Judith Johnson
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Unidentified Growing Object!

28/6/2020

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One of our lockdown activities over the last few months has been lifting turf to make three 6 foot wide borders, a long-held ambition -  one for vegetables, and two herbaceous.We visited the nearby Walled Garden Treberfydd Nursery last year soon after we moved to Brecon and, having much admired the borders there, were able, in mid-May this year, to have a selection of lovely healthy hardy perennials delivered. Having planted out one modest border, we had some left over to plant the remainder in our second flower border, some 78 foot long! 

We’re happy to let the borders mature over the next few years, dividing perennials once big enough, and adding in the odd acquisition from time to time. In the meantime, for an enjoyable display for this season, we bought some great value shake and rake seed boxes from ALDI - at £1.49 a pop. The Season Long Flower and Cottage Garden mixtures between them contained 30,000 seeds, in over 35 varieties, all the old favourites like cornflowers, calendula, nigella etc plus things we’d never heard of before, like Hare’s Ear, Nodding Catchfly and Siberian Wallfower.

Every morning we take a look at the borders, and it’s a huge pleasure to see what’s popping up, unfurling, and, this last week or so, starting to flower.  The packet does say that varieties may differ from the front image and can be replaced due to crop and seasonal circumstances, and among the plants not mentioned there which have appeared are coriander and fennel, both very welcome.

One seedling however, featuring two semicircles with a flat edge, was very unfamiliar. We were fascinated to see about six examples in the border, and watched to see what would unfold. After a couple of weeks, alarming thoughts came to mind. The seedling was beginning to look distinctly like it might be that most feared garden escape of all - the dreaded Japanese knotweed! 

Action stations!

We went through all the plants named on the packet and looked at images of each one on the internet to see if we could identify it.

We looked at blogs, images, you-tubes etc of knotweed - and googled for images of seedlings with similar characteristics.

We went painstakingly through our gardening and botanical reference books.

We still weren’t sure whether this was the culprit, but in the meantime the anxiety was growing faster than the plant: if it was JK, it would very likely take drastic measures to eradicate it, and what’s more it might even have a sizeable effect on the value of our property.

Hell, what to do? We couldn’t ask the neighbours.

I belong to a Facebook gardening group and asked what the best plant identifying app was (I’m fairly app-averse so have very few on my phone). 

“Why not post a picture on here?” several people suggested, “With over 600 members, someone will know any plant, no need for an app.”

Yeah, but they might report us to the Knotweed Police!!!

We were losing sleep by now. Time to grasp the nettle and download an app.

I snapped one of our merrily burgeoning offenders and uploaded it. 

We could have sobbed on each other’s shoulders...

It’s bloody buckwheat! 

No ambiguity about it! Buckwheat without a shadow of a doubt! Thank you, modern technology!

Ironically enough, had we leafed through our trusty Organic Gardening Catalogue, we would have found easily identifiable photographs of it in the Green Manure Section ...

Anyway, panic over, it’s growing nicely in the border. We like buckwheat.
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Plastic toys in plastic bags on children’s comics? Really?

20/4/2019

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When I was little and one of eight children, my bedroom was usually at the front of our house, where there was a gravel drive, so my favourite day of the week was Thursdays (even more so in the school holidays, of course!), when I could hear the approaching footsteps of the paper boy with our comics. Between us we had The Eagle, The Beezer, Dandy, Beano, Bunty and Jackie. I think we got Look and Learn at school.

Later in life, when our son was unwell, in addition to his usual comic, I’d pop out and get him an extra one from the local newsagent as a treat, so when my little granddaughter, three years old, was unwell recently, I thought I’d get her one – she loves drawing and is also showing a lot of interest in reading. However, when I had a look at what was on offer I was really taken aback. Every single comic was not only wrapped in plastic but also had a plastic toy attached.  When I was a kid, you’d get the very rare free gift with a comic, maybe once a year, and it was usually stuck on the front with a bit of glue. If you’re the right age, you’ll remember the kind of thing: a little Princess ring, or a paper device that made a bang when you gripped it and threw it forward.

