England and Wales 2017

England 2017

The Cotswolds, Midlands, and southern Wales spring adventure

In decades of visiting the UK dozens at least 20 times, it’s the first time we have rented a car (and will not be the last).  What a perfect time to come – the spring lambs have just been born and are frolicking in the country with their moms (cute, and tasty, too!).  The daffodils are in bloom when we arrive and the tulips are in bloom when we leave.  We stayed almost every night in a Premier Inn, a budget UK chain where we pay as little as 36 pounds for a night and a maximum of 85 (for London), averaging 48 pounds ($60 at the current exchange).  Clean, comfortable, friendly, well-located, and a total bargain.

A couple of months before leaving we purchase a membership in the Royal Oak Society, the American wing of the National Trust.  This membership gives you full benefits while in the UK while providing you with a tax deduction in the U.S., the ability to attend Royal Oak events stateside, and they mail your membership package to you before your trip.  Visiting just a handful of properties and you’re already ahead of the game, and we found this gave us the incentive and prepaid ability to visit as many properties as we wished, even for short visits or just to eat in their tearooms or walk through their gardens.

While the British have this stiff upper lip reputation for being reserved, outside of London we have always found them friendly and helpful.  Throughout the trip everyone is chatty and kind.  Perhaps because we’re off season and off the busiest tourist path, and also we only encounter a handful of other Americans (and as far as the National Trust properties go we’re just about the only childless people not collecting a pension).  Being enthusiastic about the places we visit doesn’t hurt either.

 

31 March 2017

Snow coming in Boston so we rebooked to a daytime flight and got a room at the Sheraton Skyline Heathrow (which is nicer than the other LHR Sheraton, where we stayed two years ago).  We take the Hoppa bus for 10 pounds (for 2), we tell the driver where we’re going (after verifying the stop at the posted sign), then they change drivers and as we arrive near the hotels the driver tells us and the Chinese couple with us that he doesn’t go to our hotels and that the sign is wrong.  TIP:  Just pay the 12 pound flat fee for a taxi.

Dinner was fish and chips in an American style bar inside the hotel, which has half of a 1977 Firebird at the front of the bar next to the pool table. The bed was very comfy and we slept well.

1 April 2017

Short taxi ride for 12 pounds to the rental company, Alamo/Enterprise booked at a great price through Expedia.  With a tank of petrol the car is 210 pounds for an 8 day rental of a new, mid-sized Vauxhall Astra lift-back, diesel, 6 speed, SatNav and satellite radio included.    The staff are all very nice.  Travel was going great until 15 minutes into the drive, we ran into a closed part of the M4 and spent 45 minutes in traffic on the A4 detour.

 

First stop:  Kelmscott Manor, summer home of William Morris and pilgrimage site for us.  We arrived at 10:30, 30 minutes before it opened, so we had a flapjack and shortbread for breakfast with tea in the tea house.  We are the 1st in the door and 1^st visitors of 2017 (today the house re-opened after winter)!  No interior photos allowed.  Lots of William Morris textiles and such.  Nice tiles, paintings, drawings, very nice.  Outside very nice as well with lovely gardens.

You have to park about a 15 minute walk from the house, but along the way we went to the village church and saw the Morris family grave under a large tree.

Easy drive to Buscot Village, had beef and ale pie from an old lady at the village Tea shop.  Not tourist season yet, because we are alone save for one more person.  The pie was beefy like stew, washed down with spicy Ginger Beer that hurt my nose.  The National Trust owns a lot of buildings here that they rent out to private tenants.

Drive to Buscot Park (NT).   We are the 1^st visitors for 2017 here also, and the lady at the front doors says she feels like sounding a trumpet for us.  The highlight here is the Farringdon Collection of paintings, a significant pre-Raphaelite collection that includes the stunning Briar Rose series of murals (it is a masterpiece, and when hung in the house inspired Burne-Jones to paint connecting pieces.  It must be seen in person to truly appreciate its magnificence).  There is also a mix of the family’s modern art pieces, which could be bad/strange but is conversely well done.

