Clio's Garden

To begin some perspective, Stone Henge is five thousand years old and people proabably worshiped there or whatever they were doing for a long time before that. The oldest pyramids are also around five thousand years old and graves in the Valley of the Kings could be older….not going to check this. The Great Wall of China was built around fourteen fifty and the Great Wall of Groton finished in 2018. So, as things go Hadrian’s Wall is in the middle of all the grandiose building projects. However, the wall was built to delineate the uppermost limit of the Roman expansion into the British Isles and they never did get to Ireland. It is easy to check the history of the wall and Roman lands but the thing that interests me is how they came, they conquered and they went back home. We were in the Roman villa in the Cotswolds which was a very inviting, clement place. Not so at the wall. We were there on the Solstice and the wind was whipping around and chillingly cold. It can’t have been a welcome post to men from warm, dry Italy. The Scots….the various tribes that would some day become the Scots, were always trying to take back their land and overthrow the invaders….I can’t imagine why…and the wall was built to keep them confined. And it was very effective for several hundred years. It took only six years to build and in addition to the wall every mile along it was a small tower with living quarters that was manned and there were larger fortresses along…several of them, also manned, and that wall was patrolled every moment of every day.

Their cisterns were morticed with lead and some of that is still intact. You can see it, gray, between the big stones. They had to haul everything up that very steep hill to the garrison including water but they had locals working for them. It would have been a hard life for those workers. Now there are sheep there….hundreds of them as there are everywhere in the north. 

England is very narrow there and the wall is only seventy three miles long but it spanned the country…much like the Ice Wall in Game of Thrones.

The foundations of the Roman military garrison and the small village that grew up outside its walls are still there, snug up against the wall. We had a tour guide who explained the purpose of the rooms that would have been there and most especially their water, latrine and sewage systems. For the next two thousand years or less, people would empty their slops into the street or a cesspit if they were lucky but the romans up there on that windy hill had the equivalent of flush toilets. In some ways it is sad that Rome could not keep it together and due to internal fighting had to leave Britannia. In many ways they really did bring peace and prosperity to Britain. They allowed people, men, to become Roman citizens after twenty five years of military service and all their decendants  were then citizens. Citizenship brought many benefits not the least of which was a pension. The reason more of the buildings are not standing is that in the next fifteen hundred years the locals took them to build houses, churches, etc., because they were already quarried and shaped saving thousands of hours of labor. One stone which was inscribed with a commanders name was taken out of a hearth in a private home and donated back to the museum.

We visited the military museum and they had a half hour film taken above the wall along its entire length. As the camera went along they superimposed views of what it would have looked like in AD 150. They know what the buildings looked like because they have many examples of Roman architecture. The Roman Empire did not build by half measures.

The wall is truly impressive, high and thick and couldn’t have been easily scaled. It is a thing here in Britain to walk all over the country and walking the wall is very popular. I was surprised at how many people were there with us.

I know folks back home wondered why we would go all the way to England to visit Hadrian’s Wall…after all, it is just another stone wall. A funny thing, as we crested the hill and could look down upon the wall snaking its way across the country side I said, “Is that it then?” Everyone laughed…they probably thought I was unimpressed but it fact England has a surfeit of stone walls and I was just making sure! Being at the wall was to me like being in one of the great cathedrals and I had the same shivery, otherworldly feeling. (The fallen columns are the temple) (The floor of the hypocaust warmed room was tiled with stone…not wood as I earlier surmised). 

Haltwhistle, the town we stayed in, calls itself the ‘Center of Britain’. The town is situated half way between the coasts of the Irish Sea and the North Sea and half way up(or down) the country from north to south. Kids keep moving the sign and I can understand that…very tempting. We wandered into the local church which was built in the 1300s and lo, they were having choir practice. We were invited to come in and view the church and we stayed to listen to them and Eric couldn’t stand that the bases were sharp and he kept chiming in with the correct note (softly) but someone noticed and invited him to join them. I think the choir mistress was getting fed up with them not hitting the right note. That experience is not unusual, everyone in this country has been gracious and welcoming.