In this time of crisis, when children worldwide are taking to the streets to demand climate action, right now, calling for us to reduce the impact of human over-consumption on our planet, and when David Attenborough and eminent scientists have laid out the devastating reality of the irreparable damage already done to planet Earth, and the legacy of our wasteful civilisation, bequeathed to our children and any future generations to deal with, it’s hard to believe that publishers  of children’s comics can be so blind to all this that they are producing further mountains of plastic to be, eventually, tipped into the sea or landfill sites.

Boycotts can be very effective. May I suggest to all those who care enough, that you take the small steps of not only boycotting children’s comics until this practice is stopped, but also letting the publishers and retail outlets know of the action you’ve taken. In the meantime,  you could go to the public library every week and get out a book (they really need our support), or if you can’t access a library, buy a second-hand children’s book once a week from a charity shop?

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Away with the Birds ...

8/2/2019

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​Recovering from particularly vicious flu, have been having some bird therapy today! Listening with full attention to bird song tracks while simultaneously looking at picture of each bird in my 1988 edition Book of British Birds (Readers Digest/AA).



If you love birds as much as I do, please see below (courtesy of and thanks to The Observer - I clipped this from their 19 August 2018 issue), here is a damn good reason to buy organic foodstuffs.

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Postcard from Yeovil

9/8/2016

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I popped down to Yeovil last week for a couple of days, and was delighted to see that the trees by the Library in King George Street had been poetry-bombed! Notices attached to the nearby benches explained that this was organised by Yeovil in Bloom - Words in the Street, whereby residents in South Somerset were invited to write a short poem or phrase about what nature meant to them.

There were too some wonderfully planted beds, a mixture of flowers and vegetables, by the Church of St John the Baptist in the centre of town, where my co-workers and I sat and ate our lunch  on the lawn enjoying the August sunshine.

Later that evening a further blooming of 21st Century culture manifested itself near the Library - crowds of youngsters with their faces lit by mobile phone screens, playing Pokemon.

“I thought you were supposed to walk round catching them on your phone?” I asked a colleague.

“Apparently, there’s a Pokemon gym here where you can fight other people.”

You learn something every day!

(I see, thanks to my friend Google, that there is an active Community Arts Association in Yeovil, so I look forward to attending some of their events on future visits.)

www.yeovilarts.co.uk
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Country Matters

31/1/2016

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PictureSnowdrops at Bough Beech
I've recently (rather late in the day, she’s 92!!) started to write a weekly letter to my mother, who lives about 35 miles away. She’s hard of hearing, and not always in a wakeful state, so phone calls aren’t an option, and it’s always a bit of a thrill to get post, isn’t it? (With the exception of bank statements or letters of an official nature!)  It’s quite therapeutic to get a pad of writing paper out of the old bureau inherited from my husband’s family, rather than boot up the computer for an email. Mum has a tablet, but doesn’t use it, and is still a voracious reader, so I thought a letter might be welcome.
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Earlier this week, on a beautiful January morning, I was looking out for things on my way to work I could include in my letter. I waved goodbye to Martin, (who had kindly scraped my frosty windscreen - he likes doing it, strange creature!) after pointing out to him the winter jasmine just beginning to unfurl its delicate small yellow flowers in a neighbour’s front garden. As I drove through Speldhurst I spotted daffodils blooming, and then in Poundhurst Lane the first primroses peeping out from a bank which, in a few weeks’ time, will be carpeted with them. At Penshurst the meadow between old stone bridges crossing two rivers at
its edges, had flooded, and driving past Penshurst Place I saw some of the black-faced sheep had tiny new lambs. There were glossy crows high up in the trees at Chiddingstone Causeway church-yard surveying their demesne, and in the old orchard at Bough Beech reservoir I saw, and heard, robins and blue-tits. The birds always sing up when the sun shines. The birdwatchers’ board reported that over 250 fieldfare had been spotted in the last week.

At lunch time I strolled up the hill to see what stage the bluebell wood had reached in this mild winter (the snowdrops have been out for some time), and noticed clumps of  their thick green leaves were already pushing through the dead leaves, and wild honeysuckle is flaming into leaf along the hedgerows.

