A change of plans

On Wednesday we thought that we would visit some more National Trust properties.  We ventured north into Gloucestershire to Newark Park.  Once again, this had an interesting history.  It was originally built as a hunting lodge for one of Henry VIII’s mates.  Subsequently it was bought by another family who doubled the size of it by building a duplicate of the original building and joined them together to form an “H”.  Another family got hold of it after that and filled in the gaps so that now it is a squarish rather grand house.  After that, it fell into a state of disrepair until rescued by a Texan architect.  Sadly, he passed away a few years ago, but not before he had significantly restored the property. 

It has spectacular views over the surrounding countryside.  England continues to amaze us with its wide-open swathes of green in a country not much bigger than NZ but with many more times the population.  We started a tour of the garden but quickly got bored with that.  There seems a little bit of the garden that the Texan has restored.  The rest of the garden tour required people to use their imagination more and guess what it might have looked like.  We went inside and took a tour of the house instead.  A number of changes have been made over the years and it was quite interesting. It had nothing like the grandeur that we have seen in other places though.  As a result we didn’t stay long.














From there we decided to have a look at another property – the Westbury Court Garden.  It is the only restored Dutch water garden in England.  It was a very pleasant setting for our picnic lunch.  The gardens were very nice – it really makes you appreciate how big a job it must be trying to maintain these on entry fees and donations.  It also had one of the oldest holm oaks in England (if not the oldest one).  It looked like the inspiration for the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter books.














The day was still relatively young and we were a distance from Bristol when I had a brilliant idea.  I had heard of a brewery in Wales that had been recommended to me by a guy we met in Lostwithiel.  On looking it up on my phone I found that we were only 40 mins away from it.  Importantly, it also meant that we’d get to go to Wales (we haven’t been there yet), and through the Wye valley, and be heading back to Bristol too.  A convergence of good ideas.  So we headed off to the Kingstone Brewery.  On the way there two things happened.  First, the car started making lots of noise like it was a boy racer car.  The second thing was Grant’s phone rang.  He had an interview for a job in London at 12.30 on Thursday.  Unfazed, we carried on to the brewery and didn’t head back to Addlestone straight away.  The brewery was a small husband and wife operation but it looked to be very successful.  A few beers were sampled and we got a few to take home (along with some flour for bread making and home-made marmalade).

Back at Bristol we had dinner and packed up heading back to Addlestone to Mark’s place.  Siobhan had also contacted another teaching agency and arranged to meet them in London on Thursday too.  So we were both up and dressed in our finest catching the train into London on Thursday morning.  Both interviews went very well and so it is now a matter of waiting to see what they bring.