Cheltenham Racecourse, Gloucestershire

Yesterday morning remained on track; a leisurely rising, absorbing British politics made a little more exciting by the fact that the annual Labour conference was very recent and that for the Conservative party starts this week; this is the first since their poor election result. All of this makes for interesting times. Having said that, we are still awaiting news from New Zealand as to the makeup of the post-election parliament there. Snippets of startling possibilities pop up on my iPhone, like the suggestion from a past prime minister that the National Party sit at the table with the Green Party, although that is really no more frightening than Winston Peters holding the whole country to ransom while he makes the most of his king maker status. Indeed I wonder what we will return to. 

And speaking of return, we made the most of the morning to make our travel arrangements for the last few days in the UK before we fly out at the end of the month; train travel from Suffolk to London and hotel accommodation in the capital. I do like to be organised and am happy to be in this situation.

Chris took over lunchtime duties for a change and turned out some excellent cheese toasties on our second rate toasted sandwich maker, superior to the messes I have managed so far; he has now been appointed lunchtime chef for those times we eat in house.

The racecourse had been a hive of activity all morning, even through the intermittent rain, and the level of noise only tolerable because we knew it to be temporary. But soon after 1 pm, the barricades and other crowd control paraphernalia were almost all stowed away, and we no longer had any excuse to remain caravan-bound. We headed into the centre of Cheltenham to explore the retail area and observe local Sunday afternoon behaviour.

Cheltenham, with a population of just under 120,000, was little more than any other rural Cotswald town before 1716, the year a spring was discovered, transforming the town into Britain’s most popular spa. During the next century or so, royalty and nobility descended in droves to take the waters, said to cure anything from constipation to intestinal worms. The moneyed classes have since moved on to spots that offer more sun than mineral, but the town has managed to retain a vibrant atmosphere, these days hosting a number of festivals spread throughout the year.

The heyday of the spa was that period of the Regency, when the Duke of Wellington was taking care of business while his father, George II, exhibited spasmodic spells of madness. The greatest development took place then and the architecture of the time remains in evidence. Here is apparently some of England’s best preserved Regency architecture and we spent some time walking along the Promenade, that area near the Town Hall immediately north of the High Street, admiring the fine buildings, all enhanced by avenues of trees dressed in their autumn colour.

Cheltenham is home to a few celebrities, one of these Gustav Holst, English composer of the well-known orchestral suite The Planets, born here in 1874. His Birthplace Museum is here and would have been interesting to visit, if only to familiarise myself with his music; I must confess that while I have certainly heard of both the composer and his work, I could not identify his work from other like music. We had to be satisfied with his statue, depicted conducting in the middle of a pond in the Imperial Gardens behind the Town Hall. 

Another favourite son met with a rather tragic end; Edward Wilson, a member of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic in 1911-12. He is immortalised outside the Municipal Offices and his presence is spelled out to the ignorant. Quite frankly I was unfamiliar with his name, although familiar with the details of the expedition, having visited several exhibitions both in New Zealand and Australia regarding the whole sad affair. 

We also walked the length of High Street, and back again, joining the crowds of shoppers, noting that the homeless beggars were much tidier here than their colleagues in the northern cities. I managed to pick up a pair of walking shoes in a charity shop to replace those which tread their last yesterday. I had been dismayed to find a great split across the front of one of my shoes yesterday, which explained why my socks had been absorbing more than their fair share of water over the past week. These “new” shoes should see me through the next month.

This morning dawned dry and with the rather ghastly news that another gun-toting Yank had run amok yet again, causing two deaths and about fifty injuries. Worse was to come later in the day when we learned the deaths were well over fifty, the injuries over five hundred and the killer a man of senior years with no criminal history but a chest full of firearms. And Chris wonders why I am not excited about the idea of touring the United States!

However, as happens, life goes on elsewhere after a moment spent pondering the horrors and sorrows of the universe, and today was no different. We had planned to spend the day doing a tikki tour about the Cotswold Hills, an area roughly twenty five miles across and ninety miles long, lying across the counties of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire in the main, but also encroaching upon Wiltshire, Somerset, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. It is a very beautiful area, of both arable and pastoral agricultural use, and peppered with absolutely delightful villages and small towns.

We drove the ten miles eastwards to Northleach, then on to Burford, turned back north west to Bourton-on-the-Water, further north to Stow-on-the-Wold, then north west to Chipping Campden, then south to Winchcombe, across the hills, passing by the highest point of Cleeve Hill which stands 330 metres ASL. As we came down toward Cheltenham, the racecourse lay out below us, revealing its extent, all three hundred and fifty acres in the lee of the Cotswolds.