In all this bucolic splendour I finally met with a large Landrover and trailer which screeched to a halt in front of me at the gate to a muddy field. Out popped half a dozen men with shotguns, flat caps, and eager spaniels. As I walked past I saw more people inside the trailer, a sort of Anderson shelter on wheels with  benches inside. On the back of the trailer hung a bunch of dead pheasants. They all (the people, that is) looked very jolly. Pheasant-shooting seems a sad kind of sport to me ...  going out into the country and killing birds that are famously rather slow and stupid and stand little chance of getting away, bred specifically so that people can have a day in the country and kill large numbers of them? Sorry, I just don’t get that... I feel bad enough if I run into one on the road.

I recently came across, on my way home  in the dark, a young deer which had been hit by a car that had failed to stop. It sat in the middle of the road, blood seeping from its nostrils, unable to get up - I guessed its back or legs were broken. A helpful young man stopped and moved the deer to the side of the road under some trees so that it wouldn’t get hit again. I drove to the house of a vet I knew lived nearby. Sadly he was away, so I drove home and got on the internet to seek help. The RSPCA will come out to an injured wild creature, but you must have the animal in sight when you call, as many will crawl away before an inspector gets there, which is therefore a waste of precious resources for a hard-pressed charity. Martin kindly came out and sat in the car with me for two hours until an RSPCA worker reached the scene. She had been on call since early morning and drove 40 miles to get to us as soon as she’d finished an earlier call out (this was now about 10pm). She said that she would give the deer an injection and put it out of its misery, that this was necessary due of its severe injury and because a wild deer can only tolerate about half an hour’s travelling in a vehicle before receiving treatment, because the stress of being handled is too much for their nervous temperaments. She said it would only have lived so long after the initial impact because it was quiet and on its own in the dark. I’ve got the number on my mobile now, so if this ever happens again I can act immediately. In the meantime we’ll be making a contribution to the RSPCA to help with their compassionate work.

So, there you have it, plenty of news to tell my Mum. 


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Walking in the Austrian Tyrol - Wilder Kaiser

12/9/2015

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Every year we come to that pleasant time when we talk about where to go on our annual holiday. The last few years we’ve got hooked on lakes and mountains. We love visiting museums, art galleries, historical sites etc, but culture-vultures like us can wear themselves out picking the carcass clean! When, for example, we stayed on Lake Garda a couple of years back, we spent three whole days ‘doing’ Verona, and came home still pretty exhausted!

So recently, although we toy with the idea of coastal destinations, cities, and new exciting countries, we’ve been drawn back to the peace, quiet, beauty and fresh air of the Wilder Kaiser region of the Austrian Tyrol.  We’ve already explored the local towns and cities on previous trips, and now we find that we want nothing more than to venture out each day with walking boots, rucksacks and yummy Austrian rolls and fruit, and wander in the mountains, listening to the birds and cowbells, resting our eyes on the views, exchanging friendly smiles and Grüss Gotts with other walkers, and having an occasional swim in mountain lakes. After another year of sitting at computer screens, being bombarded with information via social media, radio, shopping in supermarkets, sitting in traffic jams, etc, it’s the least we can give our minds and bodies. After a walk, there’s always a fresh buttermilk or coffee and an hour’s reading to enjoy before dinner! Bliss!

PictureAustrian bread - yum!
This area seems to draw many people back  -  some have been returning regularly for up to 50 years, bringing further generations with them. Must be something in the air!

We bought another walking map (our first one had fallen apart) - the Mayr XL Edition Wilder Kaiser: Ellmau, Going, Scheffau,Söll - a bargain for 5 euros at the Söll Tourist Office (the new edition is helpfully crease and waterproof). It comes in a plastic wallet with a little booklet that describes local walks, but we found these unclear and not detailed enough, so, for anyone who might be thinking of staying in Söll,  here are some of our favourite walks. Just one warning: most of the mountain Hütte and Stüben, where you can buy lovely homemade eats and drinks, have a rest day (Ruhetag), and it’s worth checking this before you plan your walk. The local Tourist Office have a pamphlet giving details of all the Hütte. The whole valley can be accessed via the yellow bus, the Kaiserjet, free to all visitors with their Wilderkaiser Card, and we usually buy (our biggest expense, but worth it) a lift pass, which gives you use of all the ski-lift gondolas and chair lifts. This year we spent the first week walking on the Wilderkaiser side, and bought the pass for the second week for the Going -Hohe Salve side of the valley.