The gardens include oversized Chinese terracotta warriors.  Nice shop where we buy local fudge, honey mead, and ice creams with Cadbury Flake.  The guides tell us that the Lady of the manor sometimes serves guests in the tearoom.

We stop in a village along our route for an antiques shop with a cockney owner.  I pick up a silver plate (?) Mercury figure statue.  Owner said it was a hood ornament, but later research shows it is not.

Drive 30 minutes to the NT’s Chedworth Roma Villa. There is a small museum with the history of the dig here, and we have time to see the mosaics and Villa rooms as well as the grounds.

Drive to Premier Inn.  We purchase the 24 pound meal deal (dinner plus breakfast) and have fish / chips and very good lamb for dinner with Mississipi mud pie and banoffee pie for desert.

2 April

First stop today is the NT’s Hidcote.  We are early, one of the first to show up.  We walk around the beautiful gardens with others and take photos.  Skunk cabbage, daffodils, and stone walls; Lawrence Johnson traveled the world and brought back exotic varieties.

I’d love to come back in another month and see even more blooms.  A staff member tells us a bit about the history of landscape architect Capability Brown (who was prolific in this part of the country) and makes sure to recommend other properties in the area (and we hit them all in the next week!).

Chipping Campden and the Court Barn, which is tiny but has some very beautiful items: silver, pottery, CB Ashbee cabinets (we’re not familiar with him until now but he designed beautiful furniture), books.  This was an Arts & Crafts community reacting against the industrial revolution but did not last very long.

Snowshill, another NT property. .  This is a timed visit, and it is busy, so we get a soup and pork stew from the cafe along with tea and scone.  The home’s former eccentric illustrator and architect former owner, Charles Wade, would likely have been good friends (if you know what I mean) with the owner of Beauport in Gloucester, MA.

The house itself is the largest item in Wade’s many collections, and he filled the house so much to the brim that he lived in one of the outbuildings.  Samurai masks, old bicycles, clocks, all kinds of stuff.   No description can do this place justice because it is so eclectic and wonderfully unique.

The outside has a dovecote, to keep doves, and some of Wade’s model houses.

Shopping stop in Moreton-on-Marsh to see if we could find a snack, but ended up buying a watercolor of a Cotswold barn for 3.50 pounds and a silver plate cigarette box for 3.50 pound from a charity shop.  It is engraved State Express on the bottom and not worth much, but a fun souvenir that can be used as a little jewelry box.

Chastleton House, another NT property where they have filmed many shows, including “Wolf Hall.”  A house existing since the 1600s, but the owners were always poor so they did not have money to fix or repair.  There is a strong Jacobite history here (this seems to be a theme with NT properties in the area, that and crazy cat lady owners).  In 1991, the surviving owner left the house to National Trust, who must have been entrusted to also care for her gaggle of cats.  The large attic where kids played games on rainy days is one fun highlight.  Outside is a large sloped hill full of sheep and their lamb babies prancing about (and so tasty on our plate for dinner this night, too).

3 April

Yoghurt, banana and Nutella for breakfast.  In the car, drive to The Wilson, the Cheltenham Arts and Crafts Museum.  The museum is free and there is metered, paid parking in the back.  This is one of the country’s best Arts & Crafts collections.

We are very lucky because the collection specialist Dave Walton is on duty, and upon discovering that we’ve come from so far away and can’t be there for one of his specialty tours he gives us a private mini tour.

There are items from the Silk Barn and Art Barn in Chipping Camden by CB Ashbee and others.  Dave gingerly and with with gloved hands shows us the interior of an Ashbee cabinet with silver plated pull handles, inlays.  It had been purchased by a an auto mechanic whose wife would not let into the house.  So it lived in the garage with auto parts in the drawers.  We especially liked the silver jewelry and bowls.  The rest of the museum showcases local history and also has a nice collection of paintings.

Drive to Wales with a quick photo and Tourist Information Centre stop in front of Chepstow Castle.  We go crazy looking for Tiffins, the Indian buffet with the top Yelp ratings for the city of Cwmbran.  It is next to a shopping mall so that threw us off, but it’s a chance for a pop into Boots for some necessities and Marks & Spencer’s for the world’s most comfortable and sensible budget underwear.  Tiffins was okay, not really spicy, but it is crowded and clearly popular for its cheap, fruity drinks with paper brollies.

