From Bamberg to Hampshire: England I
Aug. 13th, 2006 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn haste, since I'm using the computer of a friend at Winchester (and a cd on which my impressions so far were burned):
Every other trip I ever made to England started with a flight, so I’m almost tempted to agree with the Irish bookseller I met in Rye who declared my Aged Parent must have been divinely inspired to insist on going by car this time. (More about her later.) Anyway, going by car meant starting at 4 am, but it also meant avoiding all the chaos at the airports and arriving in Calais in time to take the ferry at 10:50, almost two hours before the one we had actually booked. It had rained for most of the way, but the clouds opened over the channel and the sun came through with enough force to lighten the white cliffs of Dover for us, which made for a fabulous sight. (Due to the earlier mentioned arrivals by plane, I had never seen them.) Beautiful scenery always accesses my inner show-off and quoter, and so I had to think about what bits of literature I could come up with that were located at Dover - Lear, of course, and I thought of the radio production I owned, with Gielgud as Lear, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund and Richard Biers as Gloucester. Edgar and Gloucester on the not-cliffs, and the cries of gulls. And then I remembered Aunt Betsy lived here, Betsy Trotwood from David Copperfield, aka the tough aunt every orphaned boy wishes he had.
Our first destination in England were the gardens of Sissinghurst. Those being the result of the marriage of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (both homosexual, both writers, and if their letters are anything to go by terribly fond of each other despite affairs with lots of other people, including, rather famously, Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf on Vita’s side), my AP had to endure more quotes from me. One of Harold’s letters which most amused me was about Konrad Adenauer, whom he met briefly before the Third Reich and whom he predicted in said letter would rule Germany one day (Adenauer, of course, became our first post-WW II chancellor). Sissinghurst was also where my decision to become a National Trust member started to pay off, as said membership meant free parking and free entrance.
There isn’t that much of the old manor Sissinghurst used to be; it was pretty much in ruins when Vita & Harold bought it, and they used the stables as a living room, for example. The books on the shelves there were detective stories from the 30s and 40s, letters from Restauration poets, and some of the classic poetry you’d expect, mixed, which I loved because that shows they actually read the books and didn’t just have them on the shelves. There was also a small exhibition about Sissinghurst’s past, which included the fact it was used as a prison for French soldiers in the Napoleonic wars. The exhibition text said they were “treated brutally here”, which surprised me – not that they were but that the text admitted it, the Napoleonic wars being (to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong) usually presented as a clear case of black/white, good/bad in England, with the French taking the villain part. (Not so on continental exhibitions, but then, that’s another matter.) There was also the printing press donated by Virginia Woolf as a gift to Vita & Harold when they moved in, the very first she and Leonard used for Hogarth Press.
But of course, the main reason for tourists to visit Sissinghurst are the guardens. Who really are beautiful, with all kinds of flowers and the occasional fin du siecle statue. The AP photographed like a madman but later had to find out he had used a wrong switch or something, so all the photos can’t be used. Alas. Because it was quite a sight. Their shared work is still floroushing – how many a) writers and b) couples can say that?
Next we went to Bodeiam Castle, which the guide said was the most romantic ruin of a castle in the whole of England. Not having seen all the competition, I couldn’t say, but it’s certainly stunning, with the moat so wide and all around the castle that it’s no wonder it never was besieged and captured. The fish which live in the moat are so large that we noticed them at once. Thinking of our cats, I thought they’d be occupied all day watching them from the bridge; my father declared those fish were so huge our cats would be frightened.
Anyway, with its sandy colour, the castle ruin in the middle of the water certainly is a sight made for postcards, and by this time the AP had discovered the malheur with the camera, so there are some photos!
Considering we were up and about since 4 am, we decided to look for a place to stay for the night then, and ended up in Rye, which has lots of cobblestone, some nice medieval and Elizabethan buildings, and enough gulls to make you think of Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier. We stayed in the Old Vicerage, which is a Bed & Breakfeast today, and walked around in the town. One of the bookstores had photos of the writers doing signings there, and I recognized Lindsey Davis, Nigel Nicholson (aka Vita’s and Harold’s offpsring, the publisher), and Andrew Motion, among others. But the bookstore I ended up spending most time in because the owner was chatty was a second hand one. I found two biographies I always wanted and which were there. She, as it turned out, was Irish, and deeply distrustful of Scotland Yard, Tony Blair et al. Now I don’t think that current events were faked, but I think it says something about the goverment’s behaviour these past years that there seem to be people about who tell a foreigner on their very first day they supect they could be. “How can you trust anything that man says anymore,” the bookseller said scornfully, re: Blair, “or the police?” And she went on about last year’s case of the Brazilian who got gunned down, with none of the reasons the police said making him suspicious being actually true (he didn’t wear a long coat, he didn’t run, etc.). “Seven bullets!” she thundered.