Hintersteinersee to Söll

PictureThe Hintersteinersee
Catch the 9 am Kaiserjet to Scheffau dorf, getting off by the church, and catch the connecting Seebus (also free) up the Hintersteinersee, a beautiful glassy green mountain lake (wonderful for swimming, access from the little café, with grass slopes, changing rooms and loos - 4 euros each entry). Then take the 822 path round the edge of the lake (at the café end) and down onto the 57. If you’ve set out early enough you could stop at the Alpengasthof Achleiten for a late morning coffee. We stopped by a lovely organic family dairy farm and sat on a bench by their bee-house for our rolls, and carried on, crossing over the Kufstein road by the Oberstegner inn, and past the Moorsee. We were back in Söll by 2pm and popped into our favourite Baguette cafe (adjacent to MPreis). You get very good coffee there and they make fresh-pressed juice drinks - yum!


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On the 57 en route to the Alpengasthof Achleiten
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Bee House
Ellmau to Söll along the Jakobsweg

Catch the 8.08am Kaiserjet to Ellmau dorf. Excellent packed lunch ingredients can be purchased at Billa in the village - another friendly small supermarket. The Jakobsweg is signposted - it is part of the pilgrims way to Santiago de Compostela (a couple of places are marked by the traditional white scallop shell), and this beautiful walk is along the Schattseite (shadow side) of the valley, through meadows where farmers are mowing and raking the organic grass, full of clover and wild flowers. We hardly saw a soul except farmers. There is a spring along the way where you can fill your water bottles (all of the villages have fountains where you can do the same, with clean mountain water). We got slightly lost at the Scheffau Brandstadl lift station, where we exited the car park at the wrong place. You have to walk to the end of the car park past the former lift building on the left, and cross under the main road to the hamlet of Blaiken, go though the houses towards Söll, then take the left-hand fork (the 70) marked Bärbichl, and back under the main road, for 54/55 paths. We arrived at the Ahornsee in Söll at 1pm, having stopped for lunch en route, and had a swim in this wonderful man-made lake. Spring water runs into it, and about a third is roped off for ‘regeneration’, planted with bullrushes and lilies, with dragon and damselflies scooting over it. In the winter, the lake is used to fuel the snow-making machines.

Summary: paths 3,1,30,14,70,54,55. Three and a half hours’ walking with half an hour for lunch and water breaks.

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Spring on the Jakobsweg
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Ahornsee, Soll
Söll to Scheffau via the Steinerne Stiege

Oh we love the Steinerne Stiege! We were first told of this way by Adrian, an excellent Thomsons Rep. It’s become a favourite, but we always give it a few days’ training before we go up it, and there are lots of heavy-breathing breaks to get the heart-rate down! This year we were only overtaken by one white-haired local, so that was OK! We set off from Söll at 8.30am, walking past the Moorsee and across the Kufstein Road at the Oberstegner Inn. You turn left along the 55 and follow it along the riverside (there’s a No Through sign and a little link chain across the path at one point but that’s just for vehicles) and up hill, past a farm or two. It comes down for a (very) short time onto the main road, but you can walk on the verge till you come to the sign for the Steinerne Stiege on the right. It’s a steep old path through lovely woods, going up and up. There a bench part way up (labelled the Schwoicher Aussicht but I think this should bear the translation The Most Welcome Bench in the World!) which is always further than we think!  Eventually you come out at the top of a green valley, and pass the Hagenhof farm before coming to the Pension Maier (we arrived at 10.45am) where there is a gorgeous view of the Hintersteinersee and excellent refreshments available. You can then enjoy a walk along the left hand side of the lake before catching the Seebus down to Scheffau and the connecting Kaiserjet back to Söll (Tip: consult the timetables for both buses before setting out - available from Tourist Offices).

