Monday 1st July
A wander around the countryside with John and Jacky, taking in Ditchling, Hassocks, Lewes and Eastbourne. Enjoyable drive around visiting new places. Lunch at Lewes.
Tuesday 2nd July
Peter, Anthony and I collected Stephen and Kazumi from Gatwick. K absolutely pooped soon arrival at The estate she was bundled off to shower and have a sleep. S around to catch up with Anne and Harry with a plan to return later for tea with K. Best laid plans etc....K still sound asleep but S dogcame back around for a couple of hours.
The three...A,S and K into Brighton for a first sortie....dinner with AandH......Thursday all the boys to the Bell for the poker game and Hoiles Minor took home some loot from the locals....Friday morning Anthony flew out for a couple of days in Prague and following that another couple in Amsterdam and in the late afternoon evening for those left behind it was off to watch cricket on the village green accompanied by lashings of ale and cider and the odd hamburger or hot dog and chat. Very pleasant way to spend the evening. Saturday it was off to the Bell to suffer the public humiliation of a Wallaby defeat by the Lions and then Sand K and Peter and I went to the Wiston Steam Fair at Steyning for an interesting but very hot afternoon.....where I lost my camera @&$)&?!$! And then off to the pub at Shoreham for a cooling ale.
Sunday 7th July
S and K and Peter and I took off in the hire car to Bristol and Bath ....via Stonehenge to satisfy a childhood dream of Kazumi's. The newly purchased TomTom repaid the investment especially in getting through the cities and delivering us to the accommodation doors. Arrived bout three and made arrangements to meet up again at five - ish for a wander about and then had a very good dinner in an Italian restaurant. Followed by more strolling around on the look out for Banksy's and other street art. Bristol has a very vibrant feel, the waterways and canals have all been tarted up, lots of bars and restaurants, new apartments lining the waterways and people everywhere.
Monday 8th July
First up onto the hop on hop off bus to get the lie of the land.....it's a very hot day and keeping up the fluids will be important! Peter has, as ever, done plenty of homework on essential places to visit and things to see. The festival theme this year in Bristol is Wallace and Grommit and there are 99 Grommits around the city, on ferries, buses and church grounds, inside shops etc etc. it is possible to buy a Grommit passport and then check off all you have seen....shades of the English penchant for train spotting?.....we started taking photos of Kazumi next to Grommits but this excitement palled a little after half a day! One of the highlights was wandering around the Nelson Street area checking out the street art. In all we have spotted three Banksy's ...the grim reaper, the hanging man and the Queen....but there are many other fine examples.
The local church.. St Mary's ....was very grand with magnificent stained glass and vibrant historical record of the town. John Cabot sailed from here in ( need to look up the dates again ) and "discovered" America. This place has been a significant and strategic sea port and clearly a wealthy place. The colonisation of the Caribbean principally Jamaica, is the entry point of GB into the slave trade
Kazumi and I had intended to have high tea at the Hotel Bristol but our complementary vouches had not arrived :( so we availed ourselves of two ferry rides along the waterways and then headed off to a pub overlooking the water which had looked promising in the morning when we walked past but the evening reality was a little disappointing.
Tuesday 9th July
Off to Bath en route back to Henfield. What an elegant city. You could expect it to be a bit twee given the cohesiveness of the place with all buildings created with the same local stone but the type of architecture results in gracious and elegant facades. In fact the houses are all quite small and historically were mostly guesthouses for those here to take the waters but arranged to seem like grand houses indeed. Again the hopon hop off bus was the priority mode for getting the best sense of the place then a bit of free time and departed about 1:30: home via a quick detour through the New Forest...ponies etc...then to Midhurst village for a mooch and tea in a fifteenth century pub on the way home. Super few days.
Thursday 11th July
Lucky to receive comp tickets from Vic to the Goodwood Festival of Speed trade day. Another really hot day....the UK is in the midst of a genuine heat wave....spent all day looking at cars, motorbikes, dirt bike riders and BMX displays. Pooped and dusty by the time we got home...but managed to down a curry at the Bollywood in the village after a pleasant drink in the garden at the Fountain Inn in Ashurst on the way home.
