Montacute House

I love Jane Austen, which is good as I live near Bath. I also love Jane Austen film adaptations which is why I often go to Stourhead, but recently I went to Montacute House where Sense and Sensibility was filmed. Here are some of my pictures from the day.

There was a very nice cat which was walking around the house, we made friends. 

Cxxx

The Cake and Bake Show

This week I have been very busy at work, but also last week I went to the Cake and Bake Show! It was such a busy day, and Earls Court was full of people all talking about baking. My day started with a lovely train ride to London, through the green misty fields of England. I saw deer frolicing in the fields, hot air ballons over the Somerset horizen, the sun rising over the kennet and avon canal so actually it was a lovely start to my day. I got to London, and as I came out of Earls Court tube station I was faced with a huge que! Not impressed, but as the true Brit I joined the long walking que. The further we walked the more worried I was getting about how long I would have to que and possibly miss my classroom session, thankfully in the quwerky way we Brits have, I ended up at the front of the que and able to go straight in.

So I ended up going to a classroom to learn how to paint flowers on cakes. I was rather dissopinted as I spent £5 extra to hear the same talk as people who could stand next to a small picket fence. Anyway the talk was helpful but I doubt my poor arty skills will let me paint flowers well on a cake.

The show was full of bakers, I saw Eric Lanlard, series one and two Great British Bake Off winners, Cathryn and Sarah-Jane from this years show and of course the ledgend Paul Hollywood. I caught some of the demonstrations by them but spent a lot of time looking round all of the lovely shops. I do now feel terrible (like I have cheated on baking) because I ended up going to a Betty Crocker class on how to use their cake mixes, in my defence, it was free, I got to take the cookie brownies I made home and ... it was free!

So to sum up, it was really busy (almost uncomfortably so), a good day but im not sure if I would do it again soon..

Another day out

Today was actually a nice day! Although the MET Office said that there was a amber warning of rain it was blue sky and puffy clouds today. So I went to Wells and then Glastonbury Tor, I do love having long school holidays. So here are some of my pictures from today;

These swans are all over Wells, they are part of their diamond jubilee celebrations and will be auctioned off for charity in September.

It was the perfect day to go up the Tor, sunny, warm and very very windy. But I love having the wind in my hair so I didn't mind how messy it made it!

It's a long way up to Glastonbury Tor.

And finally a panoramic view, showing the North of Somerset.

Its the summer holidays!

I love my job and I love my holidays and thankfully at my job I get long holidays. So the first weekday of my holidayy I decided to go to Cheddar Gorge. After weeks and weeks of rain, today was the first 'overcast' day and so I decided to go to Cheddar gorge because it is very pretty and because I needed some cheese for lunch! Thankfully on the way I could tick off one of my Enchanted Land places, Rodney Stoke a thankful village.

For those of you who don't know, a Thankful Village is one which had no losses in ww1 and a doubly thankful village is a village which had no losses in ww1 and 2. These villages had their young go off to war and they all came back. Rodney Stoke proudly professes its thankfulness, even in it's village sign. I quickly pulled over the car when I saw that they have a 'shrine' to the fact that they are a thankful village. I drove down this small country lane to find a the church perched on a small mound looking out onto the Somerset Levels

. I walked up to the church and it was locked. Disappointed I turned round to find the key holder (a village oap) who was more than happy to let me go in. He chatted to me for about 5 minutes about the church and the history and then was on his way.

As enchanted land says:

"We come to Rodney Stoke in Somerset we find a village proudly expressing its thankfulness that it offered 17 men and four women to England and all came home safely home. Nowhere else have we found the spirit of thankfulness expressed as in a lovely window here, facing the door as we came in, with these grateful words:

To the glory of God and in thankful remembrance of the safe return of all the men connected with this parish who by land and sea served King and Country in the Great War."

The village only lost four people in the second world war and has a plaque dedicated to them, strangely enough another plaque on another wall documents another person who died in ww2, it is presumed by the villagers that this person was not part of the armed forces when he died but was in a cargo ship at sea (or so I was told by the kind gentleman).

The enchanted land also talks about other aspects of the church which make it special, the tombs of the Rodney family and the pews, which the gentleman who opened the church for me told me about. One the end of each pew is carved wood, two girls (I think they were the vicars

daughters) who taught people of the village how to carve and so each pew end was carved by a different person of the village. One was carved by Reginald Hale: "who left Rodney Stoke to seek his fortune overseas sailing in the greatest ship that ever then had gone to sea, and went down with it on his first voyage. It is one of the sad little postscripts to the poignant tragedy of the Titanic." The pew carved by Reginald Hale is the picture to the right.

As I was leaving the church I bumped into the old gentleman again and he told me how they had a dig recently by the church and found roman pottery and so it seems Rodney Stoke has been part of history for years.