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Schwoicher Aussicht
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Top of the Stiege
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Up the Steinerne Stiege
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Pension Maier
Short and sweet - Hochsöll to Filzalmsee and back

If you fancy a light day on the walking, you could get the gondola from Söll up to Hochsöll, the middle-station, and walk to Filzalmsee, which takes us about 45 minutes. You could stop along the way to play the Giant’s Xylophone, and on arrival at the Filzalmsee you could give your feet a treat on the Kneipp trail (complete with peat bog - wunderbar!) and then have a dip (free) in the lake. As with every middle-station in the valley, if you have children, you’ll find wonderful playgrounds and activities both at Hochsöll (Hexenwasser) and at Filzalmsee. Needless to say in the Tyrol, you’ll always find sparkling loos. You could also catch the gondola on up to the Hohe Salve, and eat delicious Nettle and Spinach Dumplings at the Gipfelrestaurant and then walk down to Filzalmsee via the Jordan Spring, where local legend has it that the water is especially good for eye-troubles, but the path is very steep down from the Hohe Salve, and you would be wise to take walking-sticks for this one.

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Short and sweet - yep, that's me!
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Children's play house at Hexenwasser
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Peat bog at Filzalmsee - fantastic on the feet!
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Gipfelrestaurant, Hohe Salve - dumplings to die for!
The Big Yin - Going (Astberg) to Hochsöll

We walked part of this route a couple of years back (Tea with a Wild Mountain Man) on a cold rainy day, but this year we were determined to go the whole way. On a sunshiny day with blue skies and just the occasional cloud we walked through some wonderful terrains: woods where raindrops still hung from the pines and the air was fresh and clear, meadows with cows and calves, roads past farmhouses, moor, heath, streams and swamps, with fantastic views as the way between the Wilderkaiser and Kitzbühel valleys.

We took the 8.08am Kaiserjet to Ellmau and popped into Billa for rolls, walked along the road to the Going Chairlift (road forks at the end of the village, take upper fork). We took the chair-lift up at 9.30am onto the Astberg, then took the 11 path (straight ahead from top of lift) through woods and heath, then turned right at the bottom of this path where it met a road and past a red bench (lovely to sit on and gawk!), and beautiful farmhouse ‘Kathen’. On past the Hohenangeralm, Boden Alm. Then we took the 11/99 direction Brandstadl Scheffau/Jochstuben See, and then the 11A, up, up up!

At sign marked 1388m we turned right up a path through woods (99/11) and then the 99. We sighted the Hohe Salve at 12.55pm, stopped for lunch, then left at 1.15pm. Before you get to the Jochstuben, take the 96/99 for Filzalmsee. Arrived Filzalmsee at 2.15pm, had a coffee, a Kneipp, and left at 3.10pm for Hochsöll, getting downward gondola at 4pm!

Incidentally, for a shorter version of this walk, you could walk from Astberg to the hut at Jochstuben (SO welcoming and gemütlich!) and then take the lift down from Brandstadl to Scheffau and get the Kaiserjet back to Söll. Or even shorter, just do the Astberg round walk through the woods, and go back down the chair-lift and Kaiserjet back!

I’ll finish with my husband’s amusing off the cuff comment on this long walk:

Me: Pyrenees are supposed to be good for walking.

Martin: Yeah, I’d be lost without my knees.

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On the Hollyhock Trail

12/7/2015

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One of the many joys of living is the annual cycle of favourite plants flowering, in their turn - in spring there are snowdrops, daffodils, bluebells of course, and I love to see the horse-chestnut coming into bloom and then the conkers forming once they start to die off.  Hollyhocks always  lift my heart; I watch them growing upwards in June and early July and wait eagerly for the flowers to open. This traditional old cottage-garden plant isn't much in evidence in the urban setting locally, but there is a trail of them through Speldhurst, Penshurst and Chiddingstone Causeway. I thought I'd share them with you - enjoy!
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Audley End

20/6/2015

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Cook in the Kitchen
A visit to Audley End had been on my wish-list for years, so a recent gift of a year’s entry to English Heritage properties combined with a friend’s birthday celebration in Maldon, Essex, gave me all the impetus I needed.  We were lucky enough to arrive on Audley in Bloom day, with music from the Saffron Walden County High School Jazz band and gardening events laid on. Readers of this blog will already know that I have a great passion for museums, history and gardens, so my English Heritage card is, for me, the equivalent of an enormous box of chocolates, only much better!