There are defibrillators everywhere in this country! They put them in the old red phone booths and stick them on walls sort of willy nilly and you have to call the police station for the unlocking code and then I guess just follow the instructions and wait for help to come. The thing is, you have to have your heart attack next to one of them and hope you are not alone.

And last…here are two not very intrepid travelers on a windy hill with the past spread out around them. 

Beatrix Potter wrote those charming books about the little animals and her cat, her rabbits and her duck with whom she lived. She also had a husband. And a brother who painted and who drank himself to death.  She used her house and buildings in the town of Sawrey in some of he illustrations as well. I have always loved her stories, especially the story of Jemima Puddleduck because she was a gullible woman who went off with a smooth talking, nicely dressed, very elegant gentleman, like so many other women. And I have always liked Samuel Whiskers because he rolled Tom Kitten in dough and was going to cook and eat him. It is hard to find villains in Ms. Potter’s stories…I don’t include Farmer McGregor as I find him a kindred spirit, not a villain. But the thing I love most about Potter’s books and other works is her art work. There is something gentle and real about her pictures and when we had the opportunity to visit her home, a National Trust property along with four thousand acres of other farms she donated, we jumped at it. 

The door to her house is made of several huge, thick slabs of local slate. You can see this in the picture. This looks out on what was once a vegetable patch and I can imagine her standing there regarding maurading birds and small creatures in her garden.

Inside the house we saw the desk where she likely wrote the stories, her furnishings, her intricate fireplace and much more that was charming and comfortable. We also visited a ‘roadside attraction’ that was geared toward children but had enough charm for all. There were tiny mice in their houses, Peter Rabbit coming to grief and many other characters. One can get the flavor of the scenes represented by these photos of Peter’s downfall.

Also, I am sitting on the window seat with a picture from one of the books of that exact place. And those two old women? One of them is me and the other is a wax version of Beatrix. The little spinning wheel is sitting on top of a regular one and it is a spun by hand, an early version of the electric spinning wheel which sits on a table. It was a wonderful visit and I’m glad I have the photographs to remind me. We also visited Wray Castle that day which was notable only for the beautiful views and was otherwise just a castle. And tomorrow we are on our way to….

Our hostess in Bala, Wales has the fabulous job of helping farmers in the surrounding counties develop value added products to enhance their incomes and retain their farms and their way of life. You can imagine how happy we were to hear this. They have one product, Welsh butter, that could sweep the world if they chose to market it. The Irish have Kerrygold and this is better. Things close in the late afternoon, except for restaurants that serve dinners…and pubs. All other shops and many restaurants are closed by six. This has two advantages, first the people who work in the shops get to go home and have a life and the second is that it is quiet in the evening. There is almost no traffic on the streets. In addition, they have signs up in places informing people there is to be no rowdiness, no public noise, no bad behavior, really nothing obnoxious and the it is the listeners, not the perpetrators, who get to decide if something is untoward.

We went to Caernarvon where there is a huge castle where Prince Charles was invested , the last in a very long line of princes who were invested there. In 1969 he knelt in that castle and with his mother’s hands around his promised to be her liege man, then she gave him the kiss of fealty and gave him an ermine robe, a scepter and a ring and he was the Prince of Wales. We might not think too much about this but they sure do here in Wales. The English have been trying to dominate the Welsh for a more than a thousand years but the country side makes it a bit difficult. That Elizabeth II is the head of this country is simply graciousness on their part, I think if they wanted to engage in guerilla warfare they could make it plenty difficult. But that’s just it, they are too well mannered! The picture of the chessboard looking room is actually showing the Princes of Wales, the larger they are the more power they had. The gentleman in the top hat is watching the castle burning, it burned or was destroyed by war numerous times. It was restored by some very rich man in the 1800s. 
The castle has a museum of the Welsh

Royal Fusilliers which I think are the equivalent of our special forces and they are clearly tough. These men have fought in every war England has fought it. The people from the British Isles are, as I have stated before, in no doubt that their freedom was dearly won. Here is a picture of a chart The Royal Fusillers had in their museum. (Eric is standing where Prince Charles was invested in 1969).