Anyway so from there I drove onto Cheddar and decided to got straight up the gorge. It was so fun to drive up! Yes I am still relatively new to driving and so there are lots of roads round Somerset which I find fun to drive, and this is fun! I stopped at the top (I tried on the way up but it cost £5 to park for the day and as I wasn't going to stay the whole day I kept going) and then decided to go for a walk. Near the top I pulled over and decided to see if I could get a picture of the gorge from the top. But first I had to walk to the top which was a hell of a steep climb! Bearing in mind that there had been a months worth of rain this last weekend it appears I climbed up the route that it must have come gushing down at some point. The footpath is a steep climb, and full of the gorges rocks, on any other summer I am sure it would be bone dry, but today it was very muddy and very slippery! Still I wanted to get a picture at the top (because my dad would be annoyed if I didn't) and I decided to climb it. It was incredibly difficult, but I got to the top and looked around for

the view. I couldn't find the view which is on all of the leaflets (you have to pay for that one) but I did get a lovely view of Somerset. From Glastonbury Tor to the Bristol Channel, and I believe it would be even better if it was a clear day.

At this point I was getting hungry and so made my way back down, which was even more difficult then on the way up. I was over taken by walkers, who were clearly dressed for a walk, unlike me who was in a cardigan, t-shirt, new jeans (which a dog at Rodney Stoke decided to leave his imprint on) and a pair of boots. Anyway, I made it down safely!

I had lunch at Simply Gorgeous a lovely little tea rooms playing 1950's music with 40's and 50's nick nacks dotted about. As I was in Cheddar I had to have a jacket potato with cheddar cheese (it seemed only right). I looked round the village which has some very touristy shops in it and looked to see if I wanted to go to the Cheddar Gorge Explorer thing. I decided not, as it was £18.95 per adult which seemed very steep for me, so I didn't go in the caves or up the tower.

I decided not to walk anymore but instead visit The Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company which is the home of the only cheese still made in cheddar. For £1.95 you can see how the cheese is made and watch it being made and then after that you conveniently come out in their cheese shop! I had to buy some of their cheese and splashed out and bought their c

ave mature cheese which tasted amazingly! The best thing about their shop was that you could buy a knife

for 75p in case you 'couldn't wait till you got home'.

The bottom of Cheddar Gorge is very touristy however when you are driving up it, it is peaceful and definitely enchanting.

Anyway after that I went to Axbridge (which I will write in another post as this one is way too long) and then drove back to cheddar as it actually getting sunny! I drove up it again and took pictures but half way up I stopped off for another picture and heard a beautiful noise. Half way up the cliff was a man playing an Alphorn. It was beautiful just hearing this alpine noise echoing through the gorge. A perfect ending to the day.

Stourhead

Today I decided that I would go to Stourhead. I got up early to make the most of the day as the weatherman promised me that it would be sunny, sadly I was disappointed... it was overcast. Gutted as I had been planning to go to Stourhead since I moved to Somerset I went about my day... off to the post office, a bit of food shopping and then the sun slowly peeked out of its cloud. So I grabbed my camera, my phone, a bottle of water and I was off!

Driving down the A361 with 'Bring me sunshine' blasting on my car radio I happily arrived at Stourhead within 20 minutes (thanks to the help of my dear Sat Nav). I last went to Stourhead when I was a child, probably about 9 or 10 and therefore my only memory of it came from years of watching that scene in Pride and Prejudice where Mr Darcy proposes to Lizzie (the first time). So I was very excited, sadly that sun was not coming out to play but I was there and determined to make the most of it!

First I went to the gardens as I had to make the most of that little sunshine and I absolutely loved it. When you enter you have to show that you are either a National Trust member or pay, the problem with being single is that the piteous looks you get from the attendants when you say 'one please' (no matter how chipper you are when you say it). Sadly I couldn't walk round the whole of the lake as path repairs were happening but I did manage to have a good walk, followed by some scary looking geese for some of it! I swear they were following me.

After getting slightly lost and wondering into an area I was not allowed in (I always do that, and have no idea how or why), I made my way through a cave, up a steep hill to The Temple of Apollo (where Mr Darcy proposed to Lizzie) and was, I have to admit sad to say that there was no Mr Darcy waiting for me at the top. Never mind, the views were good enough. And of course I stood where Mr Darcy proposed, what Pride and Prejudice Fan wouldn't?


After visiting the gardens, I popped into the church. I always like to visit the church in a village, I guess I should start keeping a list. The church was lovely (even if it was a bit small), you could easily see the Victorian influence with the stain glass windows and the floor tiles. In one corner of the church there was a large branch where people can write their prayer requests on it, I would never normally take pictures of this as I believe it to be rather private but there was one which broke my heart.

A quick lunch (sausage roll and a slice of cake) and of course a cup of tea and I was ready to go again. This time I headed to the kitchen garden (something I love) and the house. After another pitying look when I entered the house, started looking around it (avoiding anyone who looked like they would talk to me about the paintings or the fascinating fabric). One of my highlights would probably be the library, with a beautiful stain glass window. Apparently the house is still lived in and one of the 'drawing rooms' you can see the evidence of this, a drinks cabinet fully stocked, a flatscreen tv with DVDs next to it, but generally this house is still as it was. There are also a lot of paintings to look at, all of far off lands, or naked people and generally displayed in the double height gallery. The pictures which rest on the walls where the grand windows are, are difficult to see due to their dark colours and the bright light behind them. However, this problem has been tackled, all of these pictures are on hinges. So when the lord of the manor wanted to show off his large pictures, he could maneuver them out so that the light could shine on them and the pictures could once again come alive.