Like that of many English country houses, Audley End’s history is a long, eventful one. Thomas, Lord Audley, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, converted the buildings of the original Benedictine priory, Walden Abbey, into a mansion after the abbey’s suppression in 1538. His grandson Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, rebuilt it in about 1605–14 on the scale of a royal palace, which it briefly became after Charles II purchased it in 1667. In the 1760s Robert Adam transformed the house for Sir John Griffin Griffin, while Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown landscaped the park. Richard Neville, later 3rd Baron Braybrooke, made further changes after 1820. During the 1940s the House was taken over by the Ministry of Defence, and used, among other things, as the headquarters of the Polish Section of the Special Operations Executive. There is a memorial to the 108 Poles who died in its service on the main drive.


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There were some fascinating things to see in the house  - I particularly liked the cabinets of curiosities, packed with shells, minerals, oddities picked up on travels, including some grave-beads from Egyptian tombs. Not for me the cases of stuffed creatures, though this might attract visitors who have embraced the recent trend for taxidermy classes!  There is a small case in the Saloon of mementoes from the Crimean War, in which two Neville sons, Henry and Grey, were killed, a touching reminder that war brings grief to families across the social divide. An envelope with faded writing contains “Flowers gathered from cemetery of Scutari where the English officers are buried”, and another “Flowers gathered from the grave of The Hon Henry Neville, Grenadier Guards, picked at Cathcarts Hill Cemetery on 6th September 1867. The gravestone was in a good state of preservation”.  Henry was killed aged 30 at the Battle of Inkerman on 5th November 1854, and his younger brother Grey died six days later, aged 24, in hospital at Scutari (Florence Nightingale’s base) after being injured in the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October 1854. Was it their mother, or sister, I wonder, who picked these flowers after making the long journey to Turkey?

The children’s nursery wing has been restored, and there are drawings of the two boys, along with their siblings. Here, as in other parts of Audley End, there is a living breathing personification of a former staff member - the governess, who is happy to chat, in character.  There are dressing-up clothes, a large dolls’ house, and wooden Ark and animals to play with for younger visitors, and, gratifying sight for this former child, the bookworms’ delight - a full book-case in each room.

PictureChild's bed, Nursery Wing
The house’s libraries are spectacular, including the main one, full from floor to ceiling with reference books, a combination of three collections. I would have liked to leaf through Sir Richard Hoare’s History of Modern Wiltshire, as not only do my Hayter ancestors hail from that county, but I am also related to Hoares.  Pepys aficionados might be interested to know that Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke, edited the first published edition of the diary, deciphered for the first time in its entirety and transcribed by the Reverend John Smith, and released in two volumes in 1825. I am currently on the 1664 volume of the Diary, and was very pleased to see, among the many paintings on display in the House, a portrait (from the studio of Peter Lely) of Barbara Villiers, the Lady Castlemaine admired so much by our Samuel!  Pepys himself visited the house, so I look forward to reading his comments.  

There is a Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Drawing Room - I’ve seen original Holbeins now in The Hague, Berlin, London and New York, and the excitement of viewing this great painting master’s work at first hand never diminishes. 

There is a piano in the Library, on which visitors may sit and play a tune. My fingers sadly had forgotten the piece of Bach I used to practise as a child, and ‘Chopsticks’ seemed a little unsuitable for the august surroundings!  There is a wonderful illuminated book here, and beside it an extract from a letter from the American visitor Elizabeth Davis Bancroft, recollecting her stay (published in Letters from England, 1847): “In the immense bay window was a large Louis Quatorze table, round which the ladies all placed themselves at their embroidery, though I preferred looking over curious illuminated missals.” A woman after my own heart!

I liked the Coal Gallery, on the attic floor, where the fuel for the house was kept, along with stores of candles to light residents to bed. Even here the English class system was evident, with two different types of candles, one for domestics and another kind for guests. In the 1880s, we were told, between 175 and 200 tons of coal were used to heat the house each year. That’s a lot of coal-scuttles...