On to Tredegar House, where the SATNAV sends us to a housing block of red brick apartments.  After following the NT road signs, we find our way.  The most fun rooms here are Evan Morgan’s rooms from the 1930s.  Evan was married to women, but then again so was his contemporary Cole Porter.  He had quite the menagerie and would let crocodiles, baboons, and a foul-mouthed parrot roam the home (check out the photo of the shocked look on his guests’ faces after the parrot spoke).  The NT has a fun and informative display in the bathroom, where the bathtub has been filled with wine bottles (as it would have been during one of Evan’s parties) and the wine labels are provocative quotes about the host from house guests.

The house, stable and gardens are cool, falling apart from years of “nail disease” rust, and some neglect, but they are doing major renovations and were offering “scaffold tours” (we don’t have time but these tours were featured in the National Trust magazine that we receive as part of our membership).

Cardiff Premier Inn City Centre after a little trouble finding the right parking lot which has discounted hotel parking.  Dinner right next door at Steak of the Art, which features local artists in a funk setting.  Grilled Lamb  with potatoes and super fresh and delicious Cornish mussels mariniere (and the chef comes out to check on us and have a chat).  Local milk stout and super apple-y cider.  Awesome.

4 April

Walk outside the hotel toward the shopping mall center and M&S in a pedestrianized area.  We find breakfast here, a shop that advertises 5 pound breakfast.  5 pieces each, 2 eggs, bacon, pudding, hash, mushrooms, coffee and all very good!  We walk around, look at shops, then walk to Cardiff Castle.

Wife had been to Cardiff Castle more than 20 years ago, but it’s so quirky and packed with things to see that it was worth going back.  In the Visitor Centre there’s a good gift shop, and the basement has a nice military museum.  The Keep is surrounded by a moat and offers good city views from the top, but we are bombarded by high school groups on the way down.

 

 

Walk into the Cardiff Market (right in the center of the city), where we bought cheap donuts, apples, golden South African plums, raspberries and a Welsh cake.

Thanks to a discovery on TripAdvisor’s Things to Do listings, we drive outside the city to find Dewstow Gardens & Grottoes, a private underground grotto and garden.  This was designed by yet another wealthy bachelor.  When he died everything was filled in, and the land used as a farm.  A family purchased the estate in 2000 and discovered steps to the grotto, which have been painstakingly unearthed and restored.  The grottoes with their water features are charming, and the nooks and crannies have been decorated for an upcoming Easter Egg hunt (they decorate for Halloween and Christmas, too).  After a long and leisurely walk around, dreaming of how we wish we had this at our house, we had a snack of apples and Cotswolds cheese.

 

Brief stop at the famed Tintern Abbey, which despite its country setting has only paid parking so we take a few photos and press on.  In Monmouth we park in a paid lot and walk around for a few hours. We hit all (ALL) of the charity shops in town and visit the Mommouth Museum to see the Lord Nelson memorabilia acquired by the wife of Charles Rolls (as in Royce).  Sadly, decades ago after the museum was featured on the BBC it was broken into and robbed of many of its treasures soon after the program aired.  Nelson and That Hamilton Woman did spend time in southern Wales (in a home owned by the NT but which wasn’t open on the days were were in the area) and had visited Monmouth, but the main connection is the Rolls Family’s collecting passion.  There are some fun forgeries on view, too.

Cake and tea and scones at 3:30 PM in a kooky little tea shop, the White Swan Tea Room, in a courtyard just across the street from the museum.  Stop at the Bees for Development shop for local honey and honey beer and learn that the shopkeeper lives at a cider farm (which we found too late also has a B&B at Broome Farm).