The thing is, living in Caernarvon would have been quite unpleasant and cold. It is right on the water and made of stone…huge stones with walls fifteen feet thick and with passages in the center of the wall to get to the fighting areas. Just about everyone wanted to attack this castle and I am wondering if maybe they shouldn’t have built it at all because it attracted so much attention. I think that the Roman villa was more technologically advanced, easier to live in and certainly easier to keep warm. But then, it was in the Cotswolds and not on the edge of an estuary heading to the Atlantic Ocean. The river next to the castle is subject to tides. The sail boats have fins for rudders that keep them upright during low tide. Here is a picture of that.

We drove through part of the Snowdonia National Park. It is rugged, it is big, it is steep, it is cold and it has a clouds on top of the mountains. We drove in the usual way through the river valley and many times we were perched right out there where only God and birds could see us. People actually live on those steep banks and their driveways come from the road we were on, they have narrow bridges fording the river and steep driveways and somehow they live through this. Remember the speed limits are really high…sixty on the road we were on…except when they wanted us to slow for a curve. We never went that fast. We always hunt for the turnouts  so we car pull over and let the traffic pass us. I tried several times to photograph the mountain but I couldn’t get enough of it into the frame to make any sense of it. So I photographed a bit of one of the streams coming off the sides of the mountain.
Coming back from Caernarvon we drove oven a high mountain, 1700 feet at one point, and for miles at the top it was a plateau. Not flat but lots of meadows and sheep folds. We were inside the cloud the entire way and the view might have been spectacular but we could see nothing, the visibility was practically nil and Eric said he was only going to drive what he could see..very sensible. The thing is, the sheep are all around there and we realized that the fences we had seen containing them down hill were not here! Sheep were feeding on the sides of the road. White sheep are the same color as the cloud and we had a few short moments as they dashed across in front of the car. We had to recognize faintly darker patches of cloud to know that we were to be attacked by fluffy leapers. We needed to stay awake so we didn’t count them.

Leaving Bala we drove through a valley, no more than a thousand feet up and the views were lovely. The road was mostly wide and easy to drive and at no time did I think we were driving off into space. This countryside, like the Cotswolds is relentlessly beautiful. It is impossible to photograph and do it justice so I am sticking to things that might be more interesting than gushing equally relentlessly about the scenery. And we are on our way to….

On Friday we went to Rome. Or some of what is left of it in England. In the Victorian era the game master of a Lord Elton was hunting and his dog followed a rabbit and in the scramble and digging the dog unearthed some tesserae which a friend of the Lord’s later identified as Roman floor tiles. Much vigorous Victorian vandalism ensued. Many walls were uncovered and rooms identified and they had the good sense to do two things, they covered the walls with little stone caps and they reburried the mosaic floors under several inches of dirt. They did take many artifacts which today would enable the National Trust to be more precise identifying the rooms. And they lost a lot of the finds.

This villa was the property of a wealthy Roman…but not likely a real Roman. The locals were more than encouraged to adopt Roman language, customs, everything, so the owner of this grand place was really a Brit. The first buildings were built in 150 AD and continually refitted and made very grand until it declined after the Roman Empire withdrew its troops form Britain in 403 AD. Most of the troops were withdrawn before the actual fall so those left in Britain simply as assimilated. The wonderful Roman archaitecture fell into disrepair helped along by people who dug into the mosaic floors to build storage pits  and put fires on the floor for cooking and heat. The standing stone posts in this picture, unevenly uprighted by the Victorians and left, are what held up the floors. I do not know but suspect that wooden cross beams and planking constituted the subflooring. The villa would have been comfortable in the patritician’s family rooms with the hot air heat. Not, however in the servants quarters. 