Which takes me on to my other favourite features of Audley End: the Laundry, Kitchen, and Dairy. These have been restored to their former glory, with relevant artefacts, and written, audio-visual or living witnesses bring to life the past days of those who worked there.  Personally I find the stories of those who laboured Downstairs as fascinating as those who lived Upstairs! For children, this could be a great, hands-on introduction to our social history.

So to the garden: we joined the guided tour of the Organic Walled Kitchen Garden led by Head Gardener Alan North, who sported, if I may so, a very fetching pair of tanned knees!  We saw the glorious irises and peonies border, the 200 year old vines in the old greenhouse, splendidly healthy-looking brassicas, and more. The organic vegetable gardeners among us nodded sagely at mention of garden pests, nuisance weeds and seaweed fertilisers.  We missed the guided tour by expert local volunteers of the landscape gardens - maybe another time!

After our morning's exertions, we eagerly headed for lunch in the Tea Room - good value at £7.95 for a generous bowl of delicious slow-cooked lamb stew with coriander and chick-peas, corand a large hunk of bread and butter, modestly advertised as a light lunch!

Last but not least, there was the Stable Block, with its beautiful Jacobean brickwork. Informative displays explained the annual cycle of work on the estate, and its inter-connected commerce with the communities surrounding it. There was a stunning table in the block, made from a huge septarian nodule unearthed in the grounds. And there was the gentle Bob, a gorgeous, massive black cross Shire-Percheron, impeccably groomed, with soft feathered hooves. His young groom kindly invited me to stroke Bob while he continued to eat from his hay sack in a dignified manner. His head alone, I reckon, was getting on for a metre long! 

When our son was small and funds were tight, we invested in family membership of the National Trust. His favourite local attractions were Scotney Castle, Bodiam Castle, and Rudyard Kipling’s home, Batemans.  We made innumerable return visits and got a lot of wear out of that card! English Heritage annual family membership of £88 includes up to six accompanying children, which seems excellent value, and on our visit to Audley End we saw lots of little ones enjoying the child-friendly exhibitions, the beautiful grounds where they could run, cycle and see the ducks and swans, even a pony in the stable-yard available for short rides on the rein. For Mums, Dads and grandparents, there was the added benefit of a lovely playground right next to the Organic Garden’s adjoining Cart-Yard Cafe, affording a relaxing cuppa while the kids wore themselves out on the climbing-frames. Bliss!

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Head Gardener Alan North
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Good enough to eat!
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Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

15/9/2014

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The changing of the seasons is one of life’s many quiet joys. I love the signs of autumn: spiders spinning webs in the hedges, blue-black scarab beetles on Southborough Common, skeins of wild geese flying high, toadstools in the forest.

My primary school was a converted oast-house in Rolvenden, where John Wesley had once preached under a nearby oak. In September, the beams were always hung with hops, and at home there were apples drying in the attic. I loved the harvest hymns, and often whistle “We plough the fields and scatter” now as I walk along the lanes through Bough Beech’s fields and woods.

I treasure my copy of Ladybird Books’ What to Look for in Autumn, published in 1960. The page pictured here shows women picking up potatoes in the field. When we lived in the Sussex village of Robertsbridge, I met a lovely old lady in her nineties, who had farmed there since 1947. She recalled that when she and her husband first moved there, they employed almost everyone in our lane of about thirty houses to pick the potato crop. By the 1990s, none of the residents worked on the land.

Some things change, and some things stay the same, thank goodness. There are still hops, apples, blackberries and conkers to be found in the hedgerows of the High Weald.

Another perennial pleasure is the annual scarecrow competition in Speldhurst. I drive through the village on my way to work, so it’s always fun, in the first week of September, to come upon this year’s entries. I don’t know which one won the prize at the Village Flower Show last weekend, but Bertie Bassett, sitting on the bench by St Mary’s Church lych-gate, was probably my personal favourite, made with great attention to detail from biscuit tins. Fantastic!


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Horse-Crazy!

24/8/2013

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PictureFeeling a bit worn-out at Moat House!
I'm not sure what triggered the revival in my breast of a longing to get back on a horse and start riding again. It may have been reading Cormac McCarthy's novel All the Pretty Horses, or my strange new love of cowboy films (see my husband's blog on that subject!). Or it may have begun a while back when I saw Monty Roberts in an extraordinary one-off demonstration onstage at the National Theatre, presenting a real live horse to the puppet-horse Joey from War Horse.
 