Feeling awkward because on the one hand, I agreed with her regarding the unfortunate Brazilian, but on the other, I didn’t regarding the current thing, I tried to distract her by asking about recommendations for dinner. “Bah,” she said. “You know, I visited Germany. I ate well there. Here, everything comes half frozen.” “Well,” said I, “nobody visits England because of the food anyway.”
“Too true,” she said, and the Aged Parent & self ended up eating safe fish and vegetables before hitting the sheets, exhausted, but by and large happy with the start of our English journey.
Saturday started off rather cloudy and with the occasional pouring of rain, which was something of a problem because we had two scenero points in our schedule which for geographic reasons couldn’t be rearranged for later. But Dad & self just grabbed our umbrella and walked around at Beachy Head and Seven Sisters to admire the chalk cliffs at their most beautiful. At the second place, we encountered a bunch of bird enthusiasts who were there to observe a very rare species which apparently lives across the Atlantic and only comes to England once a year. “I have a stamp with them!” cried the AP and was dutifully impressed.
Next was Arundel Castle, and by the time we arrived there, the sunshine between clouds had returned. It’s certainly one of the most impressive castles I’ve ever seen, with a medieval core and otherwise 17th century (i.e. post-Cromwell) main buildings. The Keep – i.e. the medieval core – offered an opportunity to climb narrow stair cases and admire the view, so you can bet we did that first. There wasn’t just the view to admire, either. We came through the chamber where the Empress Maud had probably resided when besieged by her cousin Stephen, and it was decorated as it in all likelihood would have been, straw mattresses included.
The “modern” – i.e. 17th century main building is full of portraits of the Howard folk, starting with John “Jock” Howard, first Duke of Norfolk, one of the most loyal partisans of Richard III (which caused him to get an anonymous warning pre-battle of Bosworth – “Jock of Norfolk, be not so bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold” – and ending with the most recently died Duke and his still living Duchess. And constant reminders that this is one of the few noble families of England which didn’t convert and remained Catholic. Seems they produced a Cardinal every third generation or so. Plus the photos of John Paul II and John XXIII with the late Duke and living Duchess couldn’t be counted. There were also photos of the Queen and of Prince Charles, with and without the Howard clan, but pointedly not of Diana, which I took for a declaration of either personal taste of loyalty. *g*
At the sight of a rosary with thick golden balls my father started another of his grumblings about the utter superflousness and parasite nature of nobles everywhere, when I pointed out said rosary didn’t belong to any of the Howards but to Mary Stuart (who imo actually was superflous and of a parasite nature, but hey, I just can’t stand the woman).
Next we took off to Petworth, which wasn’t nearly as impressive from the outside but offered a spectacular collection of paintings within, for example more William Turners than can be found anywhere else outside of a museum. Lots of Gainsboroughs and Reynolds’, too. And I was delighted to discover three William Blakes, as Blake wasn’t nearly as fashionable as either in his time. The National Trust had come up with an inventive way to occupy the kids while the parents were admiring paintings, the “Teddy Bear Trail” – everywhere in the house were stationed Teddies which the children had to count. It made me smile, as did the small stairs which were positioned next to the bed where Victoria and Albert slept during their stay here – they were necessary because Victoria was such a tiny woman. Said stairs really brought home how tiny.
Afterwards, we were all ready to settle down in and around Chichester for the night, but no. Every single Bed & Breakfeast and hotel was booked out. Weddings everywhere, and just general tourism. The helpful lady at the Chichester Tourist Information Centre told us Portmouth (Dad’s next choice) was booked out as well, and so was Southhampton, but she did give us a magazine with some Hampshire addresses, and lo and behold, we found something in Petersfield, about 18 kilometres away from Chichester, away from the coast as well. A former manor, no less. We did have to squat beneath the roof, but we got a room!
(It didn’t have online access any more than the one in Rye did, but I keep my hopes up.)
Every other trip I ever made to England started with a flight, so I’m almost tempted to agree with the Irish bookseller I met in Rye who declared my Aged Parent must have been divinely inspired to insist on going by car this time. (More about her later.) Anyway, going by car meant starting at 4 am, but it also meant avoiding all the chaos at the airports and arriving in Calais in time to take the ferry at 10:50, almost two hours before the one we had actually booked. It had rained for most of the way, but the clouds opened over the channel and the sun came through with enough force to lighten the white cliffs of Dover for us, which made for a fabulous sight. (Due to the earlier mentioned arrivals by plane, I had never seen them.) Beautiful scenery always accesses my inner show-off and quoter, and so I had to think about what bits of literature I could come up with that were located at Dover - Lear, of course, and I thought of the radio production I owned, with Gielgud as Lear, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund and Richard Biers as Gloucester. Edgar and Gloucester on the not-cliffs, and the cries of gulls. And then I remembered Aunt Betsy lived here, Betsy Trotwood from David Copperfield, aka the tough aunt every orphaned boy wishes he had.