We drove to Goodrich, but first stop at a Ross Cider near Ross-on-Wye.  This is the heart of cider and apple country.   We did not like any ciders we sampled (too dry) but got a mulled plum cordial, a sweet cider from another maker and pear cider, which we’ll bring back home for another day.  Hostelrie at Goodrich tonight, an inn with pub. The highlight here is the friendly pub with great food.  Mushroom ravioli starter, lamb with edamame in cream sauce and young broccolini and hake with chorizo tips, young broccoli and pan-fried gnocchi.  Dessert was toffee cake with vanilla ice cream. Great beer and cider.  Breakfast at the inn was lovely: English breakfast minus the beans.  It was too much and we had to take away bacon and sausage (but ate them for supper).  We also had Bob’s home grown honey, seeds, yogurt and muslei mix.

6 April

We drove to the town of Ross-On-Wye, parked and walked around.  We hit every, and I mean every, charity shop on the main road and came back with nothing.  I tried one of the public conveniences (restroom), and it was very clean.

Croome Court National Trust site.  Due to the family’s misfortunes, few original items still exist.  There’s an excellent display in one room about the items that had once been in it but were bought by a wealthy American and shipped to New York in the 1950s.  Now we can visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art when we go home and see the items as installed there.  Another room had a terrific glassed display of porcelain.

The other part of this site is that it was a Royal Air Force Base, the first in England to test radar and a secret base, and played an important role during WWII.  The old canteen is now the NT café (where you can buy your “war rations” meal), and some outbuildings have been transformed into an RAF museum.  Very fun and all of its history well explained with films and exhibits.

Hanbury House (NT), another wonderful property with lovely parterre gardens.  This was the site of many a festive summer gathering.  The collections have been painstakingly documented item by item on the National Trust website.

Yes, another NT property, Dudmaston in Shropshire, which is still lived in but given to the National Trust in 1994?  There is a mix of old and new art, and since the family still lives here their modern family photos are scattered about.  Their ancestor, the Lady Labouchere, was married to a diplomat and the collections from her travels are part of the collection (including a lot of contemporary Spanish art).  Lady Labouchere’s clothing was also left to the NT and some outfits are on display (she had quite an eye for fashion).  The outside lawn, flower garden and lake are stunning in the setting sun.

Tonight at the Premier Inn in Stourbridge.  I run to McDonalds for fries, salad, and ice cream topped with Cadbury crunchy.  My wife is watching “Dinner Dates,” a stupid Blind Dates and Cooking show, which is not as good as my educational car shows like “Top Gear.”

6 April

Luckily we found (2) charity shops, where we purchased an antique car tool wrench (sure to get inspected by the inspectors at Heathrow) and a bracelet made of old coins for 6 pounds (we are told and later confirm that they are Three Penny Bits, which they pronounce Tre-pan-y bits, and these are King George V from 1920).

Bantock House is a small, Arts & Crafts era museum with a tiny and charming garden located in a park in Wolverhampton (not far from Birmingham).  There is a tiny billiard table in a room where I put on an old hat and coat.  Also a display of antique paper theatre play houses.  Notable items were fireplaces, a huge copper or bronze angel that was removed from a demolished church.

We had breakfast here first.  English breakfast with extra egg between us because we just can’t eat meat and sausage every morning.  There is also an antique shop on site with nice items at fair prices, though we resist temptation.

Witwick Manor, another NT property and the highlight of the trip.  This is Arts  & Crafts / Pre-Raphaelite / De Morgan Tiles/William Morris on steroids.  We are amused by one TripAdvisor reviewer who complains there is “too much William Morris wallpaper,” but that is pretty much the point of this place.

The paint empire zillionaire Thomas Mander decorated this masterpiece but died shortly afterward, and though the house was donated to the NT in the 1950s the family retains rooms here.  This is packed to the rafters with something beautiful every inch you look.  We can’t imagine that this would not make every Top Ten Arts & Crafts Houses of the World list.  The docents are helpful and one particularly friendly one points out certain pieces he thinks we will particularly enjoy (like a painting of Venice).  Tea and crisps and mushroom soup and scones here in the cafe.  yummy.