Our travel guide had suggested leaving certain villages out because they surely would be packed out with tourists and holidaymakers; however we figured that the lateness of The Season would surely have reduced the pressure, and that if they were so popular, why should we miss out on their wonders? 

Certainly Bourton was hosting over five coachloads of Asian tourists, the shops were full of tourists tack, the toilets were pay-to-use, but the village really is quite lovely. The River Windrush flows through the village under five quaint low bridges, lined with weeping willows and an assortment of other lovely trees, and right now with autumn further advanced each day, we were so glad we called by to see this gorgeous spot for ourselves. 

Burford has a long and wide High Street which slopes down to that same river, and there are fabulous old buildings lining the street, their architectural features wonky and wonderful. The shops here are very upmarket, full of classy accessories and fashion, and the restaurants and cafes already full of satisfied customers.

We visited the Church of St John, one of the big Cotswold Wool Churches. While the site probably was once home to a Saxon church, the present church was built in the 12^th century and grew in stature as did the wool trade. There are several eccentric features of note: an inscription scratched into the lead-work on the font by one of the Levellers when imprisoned in the church in 1649 by Cromwell, a mysterious carved stone slab on the wall of the turret tower so worn and old it might even be some heathen symbol, an elaborate tomb to the Tanfields, he once mayor in the early 17^th century, and his good lady, both who were despised by the townsfolk. Outside are many “bale” tombs, with tops that may represent bales of cloth and unique to this part of the Cotswolds.

Stow on the Wold did not hold us for long except we did wander about the old market to find the “tchures” for ourselves. These are incredibly narrow walled alleyways running into the centre of the town designed to funnel sheep into the market, a bit like races in the sheep yards I remember from my childhood. The market is dominated by an imposing Victorian hall which happily does not look out of place amongst the buildings mainly dating from earlier times.

Chipping Campden is even lovelier and probably all the better because we saw no room for big tour coaches, leaving the town to those who come by car. We and the locals had it all to ourselves to admire a prosperous wool town unchanged since the the Middle Ages, an assortment of hemmed-in ancient houses with weather worn and beaten roofs, twisted beams, mullioned windows, rotting stone work. Every structure was photo worthy, although I am not sure whether the photography was worthy of the subject.

We popped into a Memorial Garden, in memory to one of Chipping Campden’s own sons, Ernest Wilson. We had come upon him in the Forest of Dean just a few days ago when we learned that the arboretum which was part of the Speech House walk, was planned and planted by this plant collector extraordinaire. Much of his overseas travel was through China and neighbouring countries during a time when few white men dared those dangerous exotic lands. 

His story is quite amazing although I will not bore you here; check it out for yourself, however I will note that it was he who on his first trip to China in 1899, came across an unusual vine on the Yangtze, which bore an edible fruit. Wilson introduced the plant into Britain and later the United States. The fruit was nicknamed “Wilson’s Chinese Gooseberry”, and today is commercially grown in many countries including New Zealand and is generally known as “Kiwi Fruit”.

The garden here in Chipping Campden was opened in 1984 and is full of plant varieties that were introduced to the Western World by “Chinese” Wilson, a most fitting memorial for such a man.

The afternoon was well on by the time we arrived in Winchcombe, and our exploration was perhaps a little more cursory that the place warranted. This was an important Saxon town and one time capital of the old kingdom of Mercia. It thrived during the wool cloth boom too, one of the results the town’s main church, St Peter’s, a mainly 15^th century structure distinguished by forty startling gargoyles that ring the exterior. 

One of the highlights of our visit to Winchcombe had nothing to do with the architecture or for that matter, anything the guide books might have alerted us to. We wandered down a slope lined with charming identical houses, wondering if they were perhaps alms houses. 

At the bottom of the hill we leaned over the bridge to check out the river, if there were one, and were instead confronted by an area of allotments, a line of sunflowers and a chap wielding secateurs ready to cut the latter down. We fell into a lengthy conversation with this gardener, discussing the variety of vegetables and berries he had grown or tried to grow, and ended up learning all about the pests that plague allotment holders here. 

There are the clever squirrels who took his strawberries and beans, the moles who munch up all the roots, a badger who tried supplementing his diet with healthy greens, and the rats that crawl up from the creek and make a mess of the compost. Fortunately there have been no rabbits about. Much of these tales where told with great humour and those that were not, still amused us greatly. We left him to his toils and returned to our exploration of his lovely town. 

It’s has been an excellent day, a trip of just short of one hundred miles, and we will leave Cheltenham tomorrow with a good overview of the area, and a desire to return to do some of the many walks through the Cotswolds; again we have simply run out of time.