On the road north

Well it's just before three in the morning...... again. I can't sleep, don't know if it's  the pitter patter of rain on the campervan roof that keeps reminding me that last cup of tea before bed wasn't such a good idea, guilty conscience that I haven't blogged for a few days or my medication dose too high?? (I doubt the latter!!!!!)
Anyway, as the title suggests, we are on the road, currently at a campsite in Greetham which is not too far slightly north of Leceister.
The last two days in London, we didn't do a lot, Hilary wanted "at home" days, and read about 8 of her new books, I did go for a two hour walk in the woods/riverside from Yvonne's, and the next day Di and I did a similar walk while Hilary stayed with Yvonne eating icecream and cake in the sun in the garden while they both read books....

Beside the Brook



Pink and white hawthorn



Beside the brook in the woods



Chestnut flowering

Chestnut flowers close up



We left London just after 9 Friday morning, heading west before intending to wind our way north stopping at various spots on the way. Our first destination was Great Missenden which is where Roald Dahl hung out for much of his life, where he wrote many of his books, and where he died and is buried. There is a museum and discovery centre there so I thought that would appeal to all in our group. Great Missenden is a beautiful spot, really picturesque, and Roald Dahl related historically interesting, we should know as we now know it intimately. We arrived, parked in the well signposted carpark, and followed the well signposts to the museum.

A Hilary sized door

High Street, Great Missenden

A model of "The Nag's Head" used in movie ? Fantastic Mr Fox

Hilary putting stamps of Quentin Blake's drawings in her booklet

Checking out the audiovisual display

The BFG

Sitting in Roald Dahl's writing chair

The museum

Very good way to spend an hour and a half, with lots of audiovisuals, and great kids activities. Lots of school groups visit as we witnessed (nothing meant there). There were a couple of brochures there outlining Roald Dahl related walks, so we decided to follow one of those, up to the church where he is buried.

Three pretty scenes on our walk. Not Roald Dahl related.

The church of St Paul and St Peter where Roald Dahl is buried

Roald Dahl's resting spot

The petrol pumps that inspired the petrol station in.......

The house which inspired the orphange in the BFG

Gypsy House where Roald Dahl lived and wrote

The woods, which inspired the woods in The Minpins

It was getting considerably later than I had anticipated by now, (and we were way behind in my well planned out agenda for the day), so I tried to hurry Di and Hilary back to the camper.............. with the intention of driving on to our next stopping point where we would have late lunch. In my rush (and grumpiness) I managed to break off the key in the lock of the campervan..... Not just in the lock but deeply in the lock, deeper than fingernail deep.... Not that it really mattered how deep because our spare key was safely locked in the van anyway so we had no way of getting into the van anyway. Thank goodness for the AA is all I can say!! We phoned them and after much to-ing and fro-ing and about four phonecalls managed to convince them that we were NZ members and that the membership was reciprocal (they insisted on knowing our membership number and wanted us to phone NZ for it before they would do anything. Thankfully Di managed to find her card in her bum-bag after about the third phone-call and much searching. The up-shot of all this was, we had lunch at a cafe (cold tinned tomato soup and a white bread roll for $12 for me!!!), went for an extra walk (that's when we found the woods and Gypsy House).... and sat in the sun waiting and waiting for the AA to turn up. Finally at 3.15 (this saga started at 1230) "Jim" from AA arrived and set to work,with Hilary to firstly extract the key and then design a tool to open the two locks on the passenger's side window. He perservered.....  thankfully......


Jim and Hilary breaking into the van

 and finally at about 4.15 managed to boost Hilary in through the open window to open the door, to let us in.
We had a cup of tea and redevised our plans. We had been going to go a few miles down the road to St Tiggywinkles which is a hedgehog hospital that Hilary, Yvonne and Diana had seen on the tv the night before, and I had noticed on the map when planningour itinerary, but much to Hilary's chagrin it closed at 4pm. The plan was to visit Stowe Gardens that day too, but they were still an hour plus away too, but we headed that way so we could visit the next day.
We didn't know where we would stay that night, but didn't really mind as we thought anywhere would be fine. As we were nearing the Stowe gardens area there was a sign for "campsites" so we followed the signs to an empty paddock in the middle of nowhere, about five minutes drive from Stowe Gardens. We parked up, made dinner, ate dinner, looked at maps, and eventually the farmer arrived to extract 15 pounds from us for parking in his empty paddock, with no showers or power, just cold water in a tap and flush toilets. He did chat a lot though,and gave us good information about local sights/sites and also told us quite a bit about badgers (they carry TB and infect the dairy herds, but are protected with an imposed 6 week prison sentence for any farmers who shoot them) including that there was a sett just across the field and if we were to hangout there at dusk we might see some.  We tried but it was getting cold, and there was no sign of anything, apart from many rabbits.