This round pool was a temple to a dryad, a water nymph and would have been revered because that is who brought clean water. The pool is spring fed still but only trickles as most of the water is diverted to the visitors center. In Roman times this little temple would have been pillered, painted, tiled, the works. The phesant is drinking from the water intake for the pool that the peasants must have cleaned.  This bird was not at all afraid of our group.

The Romans liked to eat snails so they imported their favorites from Italy and fed them on milk until they were too fat to get back into their shells. Those that were left in Gaul (France) became the fancy 🐌 escargot. Some enterprising snails escaped the kitchens and went native and today their descendants roam the Roman villa’s grounds. In 1600 years they have only extended their range by ten miles proving once and for all that a snail’s pace is truly slow. Here is a picture of one so slow it barely made it out of the room. The creamy white and brown streaked shell is typical of them. They are reported to be very tasty if you like snails (and I do) but they are protected and we were warned not to put one in a pocket for a snack. This snail was not afraid of our group, either.

The baths of the villa took up a much space since the villa was used as a place to hunt and entertain and many guests would have been invited and much influence brokered. The baths are still intact and they had pools of increasing heat until the final frigid plunge bath. I took a picture of a picture showing the baths as they would have looked in all their glory. They have excavated the baths, put in an elevated walkway and covered the whole thing…looks very good, sturdy and handles many people. All this was many feet underground when it was discovered as it is at the base of a hill and the dirt washed down over the centuries.

We also visited a stately home and the grounds were very nice, six really large redwoods on the long drive. It had a plain exterior but the inside was beautiful and full of art. The family has collected art for a long time.But…it is a private home, the family still lives there and we were not allowed to photograph inside. However, here is a photo of some random sheep on the way to the Roman villa.  Saturday we leave Cheltenham and head for…..

We took a side trip to an animal park and garden that is near Cheltonham because I wanted to see the garden. It was pretty neat, all sorts of tropical plants, temperate ones and all sorts of desert pleants. Then we went into the Madagascar area which was fenced and roofed with strong wire and had airlock doors on each end because these guys were roaming free. The picture on the right is a baby clinging to its mother. Not something one useally sees. We were warned about those tails…they can give one quite a swipe. They have a number of different species of lemur in the park, as well as birds and flora from Madagascar. 

The leaf Eric is standing by is easily four or more feet across and not the biggest one we saw.

And this spiky tree would make a good Christmas tree. The lemurs eat most of the vegetation in their compound but the guide also gives them food at certain hours so the touristas will congregate and hear about the lemurs and that the animal park and others are helping the Madagascans reforest and retrain to sustainable agriculture. 

Here is a common sign around here. You will notice how quickly this deer is running to get to the other side of the road and out of the line of fire. This is in stark contrast to the deer in New England which stand in the middle of the road with their eyes gleaming evilly waiting for you to smash into them and send you both to Kingdom Come.

I can’t help saying more about the roads here. They have other interesting signs like the one that looks like a tuning fork and means that the two lane road you are on is soon to become a one lane road. There will be little divots at the sides of the road and these are just large enough to accommodate most of a car to avoid the oncoming car, or bus, or tractor…I was surprised by a 14% grade but I’m an old hand now as we went down one that was easily 18%. Besides the insanely high speed limits these back roads twist and turn and a favorite here is the little hill you cannot possibly  see over that has a left hand curve just beyond the sight line and vegetation right up to the car. Eric has gotten really good at driving but we still mutter…tight left, wide right.

Now the Sublime…..

After the animal park we traveled to Bourton-On-The-Water which was lovely. There is a river flowing through the center of town with charming stone bridges one walks across. The stream is spring fed not too far up stream from there and perfectly clear. We had the best scones I have ever tasted there and that includes Sophia’s cherry scones and Sarah’s cream scones…really. Theadora told us that the ‘cream tea’ is available pretty much everywhere, a pot of tea, two scones, a small jar of jam and an ounce or so of clotted cream. Delicious.  Then we drove to Lower Slaughter and it was the quintessential Cotswoldian town. Old buildings, water feature, no place to turn around.