Our first destination in England were the gardens of Sissinghurst. Those being the result of the marriage of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (both homosexual, both writers, and if their letters are anything to go by terribly fond of each other despite affairs with lots of other people, including, rather famously, Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf on Vita’s side), my AP had to endure more quotes from me. One of Harold’s letters which most amused me was about Konrad Adenauer, whom he met briefly before the Third Reich and whom he predicted in said letter would rule Germany one day (Adenauer, of course, became our first post-WW II chancellor). Sissinghurst was also where my decision to become a National Trust member started to pay off, as said membership meant free parking and free entrance.
There isn’t that much of the old manor Sissinghurst used to be; it was pretty much in ruins when Vita & Harold bought it, and they used the stables as a living room, for example. The books on the shelves there were detective stories from the 30s and 40s, letters from Restauration poets, and some of the classic poetry you’d expect, mixed, which I loved because that shows they actually read the books and didn’t just have them on the shelves. There was also a small exhibition about Sissinghurst’s past, which included the fact it was used as a prison for French soldiers in the Napoleonic wars. The exhibition text said they were “treated brutally here”, which surprised me – not that they were but that the text admitted it, the Napoleonic wars being (to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong) usually presented as a clear case of black/white, good/bad in England, with the French taking the villain part. (Not so on continental exhibitions, but then, that’s another matter.) There was also the printing press donated by Virginia Woolf as a gift to Vita & Harold when they moved in, the very first she and Leonard used for Hogarth Press.
But of course, the main reason for tourists to visit Sissinghurst are the guardens. Who really are beautiful, with all kinds of flowers and the occasional fin du siecle statue. The AP photographed like a madman but later had to find out he had used a wrong switch or something, so all the photos can’t be used. Alas. Because it was quite a sight. Their shared work is still floroushing – how many a) writers and b) couples can say that?
Next we went to Bodeiam Castle, which the guide said was the most romantic ruin of a castle in the whole of England. Not having seen all the competition, I couldn’t say, but it’s certainly stunning, with the moat so wide and all around the castle that it’s no wonder it never was besieged and captured. The fish which live in the moat are so large that we noticed them at once. Thinking of our cats, I thought they’d be occupied all day watching them from the bridge; my father declared those fish were so huge our cats would be frightened.
Anyway, with its sandy colour, the castle ruin in the middle of the water certainly is a sight made for postcards, and by this time the AP had discovered the malheur with the camera, so there are some photos!
Considering we were up and about since 4 am, we decided to look for a place to stay for the night then, and ended up in Rye, which has lots of cobblestone, some nice medieval and Elizabethan buildings, and enough gulls to make you think of Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier. We stayed in the Old Vicerage, which is a Bed & Breakfeast today, and walked around in the town. One of the bookstores had photos of the writers doing signings there, and I recognized Lindsey Davis, Nigel Nicholson (aka Vita’s and Harold’s offpsring, the publisher), and Andrew Motion, among others. But the bookstore I ended up spending most time in because the owner was chatty was a second hand one. I found two biographies I always wanted and which were there. She, as it turned out, was Irish, and deeply distrustful of Scotland Yard, Tony Blair et al. Now I don’t think that current events were faked, but I think it says something about the goverment’s behaviour these past years that there seem to be people about who tell a foreigner on their very first day they supect they could be. “How can you trust anything that man says anymore,” the bookseller said scornfully, re: Blair, “or the police?” And she went on about last year’s case of the Brazilian who got gunned down, with none of the reasons the police said making him suspicious being actually true (he didn’t wear a long coat, he didn’t run, etc.). “Seven bullets!” she thundered.
Feeling awkward because on the one hand, I agreed with her regarding the unfortunate Brazilian, but on the other, I didn’t regarding the current thing, I tried to distract her by asking about recommendations for dinner. “Bah,” she said. “You know, I visited Germany. I ate well there. Here, everything comes half frozen.” “Well,” said I, “nobody visits England because of the food anyway.”
“Too true,” she said, and the Aged Parent & self ended up eating safe fish and vegetables before hitting the sheets, exhausted, but by and large happy with the start of our English journey.
Saturday started off rather cloudy and with the occasional pouring of rain, which was something of a problem because we had two scenero points in our schedule which for geographic reasons couldn’t be rearranged for later. But Dad & self just grabbed our umbrella and walked around at Beachy Head and Seven Sisters to admire the chalk cliffs at their most beautiful. At the second place, we encountered a bunch of bird enthusiasts who were there to observe a very rare species which apparently lives across the Atlantic and only comes to England once a year. “I have a stamp with them!” cried the AP and was dutifully impressed.