I was a horse-crazy little girl. I disdained to play with dolls - my tomboy childhood was spent saddling up Champion, the Wonder-Horse, tightening his girth, filling his saddle-bags with gold, and stroking his beautiful Palomino flanks. He stood at twelve inches high, but that was no problem: I could keep him on my chest of drawers and talk to him whenever I wanted. I had a horse-shoe alarm-clock, a bookshelf full of the Pullein-Thompson sisters' Pony Club books, My Friend Flicka, Black Beauty (over which I sobbed loudly), The Horse and His
Boy etc.
 
I had riding-lessons with Cherrie Hatton-Hall at the Moat, her Benenden riding-stables,  where Princess Anne, at boarding-school locally, also rode. I met Cherrie later in life, now become Sister Chiara, a Roman Catholic nun, but still working as Honorary Life Vice-President of Riding for the Disabled*. I loved my riding hat,  jodhpurs, riding-boots, and I was fearless over jumps, never minding falling off. 
 
My friend Joanna lived down the road from us in Cranbrook in a stunning Elizabethan manor-house, Goddards Green. Her father bred Arab horses, and they had a particularly beautiful stallion, Great Heart. I used to walk up to his field and breathe gently into his nostrils, and stroke his velvety nose. Bliss! I was usually mounted on little ponies at the Moat, so was quite envious when my Mum, courageously taking up riding in middle-age, was given a large and gorgeous chestnut mare to ride.
 
When my father's friend Philip Yorke inherited Erddig, near Wrexham, he invited Dad to bring the family up for a holiday. Phil had numerous enthusiasms and collections which had all fallen off when he ran out of cash - one of these was his little band of pet horses, all not quite properly trained. We kids loved them - they were naughty but spirited, and we used to gallop through the woods on the estate and the wide Maes Goch (translated from Welsh: red field, legend telling of a great battle once taking place there) in front of the house.
 
One day I was out with my brother Jonny when his horse Major bit mine hard on the backside. Roddy complained loudly and set off at a fast gallop along the road. I was about thirteen, I think, and didn't know that losing the other stirrup would have given me a better chance of balance. It was terrifying, and more so because I wasn't sure of where Roddy was going - I pictured him taking the fork towards the road out of the park, and colliding with an oncoming car, or crashing into the tall wrought-iron gates. But Roddy was aiming for the stables, and as we approached, a man came out and grabbed him briefly by the reins as I slid off, shaking. My Dad appeared then, and bravely went into the paddock off the stables, where Roddy had fled, and tried to catch the horse so that I could get back on. But Roddy kicked out at him, catching his ankle, an injury which would leave lasting painful effects for Dad.
 
They say that after a crash or an incident of this kind, you should always get back in the seat or the saddle as soon as possible, to overcome the shock. Sadly, because we couldn't catch Roddy, by the time the next morning came, I had completely lost my nerve, and even getting up on another of the horses for a photo made me tremble with fear.
 
Ever since then, I have never got back in the saddle. Aside from losing my nerve there has also been the question of funding for riding while bringing up baby and paying the bills. But taking up running in my mid-50s has shown me that it's never too late to follow your bliss, so I'm hoping to enrol soon for some riding-lessons at our local stables. The inner warrior is raring to go!


* When I met her in 2001 Sister Chiara Hatton-Hall told me some fascinating things about her work with Riding for the Disabled. She told me that the benefits for people with disabilities has been recognised for over 3,000 years since the time of Hippocrates, and research shows that the movement of a horse at a walking pace encourages and develops the coordination and balance of the rider and stimulates every part of the body, rotating the pelvis, so it reproduces, for those unable to walk, the same movement as if they were themselves walking. In Munich, France and Denmark, amongst other places, riding is used in psychiatric cases, with autistic children, children who have never spoken, and people with cerebral palsy. The medical profession, she told me, was becoming increasingly aware and accepting of the benefits of this therapy, especially in Europe, where it was professionally practised with remarkably successful results.



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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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