A country weekend

My little blog has been sadly neglected for a long while, like an orphan child. Actual life intervened and took over for a bit, and then coming back turned out to be hard when I felt I had absolutely nothing of interest to say ...

But looking back through my photos it seems there have been days I felt worth capturing, so here with few words are pictures instead ...

Easter Sunday, back at the start of April, was spent on our friends' farm, perched on a hilltop precisely on the border of two counties, with views of rolling Dorset countryside all the way down to the south coast of England.

Trees were brown and bare, despite the fact that it was technically spring, and it was very, very cold still.

After lunch there was a walk in the woods ...

... featuring walkers well-wrapped against the cold and welly-shod, English-style, for the mud ...

... two happy dogs - one a scruffy little biscuit-coloured terrier and the other a noble russet hound ...

and woods filled with acres of wild garlic, growing rampantly ...

their white flowers (reeking and also edible) just days from bursting open and turning the woods white

English village autumn

Autumn colour seemed to come late this year, but it hasn't disappointed. 

 saturated colours after heavy rain

My favourite season was on full display on a trip to Penn village in Buckinghamshire about a week ago, where I snapped these pics.

Penn means 'hill' or 'headland' in Brythonic, one of the old Celtic languages, named for its position on a hilltop in the Chilterns. From the tower of the 900-year-old church here on the village road, it's supposedly possible to see eight counties ...

but definitely not on a misty morning like this one

As you might have guessed, Penn village is the birthplace of William Penn who set up the colony of Pennsylvania in the USA. Though originally the Penns are thought to have been Norman French nobility and called de la Penne - settlers who came to England following the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Like many Norman-era churches in England, the list of names of rectors or bishops tell this story by themselves. Earlier rectors of Penn's church had French, or at least Frenchified names, like William de London (1273) and Gilbert de Segrave (1304), up until a few centuries later when these change to solid English names like Thomas Goodlake (1400s) or John Davis (1684).

The Crown pub, above in the morning mist, is first mentioned in written records of the 15th century as a local ale-house.

There are plenty of traditional English cottages to be had, if this lifestyle appeals ...

(though they're likely to set you back a bit: your Rose/Oak/Briar cottages and ye olde vicarages mostly come with a fairly hefty price-tag in this village) ...

... and open gates invite you to country trails across surrounding farmland ...

Thanks to the "right to roam" law, there is a public right to access to farmland in Britain.

Veer off the main village road and you'll find yourself in narrow lanes like these ...

where it's difficult to imagine  

what might happen if another car came in the opposite direction

yet amazingly it is possible for two cars to squeeze past - in fact it's an opportunity to stop for a chat ...

Right next-door to Penn is Tylers Green ... 

which for all its small size, checks off all the mandatory features of an English village - a church, a pub, and a village school  - all positioned round the village green ...

... site of cricket games and village fetes in summer and bonfires on Guy Fawkes night, but where in the damp mist and November chill, small girls let out from school were chasing ducks

who thought the weather just fine.

Druids and ancient beeches

Druids and Celtic rites, highwaymen and secrets of World War II featured in the latest hike with my newly-joined walking group ...

Burnham Beeches is 540 acres of ancient woodland on the border of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire that was rescued from developers by the City of London.

These woods used to be vast, covering virtually the whole of the county of Buckinghamshire. Their history stretches the mind quite breathtakingly to way before Roman times. Below are the remains of a fort which has been dated to the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age (somewhere between the 8th and 5th century BC). What you can see  here is the remnants of a moat that surrounded it ...

Unfortunately much of the remains were damaged during World War II when Burnham Beeches was used as an army vehicle depot - a perfect hiding spot under cover of dense woods. Top secret, its existence was whispered about in local villages after schoolboys in search of adventure crept through barriers to spy on the hidden camp.

Its shining moment came when more than 10 000 army vehicles were marshalled and prepared here for the D-Day landings and driven out of these woods in convoy at night, headed for the coast.

The oldest living tree in Burnham Beeches is the 'Druid tree' - not a beech, but an oak - thought to be between 800 to 1000 years old. Its trunk is completely hollow, making it rather fragile - hence the protective fence ...

It was named (and pollarded) by the Victorians because the ancient Druids are said (by Pliny the Elder, who may or may not have got his facts straight on this - see here) to have considered oak trees sacred and danced around them in moonlit ceremonies.

In the Middle Ages the woods were a mad, bad and dangerous place, being inundated with highwaymen. Today, with Pinewood Studios located conveniently close by, they are a favourite location shoot for films, from early James Bond to Harry Potter. They've stood in as Camelot for First Knight, a generic ancient England for Ivanhoe, Irish woodland for The Crying Game, and of course Sherwood Forest for Robin Hood.

Our own merry band included hiking veteran border collie, aka Alpha lead dog, a trusty Beagle as her deputy, and a rather cute, pampered poodle who, if she felt a trifle silly being carried in a handbag for most of the walk, didn't show it ...

