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 12th
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 17th 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 15th 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.
Back in 1704, when
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, returned victoriously from
the battle against the French in Bavaria, he was awarded not a shiny medal, but
the royal hunting property of Woodstock with enough money to be paid out for
the building of a suitably appropriate mansion.
Just months on, the Duke engaged the architectural services of poet and
writer, Sir John Vanbrugh, he who was also responsible for Castle Howard, but £260,000 into the project, the money ran out.
Fortunately the Duke managed to supplement the crown grant with his own funds,
and for a further £40,000, it was finished, twenty eight years later and after
much acrimonious dealings with all parties involved. While the warring Duke was
off fighting more battles, his clever but difficult wife, Sarah, managed to
create many adversaries, all recorded in history rather than her more positive attributes.
She had been a bosom buddy of Queen Anne who had made the generous grant to the
Churchills, but even this relationship ended in bad blood, and the two women
were seriously estranged by the time that Queen Anne died and the Hapsburgs
moved onto British thrones.
Evidently
the Churchills, or at least the Duke, were held in such high esteem that the
law was changed in 1706 to allow the title to pass down to a women when there
was no surviving male heir, however daughter Charlotte did not do any better in
providing an heir, so the title and the property passed to her nephew, with the
name Spencer, who begat and begat in a straight line all the way through to the
current 12th Duke still residing in a corner of Blenheim Palace. 
Interestingly in 1817 the 5th Duke managed to seek royal approval
for a name change to the rather grand Spencer-Churchill and so it has remained,
even by Sir Winston Churchill who was more correctly, Sir Winston
Spencer-Churchill. It is also this family who spawned the equally famous Diana
Princess of Wales, although on another line, but both she and Winston could
claim John and Sarah as their antecedents.
In 1895
the 9th Duke caught himself an American heiress, Consuelo
Vanderbilt, who was in turn keen to catch an English title. The match was
mutually advantageous although on a more personal level less so; the marriage
lasted little over ten years but long enough to produce an heir and a spare.
And of course the dowry enabled significant upgrades of the property, much of
it still visible today. 
Winston
Churchill, while grandson of a Duke rather than being one himself, was born in
Blenheim Palace, more by chance than good management, but did spend much of his
childhood vacation time with his grandmother or nanny there, developing enduring
ties to the palace. So much so that he proposed to his wife there and when he
died, had his body interred at the nearby church rather than Westminster Abbey as
protocol demanded. 