Next was Arundel Castle, and by the time we arrived there, the sunshine between clouds had returned. It’s certainly one of the most impressive castles I’ve ever seen, with a medieval core and otherwise 17th century (i.e. post-Cromwell) main buildings. The Keep – i.e. the medieval core – offered an opportunity to climb narrow stair cases and admire the view, so you can bet we did that first. There wasn’t just the view to admire, either. We came through the chamber where the Empress Maud had probably resided when besieged by her cousin Stephen, and it was decorated as it in all likelihood would have been, straw mattresses included.
The “modern” – i.e. 17th century main building is full of portraits of the Howard folk, starting with John “Jock” Howard, first Duke of Norfolk, one of the most loyal partisans of Richard III (which caused him to get an anonymous warning pre-battle of Bosworth – “Jock of Norfolk, be not so bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold” – and ending with the most recently died Duke and his still living Duchess. And constant reminders that this is one of the few noble families of England which didn’t convert and remained Catholic. Seems they produced a Cardinal every third generation or so. Plus the photos of John Paul II and John XXIII with the late Duke and living Duchess couldn’t be counted. There were also photos of the Queen and of Prince Charles, with and without the Howard clan, but pointedly not of Diana, which I took for a declaration of either personal taste of loyalty. *g*
At the sight of a rosary with thick golden balls my father started another of his grumblings about the utter superflousness and parasite nature of nobles everywhere, when I pointed out said rosary didn’t belong to any of the Howards but to Mary Stuart (who imo actually was superflous and of a parasite nature, but hey, I just can’t stand the woman).
Next we took off to Petworth, which wasn’t nearly as impressive from the outside but offered a spectacular collection of paintings within, for example more William Turners than can be found anywhere else outside of a museum. Lots of Gainsboroughs and Reynolds’, too. And I was delighted to discover three William Blakes, as Blake wasn’t nearly as fashionable as either in his time. The National Trust had come up with an inventive way to occupy the kids while the parents were admiring paintings, the “Teddy Bear Trail” – everywhere in the house were stationed Teddies which the children had to count. It made me smile, as did the small stairs which were positioned next to the bed where Victoria and Albert slept during their stay here – they were necessary because Victoria was such a tiny woman. Said stairs really brought home how tiny.
Afterwards, we were all ready to settle down in and around Chichester for the night, but no. Every single Bed & Breakfeast and hotel was booked out. Weddings everywhere, and just general tourism. The helpful lady at the Chichester Tourist Information Centre told us Portmouth (Dad’s next choice) was booked out as well, and so was Southhampton, but she did give us a magazine with some Hampshire addresses, and lo and behold, we found something in Petersfield, about 18 kilometres away from Chichester, away from the coast as well. A former manor, no less. We did have to squat beneath the roof, but we got a room!
(It didn’t have online access any more than the one in Rye did, but I keep my hopes up.)
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 06:04 pm (UTC)Don't know if you've visited Leeds Castle, which confusingly is in Kent ( http://www.leeds-castle.com/ if you want to see what the place is like), it's another fairly romantic site with very nice landscaping and a biggish moat.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 06:57 pm (UTC)London contacts for you, if you like
Date: 2006-08-13 06:56 pm (UTC)Never heard of Petworth, but now I have to go there. Will you be in London at all? Would you like contacts of nice, classical-music-loving, German-speaking friends whom your father too might enjoy meeting?
(Careful, my cellphone is half-broken and cannot receive text messages; I'll let you know whan i've replaced it.)
Re: London contacts for you, if you like
Date: 2006-08-15 05:06 pm (UTC)Napoleonic Wars
Date: 2006-08-13 06:58 pm (UTC)Another episode makes it brutally clear that British troops committed atrocities when they captured Spanish cities after a long siege (the Spanish were our allies, but many of their cities were occupied by the French).
So, I'd say that Sharpe at least shows good and bad on both sides in spite of having an English hero. THe characters generally hate the French, but the plot line tells a fuller story.
Re: Napoleonic Wars
Date: 2006-08-15 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 07:00 pm (UTC)...do you still want to meet up? If so, where and when would be best for you? I need to book tickets :)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 09:17 pm (UTC)It's definitely worth braving the Channel crossing to see them!
Next we took off to Petworth, which wasn’t nearly as impressive from the outside
It looks like a concrete block, but as you say it's worth the visit for the paintings.
Sounds as if you're packing in an amazing amount. I hope the weather improves a bit!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 11:11 pm (UTC)*adds "take a ferry from Calais to Dover" to my hypothetical Grand Tour itinerary* I love Dover for the Lear & Matthew Arnold associations, and I'd forgotten all about Aunt Betsey until you mentioned her.
As always, loving your travelogue and I hope you continue to have a great trip. Will be looking forward to updates!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-14 10:36 am (UTC)