 

 

Kinver Edge and the Rock Houses – an unusual NT Property.  Climb up the hill to the houses built into the rock, inhabited from the 1800s to 1960s but now partially restored.  The museum part consists of 1 large ballroom, an apartment done like in 1900 and another done like 1930.  There is a cafe now, where there just happened to be a tea house back in the 1930s, when the railroad came to town and the entrepreneurial residents profited from the tourists.

Tesco shopping stop for tea, reduced price cheddar chili lime, ginger mango wensleydale and double gloucester with onion and chive cheese, Hob Nobs and Jaffa Cakes.  After packing all of our items in a shallow cardboard box I nicked from the produce section, we made the cashier laugh because she asked if we had enough biscuits and tea (“Like Hob Nobs, do you?”).

Dinner Brewer’s Fayre, next to hotel, where I had all the non-spicy Indian food buffet I could eat (Thursdays are Curry Night!) and fish and chips – does it get any more British than that??  .  I will never learn, should have gotten chicken salad with bacon.

7 April

Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare.  It’s early and the tourist hordes have not yet arrive, so we enjoy a walk around the town and the riverside and the Shakespeare monuments.  At the tourist office, we purchase a reduced price of bag of roast ox flavored crisps.  World travel really is all about finding strange flavored potato chips.

Charlecote Park (NT), a Victorian house museum and deer park. While waiting for house to open, we had tea and carrot cake.  They have a woman in the kitchen making bread like they did in 18th century.  The Lucy Family were keen collectors of pietra dura furniture, and they had a mighty fine library, too.  The home is in a park setting alongside a river.  All of the deer are up on a small hill, fenced in, we just about missed them.  We thought this would be like the park in Nara, Japan, where the deer roam freely amongst the people.

Coughton Court (NT).  Twenty generations of the Throckmorton family have lived in this Tudor-Elizabethan house. They were devout Catholics involved in the Gunpowder Plot, and there are many Catholic treasures about the place.  One collection highlight is the [alleged] execution shirt dress of Mary Queen of Scots.  Tearoom for potato and leek soup and a delicious rhubarb and apple crumble drowning in hot custard.

Gordon Russell Design Museum in the town of Broadway.  Wow, we never were in an art type museum before where you can touch most of the art.  We make friends with the staff member here and learn a lot (including the factoid that the young Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon a/k/a the Queen Mother visited family here, and there is even a child’s chair made for her). Russell was a designer, but he only physically made one item (a small shelf that looks like a high school wood shop project), but lots of his work is here.  Dressers, tables, radios, airplane model for the war, great stuff.

Back to Chipping Camden to see the Silk Mill.  Bottom is an art gallery, 2nd floor is Harts Silversmith, in business since around 1908.  The office really looks like a page out of Dickens:  3 men, tools everywhere, 2 flames going, some expensive stuff for sale.

Back to the  Gloucester (Little Witcombe) Premier Inn, where we had stayed the first couple of nights.

8 April

First stops today will be Burford, where we walked the pretty town and buy scones to go with our clotted cream.  It is sunny today, very nice.  Then we stop in Bampton, where they filmed the village scenes for Downton Abbey, but there’s not much to see here.

Nuffield Place (NT), the home of William Morris.  No, not THAT William Morris.  This is the Morris of Morris Motors, at one time one of the richest men in Britain, but who lived quite modestly and gave away his fortune to charity (and his house to the National Trust) Due to a missed turn, we drive into the town center and park. This house is different than other houses because very simple.

Good quality china, but nothing gilded.  He smoked an awful lot, and yet died at 85.  Small gardens, and we enjoy the uneven rock mound full of flowers and moss and the fuzzy and friendly property cat that looked like a lion and likes to pamper itself rubbing around the plants.  An outbuilding houses an iron lung (Morris saved countless lives by donating iron lungs to hospitals).  One cool feature inside the house was the use of auto carpets for his bedroom and he turned his clothes closet into a workbench complete with tools and a grinder.  I think it is time for me to clean out the garage and build stuff.

