In July/August 2019 I was lucky to be able to visit the UK for almost 3 weeks for a family wedding.
London
I spent the first week in London which was hot and packed with tourists. I love art museums but visiting the National Gallery was an ordeal. Nevertheless my favourite painting, Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, was on display and it was nice to see that lots of other people also stopped to admire it. I find the way the silvery water shimmers magical. Some other paintings close by also caught my eye. I think our tastes change over time and suddenly a painting, that might not have seemed so special before, jumps out at us.
I was staying in a flat in Islington with a beautiful roof garden. What a lovely backdrop to the blue, pink and white planting the chimney pots made. The star of the garden was Trachelospermum and I was surprised to find that it grows well in London. The bride chose sprigs of its white scented flowers for her hair and bouquet. I even spotted oleanders in full bloom in gardens close by.
My visit coincided with a very hot spell. The lawns near the ponds on Hampstead Heath were covered with sunbathers and people were queuing to swim. It was all a bit of a shock to someone coming from a cold Cape winter.
Around Ross on Wye
After the wedding, friends and I set off on a short road trip. First we drove to Ross on Wye near the border with Wales, stopping for lunch at the Nags Head pub on the Thames at Abingdon. I didn’t realise how long a river the Thames is. The next day our friend in Ross on Wye had planned a lovely day trip for us visiting sites such as Symonds Yat with its stunning view of the River Wye, Raglan castle and Usk a charming town which had won an award for its floral displays. We then went on to Caerleon to see the Roman ruins and to lunch at a very nice and reasonably priced pub restaurant there. On the way home we saw more Roman ruins at Caerwent and visited Tintern Abbey. This is a very pretty part of the country; hilly, partly forested and full of tiny sunken lanes not suited to SUVs. I think we were in Wales most of the time.
Isle of Wight
The following day it was pouring with rain as we made our way down through the New Forest to catch a ferry to the Isle of Wight where we were to spend 2 nights. The freeways make it easy to cover long distances, but one does not see much from them as mostly they have a screening barrier of trees.
When we arrived on the Isle of Wight, our first stop was to visit The Needles, a series of chalk pinnacles in the sea. Never have I experienced such wind. It was almost impossible to get out of the car and I was nearly blown off the viewing platform. Walking along the hillside for a closer view would have to wait for another day.
We then set off to drive down the west and south coast of the island, heading for Shanklin where we were staying. The rain had stopped and it was a very pretty drive through farmland with gently rolling hills, small towns and occasional views of the sea. Many of the homes have very pretty detailing around the windows and doors and attractive wooden bargeboard decoration. One gets the feeling that many of the properties in the towns were built in the mid nineteenth century when Victoria and Albert made the island a fashionable retreat.
The next morning we visited the Ventnor Botanical Garden. This garden, developed on the site of an old sanatorium, has a wide variety of plants, but sadly for a botanical garden the labelling is very poor. There were borders blue with agapanthus and a lovely hydrangea dell. It contained an interesting range of trees, but without labels. One had exquisite bark and I think might be related to the strawberry tree Arbutus.
After visiting the garden we drove on to an old pub with smuggling connections in Niton for lunch. I was gradually being introduced to English ale. There is no doubt that pubs are special places and it is sad to be told that many are closing. After lunch we headed to Mottistone Manor an old estate with a lovely garden and church. It was time for a real cream tea with clotted cream, jam and scones. I don’t recall fruit scones being part of a cream tea, but it seems to be the fashion now. On the way back to Shanklin we drove past Carisbrooke castle, but did not go in.
Our time was limited on the island and we did not explore any of the chines or ravines that go down to the sea. I would love to visit again and spend more time. It is an attractive place and I can see why people like to retire there.
The next morning we drove up the east coast of the island to Fishbourne to cross on the ferry to Portsmouth. It was a lovely morning to be on deck on the ferry watching Portsmouth approach.
Around Ely
Once off the ferry, we headed north and east to my friends’ home near Ely in Cambridgeshire, stopping at another pub for lunch where I was able to have a modern version of the ploughman’s lunch and broaden my experience of English beer. We made good time and were only delayed at the Dartford tunnel where one has to cross under the Thames downstream from London. Traffic travelling south goes over a beautiful bridge overhead, but northbound traffic must use the tunnel.
