Bowood

This is our 200th blog - it is hard to believe that just under 3 years ago Mike said 'write a blog' and that is what we have done.  And this blog has been written during a fascinating week in English history.  A hung parliament (which I watched being created during the wee small hours on a Thursday night).  Though not without controversy.  Some people were not allowed to vote as the polling booths closed at 10 pm even though they had been waiting 1.5 hours, some booths ran out of voting slips, and some people with ballot papers weren't on the roll.  A few days later Gordon Brown announced his eventual resignation (he would stay on till September and negotiate a Labour Liberal coalition with lots of smaller parties for confidence and supply), Nick Clegg (opened negotiations with Labour as soon as Brown resigned), David Cameron (offered electoral reform and a few more tantalising policy commitments to get the Liberal Democrats back on side).  But then the next day Gordon Brown resigned with immediate effect, David and Nick become political friends and allies and the UK has a formal coalition - the first since World War ll.  I hope it goes well for the sake of the countries.  But then if things couldn't get worse for the airlines Unite the union which many British Airways staff belong to have called 20 more days of strikes - turning travellers holidays into nightmares at the same time that the EU is helping to bail out Greece with millions and millions of Euros. So, all that in one week - never a dull moment in the lives of the news broadcasters.  
And our week...besides the election (I was a bit tired on Friday and so were others after staying up late). On Friday we watched Bristol beat London Welsh at the local ground (two Wellingtonians in the pack once again).  Saturday dawned cold and cloudy but we headed off for our trip to Bowood.  This place had been on my calendar in the first week of May for a long time - rhododendron season and get this bluebell season as well - not to be missed. First we stopped at Bowood house,surrounded by another Capability Brown landscape which included teetering topiaries - could these have been trimmed by a one eyed, limping gardener?  If so, the trees have been trimmed all crooked-like since 1990 as inside the house we saw a painting of the garden 20 years earlier.  I did try and find a  little history about the shape of these topiaries but came up with nothing except topiaries are a 5th century art where gardeners traditionally did things by sight (my theory could be proved right after all) rather than using the measures and instruments one can use today.  The house was little compared to many large mansions - there had been a larger mansion but this had been demolished not long after the war as it needed rather extensive maintenance to keep it in a liveable condition.  During the war the house was lived in by the Westonbirt school girls (having had their school not far away commandereed for the war effort).  Now it is home to the 9th generation of the Lansdowne family.  The 8th generation retired in 1972 to a home somewhere else and said to his offspring ‘You may find maintaining the house and estate quite a challenge.’ They rely on visitors (like us - but not many others on this May Saturday) to help fund the maintenance of the buildings and grounds - and they've done a great job. There is a display of what happened to Bowood during the war. While losing two sons in action, and providing a home for mischievous school girls there were other battles to fight.  The war effort cut down the trees, allowing cattle to wander freely with no effort to replant (another reason why this country has so few trees and forests), the Cherhill white horse (that we had to climb up and see) was covered during the war, and the monument to the ancestors of the Lansdowne had to be taken down (as it was so tall it could have been easily seen from the air) brick by brick and then put up again in the same order.  It was in this house that Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen (it defies my imagination how you can discover something that can't be seen - but I guess the same can be said about God and that doesn't defy my imagination at all). Joseph Priestley was around in the late 1700's and was well known for being a theologian, dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, writer and political theorist. He somehow discovered oxygen by isolating it when it was a gas - but he is not the only one who is claiming to be the first to discover "dephlogisticated air" thats O2 by its proper name.

And then a little drive down the road past the new hotel, spa and golf course to the rhododendron garden.  I mentioned before it was cold and cloudy and the woman at the ticket office said this was keeping people away 'the weather has let us down'. I mentioned that clouds give photos and a garden atmosphere, and secretly were quite pleased that we had the 30 acre garden virtually to ourselves (except for a couple looking after their little grandson).  Photos galore without people getting in the way, admiring flowers and trees without looking around other bodies.  We didn't have to vie for a picnic bench or car park (with only our car in it at the end of the day).  Stunning was the word I used, a carpet of blue bells with a backdrop of rhodos in flower - it only lasts a couple of weeks - so get out there England and enjoy.  Some of these trees were planted as early as 1854 and some of them were enormous - now resplendent in a garden that had reverted back to nature during the Second World War.

At one point Harry told me to look pretty for a photo - huh I thought. And then he spent the next 20 minutes whistling 'I'm so pretty' so I got my revenge by composing a song over some hours to the same tune...(to sing it properly you need a broad scottish gravelly accent just like a rhododendron gardener on tv many years ago)
Rhododendron, rhododendron
Lots of colours
Red, yellow and white
Oh so pretty, Oh so pretty
With the bluebells flowering in Spring
and then later on when he wanted to take another photo of me by a sign (by a sign I ask you) with the Cherhill horse and monument behind he said 'Stand properly' and along came another verse...
Stand properly, stand propertly,
Stand still and straight and smile
Oh so pretty, oh so pretty
With the white horse on the hill behind.
Not bad creativity for a cold Saturday afternoon I thought...

Imagine our delight when driving back through some A and B roads we came across a sign to New Zealand - half a mile to home!!  We raced around the corner to see what we would find.  It is near the Lyneham air base and we initially thought that this little farming community (well a few cottages really) may have been named because of New Zealanders serving there during the war.  There are indeed a few single storey timber clad huts called New Zealand farm that belong to the airbase.  But get this - after quite considerable research we found that in the 1880's it was named New Zealand because of its remote position. It is anything but remote now.

Then in my gmail tonight was an ad from the cheap hotel chain we often stay at..."Mr. Sleep & the Zzz Squad have been out and about talking to customers and have already started to make their mark. Travelodge want you to get a great night's sleep. So after listening to your feedback we have replaced every single pillow with new Cluster Fibre ones (Mr. Sleep and the Zzz Squad's top choice after some very lengthy trials).  So, maybe there is hope that we will get two towels in each room after all - that might be their next achievement.

And on the Chippie packet (yes we had chippie sandwiches for lunch at Bowood) was information on the opportunity to join a chippie fan club.  We wondered how many other fan clubs we could join - a new hobby perhaps?