 Keep up, people ...

This hike was scheduled for a time of year (two weeks ago) when the woods are normally blazing with autumn colours - but as you can see, they were still overwhelmingly green, as the trees have turned very late this year.

On the trail leading out of the woods (with Princess Poodle still being carried) ...

we came back full circle through adjacent farmland

and ended, as English rambles must by tradition, with victuals at a local pub ... was it going to be the Blackwood Arms or the Jolly Woodman? 

Rambles in the countryside (and a small rant)

De zomer zit in het slop ... is possibly my favourite Dutch expression; 'summer is in the doldrums' is not nearly as expressive or alliterative. It applies pretty well to most days of the British summer, but now that we've progressed from mere slop to fully bewolkt en koud, I feel it's the perfect time to pull on one's hiking boots and venture into the English countryside.

A change in my working life has enabled me to finally join a hiking group whose inviting emails describing country trails have been entering my inbox for a couple of years.

This one started and ended in Hedgerley - a village and ancient parish tucked away in a tangle of fields and copses in south Buckinghamshire - not far, as you can see from the map pin, from Wooburn and the slightly frightening sounding Cookham & Burnham. You've got to love quirky English place names (how about Ugglebarnby, Crinkley Bottom, Steeple Bumpstead or Giggleswick).

But I'm also learning the clues they give to who lived where and when: 'ley' is an old Anglo-Saxon word for a clearing in a wood, and so Hedgerley was originally Hycga's clearing (though no-one seems to know anymore who Hycga was). This little settlement, like the whole county of Buckinghamshire, was once part of the kingdom of Mercia, in the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy. 

There's a village street of red brick cottages, some of which have not changed much since the 16th century. In Roman times, Hedgerley was an important centre for pottery, and later on it became famous for brick-making - in kilns supplied by nearby clay pits.

Today, it's possibly better known for multiple grisly murders, as one of the locations for Midsomer Murders, from which we have learned that quaint English villages invariably harbour dark secrets and serial killers.

In awe of those who seemed to know their way through woods and open fields, I followed the  band of walkers and progressively dirtier dogs ...

Gaiters and hiking boots were the way to go for some, wellies for the English traditionalists - whatever gets you through the mud and over the stiles.

The fields in this area are called 'sea fields', because in spring they're covered with bluebells and look like a sea when the wind blows across them.

A few hours later we'd returned full circle to Hedgerley for a look round the parish church of St Mary the Virgin that tops the village ...

poking around graveyards being a favourite thing of mine to do 

before lunch called, at the village pub ...

and look, there was Postman Pat - 

As a footnote: for those who don't know him, slightly simple-minded but adorable Postman Pat, delivering mail come rain, snow or sunshine in his dinky little red van to the residents of Greendale, was a loved character for a generation of tiny tots (including my own) and the Royal Mail's best advertisement ... until 2000 that is, when they dumped their sponsorship of the show, saying that Postman Pat "no longer fitted in with their corporate image"! Shame on the Royal Mail! 
I believe in his new life our favourite postman now works for some fictional, anodyne 'Special Delivery Service' and has a fleet of vehicles including a helicopter, but I cannot verify this personally, as I'm too outraged by the notion to go and check it out :) Here's the original, from 1981 ...

What to wear to an English summer opera

No, I'm not turning my hand to fashion blogging; this was a question an invitation had me pondering last weekend.

The venue: a country estate on the border of Suffolk; the order of events: drinks in the manor house, then a picnic and opera performance in the gardens; the music: Mozart and Leoncavallo; the guests: sounded awfully posh. So floaty summer dresses, kitten heels and a ghastly hat? No. The weather forecast: pouring rain and high winds.

Fashion notes: 1) if you're over a certain age a sensible mac and umbrella are the only essential wardrobe items, no matter what the social event; 2) never pack away the wool scarves and boots - you will need them in mid-summer; 3) the boating blazer in deck-chair stripes is best left to the sort of Englishman bred on regattas and country home weekends for whom eccentric dress sense comes in the DNA.

Stanley Hall's Midsummer Opera Festival is in its 12th year now. It's not Glyndebourne, but it might be one day (see here). The venue is the gardens of an Elizabethan manor house, its owner turned impresario.

The present Hall was built in the early 1500s, but the gardens show traces of inhabitants going backwards through the Norman Conquest and medieval times to Roman occupation.

As the rain started  pelting down again we moved towards the marquees ...

dodging farm trucks and equipment

to find our seats on a floor of wood-chips where the orchestra was already assembled

and a set with a view to the gardens through rain-soaked sheeting

Pagliacco preparing his harlequin's make-up 

and with the wind shaking and rattling the tent roof and flaps they were off in full flight ...

All photos taken at  Stanley Hall Opera, Halstead, Essex, June 2012.