Wookey Hole

Having sat around for a couple of days, we decided that we had better go exploring again.  We set off to explore the Wookey Hole caves.  After driving through the Chew valley to get there, we reckon George Lucas must have been there sometime in the early ‘70’s.  Seems too much of a coincidence really!

 

It was another interesting drive – the beautiful country lanes and gorgeous cottages, spring green woods and rolling hills were lovely; idiots driving badly in the opposite direction were not.  We made it safely to the village of Wookey Hole and bought our tickets for the caves.  The cave visit is by tour only, and while the entry booth seemed pretty quiet there was quite a queue at the cave entrance.  The crowd wasn’t too bad once we went in as the cave chambers are pretty big; if only people could be a little more considerate so the guide didn’t have to shout to be heard it would have been better.

The caves themselves are really quite beautiful but the whole thing has been really commercialised with coloured lights and the theme of the Wookey Hole Witch which is a bit tacky really.  The later chambers were the best as the cheesy story is over – and gives way to actual cheese.  Truly, they cave-age the local cheddar in the caves and you can tell by the smell.  And the long shelves of mouldy rounds of cheese.  Yum.

After exiting the caves we sat in the valley and had our picnic lunch before trying to exit the complex.  Honestly, it was worse than a Las Vegas casino – there was a History of the Circus exhibit, a paper-making exhibit, a history of cave-diving exhibit, an indoor funfair, a hall of mirrors!  All we wanted to do was buy some cheese and get out of there, which was easier said than done.  We finally made it though, and while the cheese was a little expensive it is also very nice.

The drive home was reasonably uneventful (we are gradually realising that being nearly run off the tiny roads by hoons in big cars doesn’t count as an event in England) and we have spent the afternoon in domestic tasks.

Siobhan is discovering that when you aren’t working full-time, cooking actually becomes quite fun, and after the success of homemade flaky pastry (very rich) for the onion and feta tart the other night, she turned her hand to bread-making (thanks Fleur and Nick for the loan of the book “Dough”).  This first effort has actually turned out well, so she might try getting even more creative as the week goes on.  Certainly the weather forecast makes bread-making look quite appealing.

Back to Bristol in the rain...

On Friday we packed up and went back to Mark & Paula’s.  Nick had suggested a different public transport route back that avoided the city centre and saved us a few pounds.  When we arrived at Mark’s place, Callum & Caitlin were there preparing for their flight back to NZ.  Callum is Paula’s cousin and who we bought the car from.  They seemed to be pretty much sorted as they headed off to the airport.  Because the weather was such rubbish, we decided to get on the road not long after lunch and get to Bristol.  With the meetings on Thursday, unfortunately we weren’t able to get back to Bristol before Tony & Ingrid went to Germany for 2 weeks.  We made it safely to Bristol, although it was a long trip as traffic on a Friday afternoon anywhere around this country seems to be fraught. 

As it was late, we thought that we’d grab dinner at pub that is just around the corner from Tony & Ingrid’s.  The local pubs in England can be quite weird.  On entering this pub, there was a group of a dozen or so guys who had obviously come from work.  That is normal enough.  However, on asking whether we could get some dinner we were informed that we probably could if we could find a table that wasn’t set.  The landlady had set tables for those that had booked.  It really seemed that anyone who was not a local wasn’t really that welcome.  We ate and left – the food was ok though.  We wouldn’t go back there again.

Swans snoozing on the canal

Saturday got off to a slow start as when we woke we turned on the computer and listened to the Radio Sport commentary from NZ on the All Blacks v Ireland rugby test.  Having the ABs carry on from last year was a good start to the day, and having Wellington lad Julian Savea score a hat-trick on debut made it even better.  We then headed into town to go for a wander around the harbour area.  We had found a walk that looked nice in one of Tony & Ingrid’s books.  The walk was very enjoyable and made great use of the sunshine that we haven’t seen for a while.  We popped into a bar on the waterfront that was showing the women’s final from the French Open.  Watching Sharapova take the title was a pleasant way to break up our wanderings.  We had been watching the tennis with Nick & Fleur and it was good to get to see the first final.