The next day we drove to Glouster and walked the waterfront, ate dinner but before that we went to Glouster Cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Glouster, who, I’m mighty proud to say, is a woman. We attended Evensong and why did we do that you may ask? Because it is sublime. The organ fills the church, the service is beautiful and there is sweet singing in the choir. The choir master at Glouster is a master of his craft and the choir, ‘tho composed mostly of young people, ten to about sixteen, was as professional sounding as one could wish. If you really want to get the flavor of a cathedral Evensong is the place to be. And…it happens every day, no waiting for Sunday. Here is a picture of the quire…church for ‘choir’ where the choir sings. Quires are in the chancel at the back and often separated from the nave by a screen or raised area. If you count three gold posts on the right we sat two  rows back. 

No matter where we drive we are struck over again by the sheer beauty of this place. Strangely, when we say we are going to the Lake District to a one they tell us how beautiful it is there. But it rains…they always add that.

What is really strange is that we have had lovely weather every day! It is warm/cool, breezy, sunny…truly, I am beginning to worry about their crops around here and this is a big farming district. Perhaps when we leave it will rain. Tomorrow we head to …..

Hello everyone,

Face book did not publish my first post because it thought I didn’t exist over here. If you want to read all about the London Eye go to cliosgarden.com and you will find it there.

Clio

Years ago I saw a picture of Salisbury Cathedral painted by J.M.W.Turner and when I am not using War of the Worlds wallpaper on my screens I use his painting. It is a pastoral scene and does not in any way reflect what is there now but the building is the same and I have always wanted to go there, to be there. Sometimes the ideal and the real come together in a wonderful way. We had the good fortune to attend evensong during the commemoration of the end of WWI. The Royal Legion was there in full regalia, the bands were good, the choir was lovely, the organ was sublime. The Royal Legion is the equivalent of our American Legion and they are very active helping British servicemen and women while on active duty and in retirement. They help children, the injured, widows, everyone in a service person’s family if needed. The RL has the complete support of the government and it is clear that in England they know exactly why the war was fought and what the true price of their freedom is.

It was a Church of England service which was much like the Episcopal service of my youth and they sang the old hymns. All that aside, I was actually there, sitting in the sanctuary, singing…and we sang God Save the Queen which was so much fun. I would have to use a lot of rather flowery language to convey how I felt in that church. All I will say is that my heart was full.  My only concession to my UUism is that I crossed my fingers during the Apostle’s Creed. Hearing it brought me back to standing next to my mother on Sunday morning as the church was full of voices and it was strangely comforting to hear it again. The building is very old and is built upon still older ruins as many of the big churches are. Apparently it was the cathedral of Ken Follett’s ‘Pillers of the Earth’ and ‘World Without End’.  They have a brochure about it but I didn’t have a chance to get one. I will always remember it.

The doves are for peace and are hanging from a net. They look like the starlings going over our property in the autumn, a few above, then many, then a few. On the walls of the cathedral are plaques commemorating dead parishioners and we have them in our church, as well. And seeing them there always makes me wonder if we will have to remove one in a hundred years or so to put up another plaque with the names of our ministers on it. I look at the walls of our little church and rearrange plaques, adding and subtracting as the mood strikes. I haven’t seen any plaques in Salisbury Cathedral that are newer than a hundred years ago. 