Grey’s Court (NT).  First thing we notice is 10 or so vintage MGs, even a Rover from the 90s.  Still surrounded by a working dairy farm with cows.  There are several walled gardens, and 2 women were giving their daughter/granddaughter photography lessons with all the colorful flowers  Inside the building varied from antique to Golden Girls 80s.  Busy tearoom with mushroom soup with tarragon and huge slice of fluffy bread.

On the road toward London to stop at another National Trust place, place but several things threw a wrench into the plans.  First, lots of traffic at the Heathrow exit on M4.  We freaked when we were on the M4 and saw Low Emission Zone.  We think we’ll be okay, but our friends just got a $200 speeding ticket from a trip to Italy 6 months ago, so who knows.   Now that we are in London we might as well drop the bags off at the hotel and recompose ourselves.  Courage back, we drive the car back and SatNav leads into a Heathrow parking garage, drive around 6 times in the corkscrew to exit and pay 3 pounds 80 to leave.  What a rip.  The friendly attendant at Alamo tells us that low emission zone is just that, diesels should stay out, but it is not a charge.

On the Tube back to Hammersmith a French girl with a cat sticking out of a carrier keeps petting the Russian blue so I whisper, “Arret with the pet.”

Back to the Premier Inn Hammersmith (by Ravenscourt Park station), where we’ve stayed the past few trips and is a great find/bargain.  We walk to Franco Manca in Chiswick for pizza (and we love that all the staff is Italian and we can speak to them in Italian).  We get the fresh mozzeralla, rape, and boar fennel salami and the ricotta and ham, which we wash down with passion fruit apple cider and honey beer.  I run across the street to get peach cheese cake from the Polish restaurant, which is good but not very peachy.

9 April

Wake up at 8. Breakfast is the other half of last night’s pizza.   We eat while watching Everybody Love Raymond and noticing the occupant of the adjacent building lean back and put her feet on the railing while sitting on her outside patio.  I guess if you spend lots of money (as in more than a million dollars for a two bedroom) for the apartment you should enjoy.

Underground to Big Ben / Westminster station.  Very sad to see the barricades from the terror attack the other week and all the memorial flowers.  Lovely Thameside walk to the Royal Horticulture Hall in Vincent Square and got into the queue for Adams Antiques Fair (which we discovered back in 2015).  Back to the vendor we bought a few things from then and get a couple of darling charm bracelets.  Even though we don’t buy much, we learn a lot and see some beautiful things (including some silver dealers who just loaned some things to the Chipping Camden Barn!).

Marquis of Westminster pub for Sunday roast lunch. Lamb with mint and Yorkshire pudding – it’s okay.  Tube to Liverpool Street waiting for our 2:30 walk and a pop into McDonalds to use the restrooms and get an ice cream with Cadbury Flake.   About a dozen people on our Hoxton & Shoreditch walk, organized through Meetup.  The guide was late, we started late, and we walked for 2 hours learning almost nothing.  This is the worst walking tour we have ever taken in London, or anywhere else in the world, bar none.    At least the people in the tour are very nice, we speak to a man from Sao Tome and a Chinese girl and some London natives.  It’s such a vibrant and hip area that we felt like it was a big, missed opportunity.

We ditched the lame tour upon arrival at Box Park, where memory didn’t remind us that DumDum donuts are not that great, but now we’re hungry and thirsty.  Memory also didn’t serve that Belgo Centraal in Covent Garden doesn’t have the best food, BUT the strawberry Fruli beer and the Trappist brown beer are very good, though expensive.

10 April

First people in the door at the Barbican Centre for a Japanese post-war architecture exhibit.  Plans and models and even a couple of tiny houses built into the middle of the museum.  Very fun and well-curated (last year we saw an Eames & Eames exhibit in this same space.  While a little expensive, the special exhibits here are bound to be well done).

Museum of London for the Fire exhibit, which is not free but we walk around the regular exhibits.  Despite having been here many times before, there is always something new to discover.  Very good fritattas at the museum café.

Tube to St Martins in the Fields for cream tea, but 7 pounds each is too much so we go to our standby National Portrait Gallery basement cafe and have cream tea there.  Poke around the gallery to see what’s new.

Back to Heathrow for dinner and showers at the lounge and our journey home.