My favourite bit of the house? Probably the study, not because it was filled with the works of the great English writers but because I found funny that the Lady of the Manor had Delia's Cheats cookbook placed carelessly on her bookshelf. Even Lady's need to cheat sometimes.

After walking round the house, my feet were becoming tired. So, I thought I would take a short cut, of course not being bothered to read my map might explain why once again I was lost. But thankfully getting lost meant that I came across a beautiful view point and so I got more pictures (even though the weather was now, once again overcast).

So after a long (ish) walk back to my car, my feet tingling, the weather muggy and trying to use my GCSE German to eaves drop on the German tourists in front of me, I decided to go home. I think from now on this will be were I go to think, as it is beautiful and very peaceful. If I had written The King's England, Enchanted Land this would be in it.

Enchanted Land: Chedworth Roman Villa

After I went to Chipping Campden I twoddled on to Chedworth Roman Villa, partly for a cuppa break but partly because it is in my Enchanted Land book. Now I have to admit that on my drive there me and my so-called trusty sat nav had a slight argument (well I shouted at it because I thought we were lost but as it turns out I was about 100 yards around the corner from it). Anyway, thankfully Chedworth Roman Villa is a National Trust property which meant I got in free. If you are looking for somewhere to break a journey as I was, this is the perfect place. Not big enough to feel guilty about leaving early and not small enough not to go. There is a small cafe, a museum and of course the lovely grounds and mosaics.

Enchanted Land describes Chedworth as:
"Far away from the busy world is a Roman house that all may see, the villa at Chedworth cared for by The National Trust. It Lies in a valley like a miniature Switzerland, splendidly excavated and preserved with all its rooms and passages since it was found through a ferret losing its way in a rabbit hole."

A valley which is like a miniature Switzerland? I was there! I love the Alps and yes this valley may not have lived up to my expectations as a miniature Switzerland, but it was beautiful. For the villa, I had to park in the over-flow car park and on my way out do one of the steepest hill starts I have ever done! Anyway, The National Trust have done a brilliant job of creating a modern visitor centre and of course un-covering the mosaics.

The mosaics were alluring and delicate, to be honest I haven't seen mosaics for years. Possibly since my primary school went for one of our many school visits to Fishbourne Roman Villa. They were of course all covered by a modern building and you had the typical 'roman voices' displays playing in the background (which to be honest was rather annoying, now I know why so many people were walking round the villa with audio tour's in their ears). They also had one of those re-enactment people making cloth, not to sound grumpy but they annoy me too!

It is a great place to understand how the roman's lived and what their buildings looked like. And for an afternoon out I would recommend it, yes the valley was not a miniature Switzerland but it was close, just without the clanging of cow bells and no Alps in the distant.

Enchanted Land: Chipping Campden

Yesterday was two of my friends wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and I am so happy for them, but it was a 3hr drive away which meant I had to stay over, which also meant that I had a long drive back today.

I realised that the route I was driving was going to go past 3 Enchanted Land places (well actually a lot more, but these were the closest places). This blog post is about the first place I visited today, Chipping Campden.

Enchanted Land describes Chipping Campden as:

"It has been said that merely to walk down the long street Chipping Campden is a recipe for happiness and from the 14th to the 18th century the men who were building it must have known they were doing a lovely thing. Their canopied doorways, charming gables and oriel windows are all alluring, and crowing this splendid piece of countryside is a stately church filled with beautiful things."

So as you can see, I had to go! And I was not disappointed. Chipping Campden is simply a beautiful village. Made of Cotswold stone it is uniformed with wide streets, dappled by sunlight through ancient trees and enchanting. There is a warning which should come with Chipping Campden, it is a bit touristy and sadly the street is usually filled with cars so 'perfect pictures' are hard to get. I loved how all the modern houses are made with the same stone, and how as you drive out of the village, you drive through a street made up with thatched Cotswold stone cottages.

I was lucky that I visited just after the jubilee and so some of the bunting was still up in the village, so as I wandered around I could hear the gentle breeze blowing the flags, the smell of yellow roses (my favourite) wafting through the air and thankfully a sunny day.

Finally I stopped off at the church in Chipping Campden, I love churches and I love graveyards. I know it is strange but I do find graveyards very peaceful and calming (as long as I'm not in them on a dark windy night). Sadly I couldn't go into the church as there was a service taking place so I wondered round the cemetery, but I think I will have to go back as apparently there are some beautiful things in that church!
So final thoughts (for now) on Chipping Campden, lovely, beautiful, would love to live there, but next time I visit will be very early in the morning so I can try and get some pictures without cars and people in them!