I spent 5 days with my friends and we did some lovely things. One day we went down to Saffron Walden, a very old town with ancient buildings and a nice market place. Saffron was grown there once, hence the name. Some of the buildings have pargetting, or decorative plaster work. We visited the Fry gallery there which had an Eric Ravilious exhibition. We also visited Anglesey Abbey as I hoped to see its dahlia border, but this had not opened yet. Nevertheless it is a lovely garden and I especially admired a cherry with shiny copper bark. I did not realise the ticket included entry to the house, so missed out there.
Another day we visited Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, a moated house built in about 1483. It also had a nice garden, with walls with little turrets and a beautiful herbaceous border. Nearby was a church whose tower had collapsed one morning about 150 years ago leaving an attractive ruin; and a pub for a tasty lunch and yes you guessed it, more ale. Another afternoon we visited a private garden open under the famous Open garden scheme. This garden contained an amazing collection of pelargonium varieties, many of which you don’t see in SA.
This part of England is very flat and most of it is below sea level, so drainage channels and pumps are very important to prevent flooding. We were lucky to find one of the old pump stations at Stretham, which is now a museum, open one afternoon and could view the impressive old machinery. We also visited one of main control sites of the drainage system, the Denver sluice. It is all very interesting and one hopes it will cope with global warming.
Almost all the land here is cultivated. Fields of sugar beet and wheat stretch as far as the eye can see. One farm specialized in free range pigs, with fields dotted with little huts and watering points. Farmers were busy harvesting wheat, working late and over weekends to get it done before the weather turned.
I especially enjoyed the time I spent in Ely. The centre of town is charming and the cathedral magnificent. I spent a whole morning there doing a tour downstairs and then one of the amazing lantern tower where one climbs right up on to the roof. Lastly I visited their stained glass museum. A visit to this cathedral is a must if you are in this part of England.
Back to London and home
Sadly it was my last day of the trip and I had to bid my friends good bye and head back to London laden with a huge bag of jigsaw puzzles that I had been buying on ebay and that they had been storing for me. I left my puzzles at Kings Cross and headed off to the Barbican to see an exhibition of Lee Krasner paintings with a friend. Lee Krasner was Jackson Pollock’s wife and an accomplished artist herself. What a dreadful building the Barbican centre is. The wind howls around the corners. It is bleak and one is always getting lost. I am not sure what can be done to remedy this building which is typical of this period of twentieth century architecture. Maybe better venue signage would help.
After lunch with my friend at a nice Turkish restaurant close by, I took the tube to the National Portrait Gallery to see the annual BP portrait exhibition and loved the winning picture, a nude of a young woman with very direct eyes and her dog. I wandered around Trafalgar square taking a look at the new 4th plinth exhibit which is a replica of the statue of Lamassu which was destroyed by Isis in 2005.
I then strolled down to the Embankment and walked up on to the bridge to admire the river view including the London Eye. Near the Eye I spotted a new (to me) light blue tower and as I watched horrified spinning cars of a typical funfair ride emerged from the tree tops and rose to the top of the tower before dropping down again. I cannot imagine who would choose such an experience voluntarily.
Then it was time to head back to King’s Cross, collect my luggage and make the long tube trip to Heathrow. In one of the Underground passageways at Kings Cross I came across a fun stretch which had decorated by a gin company, even the floor had been painted. My KLM flight left at 6:30 am, so I spent the night in a tiny pod at the Yotelair at terminal 4. It was surprisingly cosy and I slept well.
The next day was the long trek home, but I had a window seat and it was fun to watch London disappear, then the patchwork of brown fields where the wheat had been cut followed by the cluster of wind turbines in the sea and then the green green fields and waterways of countryside near Amsterdam. When we took off again we flew down over France on the border with Switzerland, over the Mediterranean and across the Sahara where often the sand storms prevented one seeing anything but orange dust. Unfortunately when the plane reached tropical Africa, clouds prevented one seeing anything further. We landed at 9:30 pm. It was a very long day.
UK trip 2019