Where Kate would eat in Bristol

Sunday was back to rainy drizzle and so we just hung around home.  We ventured out at about 2pm to go to one of the local pubs (and not the one from Friday night) to watch the Men’s tennis final.  That was quite enjoyable, with the staff and locals being a lot friendlier at this establishment.  The final got rained out though, which was probably quite good as Siobhan seemed to be getting quite restless, and I’d probably had enough beers for the afternoon anyway.  When we got home, Siobhan made a yummy red onion and feta tart for dinner.

We decided that Monday was going to be another quiet day too, as it was still raining.  We went into town for midday so that we could see the end of the Nadal v Djokovic match.  As I had wanted to see Federer win, I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to win.  In the end, it was pretty satisfying watching Nadal take a record seventh title.  You get the feeling that Djokovic will do the slam at some stage in his career – he is such a tenacious player.  After that we wandered around again.  We decided to go to the movies – the only thing that really grabbed our attention was The Angel’s Share.  It wasn’t on until 5.40pm so we got some lunch and went exploring in the rain.   

We found the St Mary Redcliffe church. Given that Bristol already has a cathedral, it is certainly blessed having both of these structures. St Mary’s was just as beautiful, if perhaps not quite as grand. Some of it dates back to Norman times – it was amazing.

We still had some time to kill so we grabbed a newspaper and took shelter from the rain – you guessed it – in a pub.  It started out as a very pleasant and quiet pursuit, but the pub started to fill up and get more raucous.  The reason for this was England’s first match in Euro 2012.  And it was against France, who seem to be the old foe, like NZ v Australia.  Some people asked if they could join us at our table, and it was cool to find out that one of them had just returned from 8 months in Wellington.  He had played cricket for the University club on Kelburn park.  Small world alright.  We had to leave part way through the first half which resulted in plenty of jostling for our seats.  We made it safely out of the pub though and off to the movies.  The film was quite enjoyable – set in Scotland so while it is in English, there are still bits that you can’t understand what they’re saying.  A good story and a warm place away from the rain.

Diamond Jubilee Weekend

Uncle Tony and Aunty Ingrid returned safely on Friday, and we spent Saturday with them hearing about their trip to Snowdonia.  It sounds lovely, and they had some beautiful photos.  We already had North Wales on our (very flexible) to see list, but who knows when we will be able to fit it in.

On Sunday we returned to Mark and Paula’s place to sort a few bits and pieces out before heading to London.  We had a great trip through, leaving Bristol about 9am and getting to Addlestone before 11am.  Mark and Paula took us along to their local garden centre (which is more like a farmlet really, and they have a pick-your-own berries section too) which was having a Jubilee “Hog Roast”.  This was great – it threatened to drizzle now and then but stayed mostly dry, and the spit roast pig in a bun (with apple sauce and stuffing) was delicious.  Siobhan and Emma also enjoyed sharing a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream.  Emma looked very beautiful after a visit to the face-painting stall, and also got to hold a lovely barn owl briefly. 

After the owl visit, Emma insisted that we had ice-cream – she told us that the garden centre had the best ice-cream.  Well, we won’t dispute that – we all enjoyed a very delicious ice-cream, and as an illustration of how tired Alice was, Mark got to enjoy all of his by himself.  This is apparently quite rare as Alice can usually hoover up one of these kiddy ice creams in record time.

It was a good thing that we had walked to this hog roast event, as after watching the Thames River Pageant on the TV, the day concluded with an equally delicious roast beef dinner at Sue’s house – thanks everyone for a lovely Jubilee Sunday.

On Monday morning we were off to Nick and Fleur’s place in Hampstead.  Since the Queen is celebrating 60 years on the throne, the British got an extra bank holiday tacked on to Queen’s Birthday weekend.  This made it an ideal time to visit as both Fleur and Nick had Monday and Tuesday off work.  Nick had Wednesday too, and on both Wednesday and Thursday Grant was meeting with people about job prospects. 