Now a word about the roads in England. Perhaps they are not the same all over but so far ….they have roads here that are so narrow it is actually easy to sideswipe the fences on the side of the road, or parked cars or the many mad bicyclists who seem unaware that the cars coming from both directions are going to have to pass. In New England the speed on a country road seldom is higher than 45mph. The same road here has a limit of 60mph. No, I’m not making this up! Curves in the road that  would fling someone into orbit mearly ask one to slow.  We encountered a 14% grade with a 30mph zone directly at the bottom of the hill. And the most terrifying of all is a sign that reads, “Oncoming Vehicles May Be in the Middle of the Road” and another that reads, “Arched Bridge High Vehicles Use Middle of the Road”. Unfortunately there was no way we could stop on the road so I could photograph that sign! I think the most surprising thing is that we have not encountered any traffic accidents. On the other hand, there is a fine of 1000 pounds for texting while driving and a zero tolerance policy on alcohol….not one drink may be had before driving.

In the US one can often pull off a country road onto the verge which is almost always wide enough to pull off entirely. This makes it possible to let traffic get ahead of a slow moving car (us) and also lets people pull off to admire the view. With the narrow roads and no verge at all this is not possible. Another big difference is that there is no clutter, no advertising signs, no strip malls, services are rare outside of the towns and the towns do not sprawl. There is countryside and then there is the town and the speed drops from 50 or 60 to 30 in a few hundred feet but nothing can be seen ahead but the sign. And now I am wondering: how much land do we use in the US  for verges? How many hundreds of thousands of acres rubbled over with gravel for the sole purpose of housing stopped cars?  England does not have the the land to use that way on every road and lane and in this ancient country there is a road going everywhere.

Now, remember that here folks drive on the left side of the road, and Eric is doing all the driving, and I am doing all the gasping in horror. Our first foray out was a terrifying affair.  The tendency is to drive too far to the left in an effort to avoid the oncoming traffic which to us looks like it is on the wrong side of the road and is going to bash us head-on. I was continually saying, “Too far left” and Eric saying, “Thank you”.  He said not one sarcastic rejoinder because he was as grateful as I not to crash into stone walls. My hero. Did I mention that the roads twist like pretzels?

We returned to our room….a FROG (finished room over the garage) which is very nice. It is part of a small, gated estate that is immaculate in every way. We ate a very sparse dinner and fell into bed. And the next day we were up and out one our way to…..

Hello everyone,

We left our luggage at the B&B and headed for the London Eye as soon as we hit town. We didn’t make our reservation time so stopped for the first food in many hours. Then we found that our time slot was just a serving suggestion and the thing they were really interested in was that we had purchased tickets aforehand so we walked right on. Yes, I am a sniveling coward when it comes to heights but the London Eye is not like roads in the  Blue Ridge Parkway that turn corners against the sky with a thousand foot drop and an outside lane. The LE has no jiggle, no rattle, no herky jerky, no torque and no speed. The gondolas move very slowly and the view unfolds and before I knew it I was up and photographing the superstructure and the river and what all else.

We walked the plaza, clapped for the street entertainers and sat and watched the river go by and finally, when we thought it would never, ever set, the sun went down and we went back to our room. Next day we took a turn through Harrods, still switching time zones and we found a watch for 220, 000 pounds. It was the only one of its kind.   Oh, and a carry-on suitcase for 16, 000 pounds. I kid you not. Really. If I had thought I was enough of a Yahoo to photograph the price tags I would have but I was one hayseed shy.

If you ask, the clerks will tell you about interesting things in the store, they are so helpful. One told us about the Egyptian escalator and said that even ‘tho the entire stair is carved to resemble Egyptian tombs the name comes from the speed of the escalator which is said to be as fast as the flow of the Nile. I asked, “Rainy season or dry season”, but my informant did not know. Pity.

Here is a picture of the perfect hat to wear to Elea and Alan’s wedding….only 375 pounds. Sigh. It is in a hat shop just down from our B&B in a very ordinary street. I guess they really like their hats here. 

In 1925 my mother was ten and her family took a trip to California by car. She was given a note book to record her journey but when she got home all she had written was, “Saw a bar of soap in the middle of the road”.  I hope I can do better with witticisms and pithy remarks and a bit of philosophy and, wonder of wonders,  right away I found a bear in Paddington Station. Probably as photographed as the Queen. We got on our train to Oxford to pick up a car and then we were on our way to……