Parked up for the night under a solitary oak tree

Hilary in the lush grass

It rained that night, the pitter patter or more correctly plunk, plonk, rattle of the rain on the roof made it difficult to sleep, so we were all a bit tired yesterday. Of course it was still raining in the morning too, our first inclement weather since leaving the monsoons of Kuala Lumpur, and of course we had many out-door activities planned. We ahd breakfast, and undeterred headed down to Stowe, raincoats at hand, woolley hat at the ready for me determined to make the most of it. We arrived at about 9 with the drizzle coming and going, and parked up near the deer park where we could have a walk over the fields before the gardens opened.
There were many lambs, flowering hawthorn, and interesting monuments, and the weather cleared for our wander.

Hilary picking buttercups

Triplets

We hopped back in the van and drove further back down in the carpark, near to the reception/entrance as it was looking a little gloomy again and we didn't want to get too wet. I thought the website said the gardens opened at 10, but on closer examination it wasn't until 1030, and as it was raining by then anyway we didn't mind sitting in the van drinking cups of tea and eating chocolate coated digestive biscuits. At 1040 when the rain let up we went in, the woman at the counter promised us that she had ordered the sun for 1100, when questioned, and my golly she was true to her word, sunshine was provided.  We had a lovely walk through the paths, spotting different erections and follies, squirrels, rabbits, birds and trees. We couldn't find the lime tree with the stag beetles colonised in it much to our disappointment, but it was a beautiful experience, more so because of the recent rain and slightly duller light which enhanced the greens and bronzes.

Again we took longer than I had calculated we would here, so we missed out a couple of other scheduled stops, another garden and the national herb centre and instead headed up to Sulgrave Manor which had been recommended by the farmer at our overnight camp stop. Sulgrave Manor had in the 12th Century been owned by the 5x-great grandfather of George Washington and for many generations his descendants. The Manor fell into dis-repair in the late 19th Century having passed through three or four other families, and was eventually bought by a joint USA and English heritagey group I think it was, as a commemmorative of one hundred years of peace between the two nations (1912??) my memory is a bit hazey here.But basically once WW1 had finished work went into restoring the Manor (it was added to in the 18th century- you can see the different stone-works) to its former glory. It has been really well done, and the woman who took us on a tour was fantastic- she also does children's tours which we had missed, but because there were three children in our group she also included them in her commentary and gave interesting little facts about the origin of various sayings such as sleep tight, upper crust, chairman of the board,.... and a whole lot of others. She also explained to the kids (and by default us) about life for children all those years ago, eating with fingers, drinking beer from a very young age as it was at least boiled and therefore safe to drink, slurping their soup, and other little tidbits that I'm not sure will make parenting any easier.

The Manor with Union Jack and Stars and Stripes

Hilary in little alcove beside the fire, for keeping warm late at night once the fire had died down. A palce for elbow and glass of beer/wine is available, elbow on left and ledge for drink on the right.

This is a dummy of a nine year old boy,showing true height for the era.



The kitchen and fire place for cooking.



Green velvet with amazing embroidery bed surround

Close up of someof the embroidery.

Hilary and George

We had a wee wander around the garden after the tour, I must admit the herb garden was so enticing a snitched a few sprigs of mint for our new potatoes last night and some margoram for our meat balls. Yummmmm they were good!!!  We headed north again from there, stopped in Melton Mowbray for vegetables (we are missing them), brocolli, sweet carrots,and green beans, and some fruit, plums,strawberries and bananas, before heading for our campsite which Di and Hilary had found on the internet while I was getting the groceries. Gosh these modern inventions like lap-top computers, mobile broadband and mobile phones are amazing. We don't need a sat nav,we have really good map books and can do route planners on line if we need.
So here we are in Leicestershire in a little place called Greetham. We are a few miles south east of Hose which I believe is relevant to my heritage, and I have a request from whanau to check it and a few neighbouring villages out which is why we are here.
It bucketted down again last night, hopefully it won't rain much today, we have a full itinerary planned including viaducts,  gardens, an owl and falconery centre, plus the village photos. So I'd best go get breakfast and get the show on the road.