We got going a bit later than planned, but made it across London on the train easily and reached the flat in Hampstead by lunchtime.  The plan for the evening was to meet some other friends at the pub before going to Golder’s Green to watch Jubilee fireworks and the lighting of a special beacon.  The weather had completely cleared, although it was quite chilly, so the walk across the Heath was lovely.  The fireworks were not until about 9.45 (when it would be dark enough!) but they were great.  We had a superb view, and were so close that many of them seemed to be going off right above us.  Sadly the beacon malfunctioned, and after several failed countdowns they instead released a small floating light as a substitute.  We got the best beacon possible on our walk home though – a glorious full moon.

On Tuesday, the final Jubilee event was the Queen’s carriage procession from Westminster along the Mall to Buckingham Palace.  We had not originally planned to try seeing this (we are not overly fond of crowds), but it was to now include the air force fly-over that had had to be cancelled on Sunday due to bad weather.   Nick persuaded us to head into the city after all, and we made a morning of it, running some errands before getting close to the Mall just before 1pm.  Her Majesty was due to ride her carriage at around 3pm – but already there was no getting close enough to actually see her.  We had left our run too late.  So we found a pub that had the procession showing on the big screen (on the ground floor of New Zealand House in fact), and settled in for a couple of hours.  We still wanted to see that fly-over.  It proved to be worth the wait.  We headed out into Trafalgar Square a few minutes before the planes were due.  It wasn’t raining too badly and we had our coats.  The first three planes were war planes, and quite neat.  The next formation was led by a Lancaster bomber – it was an impressive sight.  Finally a perfect formation of the Red Arrow jets went over, with their jet streams of red, white and blue.  It was a beautiful tribute, and so cool to see how many people had turned out in (let’s face it) pretty poor weather to celebrate with their Queen.  We headed home via Fortnum & Mason’s – a gorgeous emporium – and got home again without getting too soaked.

Fleur had to go to work on Wednesday but Nick took us to see some of the sights.  We caught the overground train through to Greenwich which is where some of the Olympics will be held.  We saw the gymnastics stadium and the swimming venue from the outside.  We then headed down to the Thames, and walked under it through the pedestrian tunnel.  This brought us out by the old Royal Naval College.  It was also the site of one of Henry VIII’s palaces.  The Royal Naval College was originally built as a place for the old and infirm sailors who had finished their naval service.  Over the years its use has changed with it more recently being used as the training college for all officers above sub-lieutenant.

Apart from being a cool old stone building, it also houses the Painted Hall.  This is England’s Sistine Chapel, painted by James Thornhill, an English artist.  It is a huge hall with massive paintings on the ceilings and walls of the different spaces.

After this we headed up the hill towards the Greenwich museum where the time ball and the meridian line are.  On the way up the hill we went past where the Olympic equestrian events are going to be held.  The show-jumping arena was well on its way to being finished, although it is probably good that they have a month or so to get it finished.  We got to see the time ball and the meridian line, but didn’t go into the museum as we were running out of time as we had arranged to meet Fleur for lunch.  We headed back to Canary Wharf and rescued Fleur from work and had sushi.  After we had lunch, we then travelled to Austin Friars so that I could meet up with a recruitment consultant.  He had helped both Nick and Fleur find work when they came to the UK.  It was good talking to him and he had a few suggestions that I’m sure will be helpful.

Meanwhile, Nick had been thinking about the current recruitment process that his work was currently in the middle of undertaking, and whether there might have been a role there that would interest me.  We discussed this a bit, and Nick suggested that it would be a good idea for me to meet another of his colleagues to give me a better appreciation for what they do.  Fleur had also been busy arranging for Siobhan to meet a friend of hers who is head of Maths in a school in London.  So Thursday was spent going in to the city centre for Grant to meet Nick and his colleague and then Siobhan meeting Fleur’s friend in Camden town on the way home to Nick & Fleur’s.  We were then allowed to cook dinner for them – a real token given all of the things that Nick & Fleur arranged for us.