Friday 12th July
Anne and Harry Peter and I off to Devon to visit with Rodney and Sonia. Peter and Jo on driving duties to give Anne a chance to be a passenger and just enjoy the scenery. The journey is about five hours with the lunch break included and no problems with traffic which can often be a problem on these roads and motorways.
Whilst we had booked into the White Hart in Modbury village they are closed for three hours in the afternoon and we couldn't raise anyone to Let us in. We knew that Rodney and Sonia were out sailing for the day but rang home on the off chance their son might be there....in luck!...Carl entertained us impeccably and suggested an eating venue, booked us a table and advised RandS where to meet us. Had exemplary fish and chip dinner in the Rose and Crown which is directly opposite the house where the author of the story about Old Mother Hubbard who went to the cupboard to fetch her poor dog a bone....RandS joined us about seven thirty and the chatting, story telling and laughs started!....White Hart a little basic but adequate to our needs.
Saturday 13th July
Spent a little time in the spacious and beautiful garden before going out in convoy to Dartmouth....a place where you could easily spend a couple of days...situated on the beautiful river Dart, plenty of marine craft bustling about, location of Agatha Christie home and other famous persons, also the location for the filming of The Onedin Line tv drama in the 1970's, great shops of all description, lots of artwork I could happily take home, revisited the Simon Drew shops and couldn't resist a couple of purchases. Then we went to Slapton....I don't know how I didn't know this history....during the Second World War several villages in the area were evacuated....people told they just had to go leave everything including crops and livestock and just go as the area was taken over for secret work related to the war effort!
As it turned out the whole area which includes a very long flat beach, was used as a location for the Normandy Landing rehearsal. As it happened and by sheer lucky co-incidence (well not so lucky for the allies!) a fleet of German uboats came across the exercise and caused significant casualties. The locals were eventually allowed to return but of course then had to contend with unexploded ordinance etc. the American legions return every year to the site as a remembrance activity and to pay their respects to the locals. I believe the locals were allowed to return after something more than eighteen months.
There is a famous pub right on the beach at Slapton renowned for its fresh seafood which is caught just in the bay and delivered fresh to the hotel by mid afternoon every day...so it's not possible to predict with any accuracy what will be on the menu.
Back to RandS' for a bit more chat then off to the w/Hart....
Sunday 14th July
Lazy start today. Then drove off across the Cornwall border to a pub at Edgcumbe for a lunch snack....delightful place and nice to know this will become RandS' local when they move down here upon sale of the Modbury property.
About three o'clock we went over to Darren's shipyards at Millbrook for coffee and the a look around the fifteenth century Mill House they are restoring from ruins to what by Christmas will be the most brilliant oak framed business, residence, holiday let, combination of space all with magnificent views. The property RandS are looking to purchase is 300 metres away across the estuary and has a delightful character itself and will be just ideal for everybody. Carl is a key patner as a back room powerhouse in the business.
Darren and his partner Alex have worked hard to achieve this dream in amongst running a prestigeous ship building business and notching up ocean cat racing victories.
We then went to the hotel at Whitesands Bay....where we did some celebrity spotting....Timothy Spall is starring in the making of a film on the artist Turner and staying at this very hotel and we tried ever so hard to not look as if we were about to intrude on his quiet glass of cider at any moment and start gushing about how much we like his work!
Back to the White Hart to a minor contretemps...the housemaid had spat the dummy and not cleaned the rooms...Tom the young Barman on duty did his best to sort things out for us and gave us free drinks to compensate for the inconvenience.
Monday 15th July
A quick goodbye visit to RandS.....resisting the temptation to load the suitcases with spider repelling Conker juice and retraced our steps to Henfield after a very enjoyable few days. We couldn't face even thinking about dinner so went the the Henfield White Hart and there could not resist the Partridge Green sausages and mash...waddled home about 8:30 and tried to stay awake in the lounge chairs until the ten o'clock news bulletin....not sure why we bother because it rarely contains anything of interest.
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