her.  We stayed in a lovely house in Tintern, up in the hills with a garden overflowing with flowers - just gorgeous - you have to have something to show for all that rain!

We had to arranged to meet Ruth and David in Thornbury at my aunt's home.  I had never met them before so seeing my aunt was quite an emotional experience as she reminded me so strongly of my mom, who died three years ago. Even though my mother had spent 50 years in Africa, they sounded so similar and the personality! Instantly recognisable and so familiar.

She's 92 (there was so much information, I hope I haven't got the facts wrong) and so full of life and vigor.  Inspiring.

All the photo albums were hauled out and we took a trip through a lifetime which we were part of, which indirectly impacted on ours but had been a closed book until now.  Living on our side of the world until just last year, our lives were distinctly lacking in close family so it's wonderful to find cousins!  So much to catch up on.

After much talking we went out for lunch, hence the group photo.

Then we went off to Ruth and David's home to look at more photo's.  There were a lot but the following are my favourites.

I was particularly taken with this little daguerreotype which measured 2 x 2.5 inches at the most.  Our great great grandfather taken in 1880.

My mom as a young girl, the little blonde.

Another photo that appealed, a day at the beach.

And then all grown up.

What a lovely day, but nevertheless, emotionally draining.  It was almost a relief to sit in a traffic jam over the Severn Bridge.

Even time to get a bit of a closer up view as there is usually nowhere to stop.  Yes, it was still raining. Summer is still just a rumour at the moment.