Bathtime

The temperature finally dropped a little – enough for us to splurge a bit and try out the Thermal Baths in Bath.  We miss our spa pool…

We decided we wanted to check out their Twilight Package, which involved a three-hour session in the pool complex and included a main course each at their café, plus the use of towel, robe and slippers.  We arrived in Bath a little before 4pm and did some more sightseeing before going in to the baths.  It really is a very beautiful town (although we were quite surprised, during a search for public loos, that the park had a £1.20 entry fee).

We finally started our spa adventure just before 5pm.  This meant we could soak in the pools for a while before eating at a civilised time and then warming back up in the water.  The facilities are pretty impressive; there are two large heated pools, one downstairs and one on the roof, plus a steam room with four different aromatherapy steam capsules.  We started with the roof top pool which had lovely views across the roofs of Bath in one direction, and out across the hills the other way.  The pool was very lovely, not too crowded, but it was ‘heated’ rather than ‘hot’.  Too warm for swimming, but not really soaking temperature – or not for us anyway.  It was still very relaxing, so we stayed for a while to enjoy the view before heading down to the steam rooms.

This was a whole new experience.  We had chilled down a little coming down the stairs from the pool, and the main area of the steam room was toasty warm.  We decided to check out the red capsule first.  A note on the ‘capsules’ – these were round glass rooms with a stone bench all the way around the inside.  Under the bench were lights and steam pipes that released scented steam into the capsule.  There was a notice outside in the corridor that said which colour light had which fragrance but we forgot to look before going in.

Right. Red capsule.  We opened the door and stepped in.  Siobhan nearly had a panic attack.  It must have been close to 50°C and 100% humidity – it felt like we were not breathing because our lungs didn’t actually register the air going in.  We sat down on the (hot) benches and gradually adjusted.  As Siobhan noted later, we must have been breathing some actual air because we didn’t pass out.

We only spent a few minutes in each capsule, rinsing of under a huge ‘rainforest’ shower in the centre between each capsule.  It really was something completely different, and the different scents were all lovely (for the record, red was sandalwood, green was eucalyptus and mint, purple was frankincense, and we can’t remember what the blue one was!).

From here, we went down to the basement pool, which was essentially like the rooftop one but without the view.  It turns out there is a properly hot pool in the complex but you can only use it if you are getting one of their (exorbitantly expensive) spa treatments.  Never mind.

Dinner was quite yummy – and quite surreal.  All the diners (including ourselves) were in the white robes supplied by the spa.  The tables and chairs were white plastic, the walls were painted white.  It felt like something out of a science fiction film.  It was also a little chilly as they had a couple of windows open and we were still in damp togs.  It did mean the water in the rooftop pool felt lovely and warm when we returned to it.

We finished off our evening with a return to the steam room to get fully warmed up before going home.

River Cottage

As fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “River Cottage” series’, we did a little research and found that the original River Cottage Canteen (the first of the cafes associated with River Cottage) was in Axminster, about one and a half hours drive from Bristol.  We decided that would be an easy day trip, so we hopped into the car and hit the M5 heading south.  It was a surprisingly easy drive, although we once more found ourselves a bit shocked by the price of petrol.  We only have a little car (1.5 litre engine), but filling it costs over $150 NZ.  Luckily the car seems to be pretty economical and we don’t have to fill it too often.

The Canteen is, somewhat surprisingly, right in the middle of Axminster.  We had expected it to be out wherever the River Cottage farm is – possibly by a river or a cottage even.  But no, it is really just a café.  A nice one, and with a great atmosphere, but the service left something to be desired.  We got a warm welcome, and a waitress came to us promptly to take our order.  Sadly though something went amiss from here and it was about 20 minutes before Grant’s starter came (bread and hummus dips, not exactly a tricky one), and nearly an hour before our main dishes arrived.  Once the food did come, it was absolutely delicious so overall the experience was fun.  

After lunch we had a little wander about the village, since we couldn't find the actual River Cottage farm, and had a long conversation with the woman who runs the information centre.  She clearly loves the South West!

Our drive home became a little stressful at times.  As a result of our chat with the tourism lady, we decided to take the scenic route home rather than the M5.  We believe our satnav decided to punish us for rejecting its first suggestion (the M5) by sending us down the most ridiculous little lanes and farm roads, when really all we had wanted was the A37 instead of the motorway.  We did make it home safely in the end, and that’s what really matters.

Thanks satnav

Tyntesfield

Tuesday dawned overcast but still warm.  We had set this day aside to visit the Victorian estate of Tyntesfield, another National Trust property.  The house was not open to visitors until 11am, so we tried to time our arrival accordingly.  We were a little early but this didn’t matter as the grounds were open.  We found that at 11.30 there was to be a “Servants Tour”, taking a small group around the behind- and above-stairs areas not on display to the public.  Why not, we thought and cheerfully paid a little extra.  We took a slightly circuitous route to the house but arrived in time for the tour.  This was well worth the extra fee, and completely fascinating.  We think that the behind-stairs area was actually quite generous for servants’ quarters, so a job in service to this family was probably quite sought after in those days.  The butler they had in the late 1890’s actually worked for the family for 54 years, starting as a footman when he was 18 and retiring at 72.  Very impressive.

There was a boy whose job was to watch these bells and see who was needed where!

The night-nursery

We needed a bit of a break by the end of that tour, but still had not seen any of the ‘front of stairs’ rooms which are of course the main focus.  On venturing outside we found that the cloud had burned off, so we went for a walk and found the summer house at the top of the grounds.  This seemed the ideal spot to have our picnic lunch, and as it was up quite a steep path we had undisturbed peace and quiet the whole time.  We returned to the house via the stables (which, like many stately homes, seems to make an ideal bat roost).  Also, the NT has many items of furniture in storage here as the restoration of Tyntesfield is still a work in progress.

The stable block

The house itself is extraordinary.  The Victorian love of the Gothic style has truly been played out here, and the extravagance of carving in both wood and stone is just amazing.  The number of rooms on display is only a fraction of the house so we were very glad to have been able to see more earlier.  Just when we thought things couldn’t get any more elaborate or exquisite, we found the tour of the house ended with the family’s private chapel.  Although only for family and staff, the detailing is amazing and the stained glass windows would put many a public church to shame (or perhaps to breaking the tenth commandment?).  On leaving the chapel, we found it was already after 3pm; as Siobhan had an appointment back in Westbury at 4pm for a much needed haircut, we found ourselves having to leave without exploring the grounds properly.  We shall have to go back!

The Hall

The Billiard Room (Cluedo anyone?)

The Chapel (oops, Cluedo doesn't have that one)

The house itself.

Feels like summer

The amazing weather continues, and we are making the most of it.  After all, this is England and the rain could be back at any time (in fact they do keep forecasting it but it hasn’t eventuated yet).

Troy was again of great assistance in our appreciation of the summery weather, inviting us over to his place for Monday afternoon.  He and his partner Helen both had the day off, so the agenda was for a BBQ followed by rugby – a recorded Hurricanes game from the weekend.  This sounded perfect to us.  We spent the morning industriously, going for a brisk walk in the local woods and catching up with mundane tasks, before driving across to the other side of Bristol.

Troy and Helen have a superb view out over the valley that the Avon River flows through.  We couldn’t actually see the water as it is obscured by trees but that didn’t spoil the vista at all.  The deck was a wonderful place to sit in the sun, chat and admire the scenery.  Troy’s BBQ was a charcoal one and he reckoned it maybe shouldn’t have been used on a wooden deck, but since the base was sound we couldn’t see a problem.  The food was great, as was the company, and even the ‘Canes came to the party with a resounding victory over the Rebels (we did actually know the score in advance; Grant follows the Super 15 via an app on his phone).  Before we knew it, it was nearly 8pm and time to once more navigate our way through the city.  We think our satnav has an internal rule that it can only send us on roads we have been on before when it has absolutely no other choice.