Rundown of September

Started September by booking two cottages at the Low Briery park near Keswick for a family holiday next April. Hurrah. Lake District here we come. Don't think I've been since we had a family week there in 2005, which seems a long time really. On that holiday it rained quite a lot and Hannah and I spent quite a bit of time watching episodes of Dallas on DVD.

Booked the day off on Friday 1st for a day out with Mum and Hannah in London to see the Giacometti exhibition at Tate Modern. Mum and Dad had stayed overnight in London the night before and seemed to have enjoyed themselves, things only being marred by Dad wearing some ill-advised sharp shoes that had given him blisters. He was off to the Geological Society on the Friday; Mum, Hannah and I met near the Millennium Bridge where Mum lightened her own bag by offloading a jar of crab apple jelly onto each of us. Mum had also evidently been accosted by some people filming an ad for Galaxy chocolate, and been given several free bars.

The exhibition was crowded but interesting. After taking this selfie in the turbine hall we went for lunch at a nearby Carluccio’s, after which Hannah left us to go and see a friend elsewhere in London and Mum and I walked around for a bit, having a look at the new extension from the outside.

Went over to Gail and Rob's house on Saturday 3rd for little Emily's second birthday tea party. Small gathering of only us plus Rob's nice father Brian. Emily is an outrageously cute child with a mop of blonde hair. Amused to see that she is now speaking a few words, including "More icing, Dad".

As part of ongoing quest to find a suitable hearth, or a piece of stone that could be fashioned into a hearth, I drove Ruth out to a stone merchants’ near Basingstoke on the afternoon of the 8th. We stopped off at The Vyne on the way to have lunch and make some use of our National Trust cards. Had a walk around the walled garden which had a gorgeous bed of pompom dahlias. The house is under scaffolding at the moment as there seems to be a major roof project underway.



Then found our way to stoneCIRCLE where Ruth spent some time in the yard browsing offcuts, seemingly mainly from kitchen worktops. Some discussion with the saleswoman followed but we didn’t end up actually ordering anything.

Managed to mess up our visit to the London 'Open House' weekend this year, entirely through not being sufficiently organised. Firstly, we were too lazy to stir ourselves on the Saturday morning and postponed our visit to the Sunday, thereby missing the chance to view Goldfinger's Haggerston School in Hackney, which I had been interested in seeing. When we arrived at Reading station on the Sunday morning, it turned out there were no trains running between Reading and Paddington because of line works, so we had to travel in to Waterloo instead, which, if you're unlucky (we were) takes almost three times as long.

On arrival, we headed over to Regent's Park to visit the Royal College of Physicians, though on arrival we discovered that the building is actually open to the public most days throughout the year. We signed up for a tour of the building and gardens, which was quite interesting though the tour guide was a bit over-theatrical for my taste.



We then took the bus to Hackney intending to see a few things there, but lost some enthusiasm after an interminable circa 24-stop bus journey. Queued for a while to see a wooden eco-house whose name I've forgotten, behind a bickering family of four whose bickering then descended into a brawl between the father and his teenage son. We went off the whole idea after that and took the bus back to Islington, where we had beer and crisps in The York. We should have focused on one borough and a handful of properties within easy reach of each other, but we never quite seem to manage to do that.

On the following Monday, my colleague Galina saw fit to share that she'd managed to visit four Open House properties with her daughter, in between taking her son to the junior parkrun and seeing a show. Some people are just made of sterner stuff.

On the 22nd we hosted Book Group at the house, to discuss Ruth's book choice 'Exposure' by Helen Dunmore. Quite an easy read; background of Cold War, spies etc. Of the four regular attendees who might have come, two were away but Ali and Lesley managed to make it. Ruth had tackled a new recipe involving halloumi-stuffed meatballs in a chermoula sauce - the preparation involved some ridiculously middle-class bleating over the phone about how the Caversham Waitrose were out of chermoula. Luckily I did an emergency chermoula run to the bigger MK Waitrose and managed to get some. We served polenta as an accompaniment, which I'd only attempted to prepare once before and been slightly bemused by. It was OK. By the following day it had become a shiny bouncy lump as per the photo. We marvelled at it for a while, prodding it at intervals. I eventually cut off a couple of slices and fried them as a dinner accompaniment - OK but I can't say I'd go a long way to seek it out.

Ray came up to MK to visit me on the 27th and we went for dinner again at the Antep Kitchen over the road from Tesco. Busy and humming, as per the last time.

Went down to Abergavenny the last weekend in September, stopping on the way at Westbury Court Garden, to make yet more use of our NT cards. I'd located it on the map as being reasonably conveniently located en route - the blurb claims it's the finest example of a
Dutch-style water garden in the country. It turned out to be a small place (euphemism for the fact that it didn't have a tea room, which we were a bit disappointed about, though I think the lady at the admissions hut might have been selling KitKats) but it's a dear little formal garden with some eye-catching planting.

Cone-shaped trees	One of the canals
Prettiness	Reputedly the oldest evergreen oak in England

Cultural stuff done so far in 2017

This House [play]

Garrick Theatre, 7 January 2017

AMAZING play. Pretty much the best play I've seen. Given that I'm not at all a politics junkie this is quite a statement.

Think this was an outing for Ruth's birthday. We had lunch beforehand in the Cork & Bottle, a lovely cellar wine bar on Cranbourn Street.

Interesting set in that they had members of the audience sitting on stage in what was meant to be seating in the House of Commons. I wasn't sure whether they'd been selected/applied for this beforehand, or whether they were just nabbed on the night.

Ruth in the Cork & Bottle

Interval. Members of the audience wandering around the stage

'Scots Jews' [exhibition]

Jewish Museum London, 21 January 2017

Exhibition of photographs by Judah Passow. This was a New Year outing with Helen. Think I just came across it in a search of 'stuff on in London'. Very interesting pics, and I never even knew the Jewish Museum existed - it's dead swish.

Here's Helen by a giant screen of some sort.

Helen by a screen

The Boys in the Band [play]

Vaudeville Theatre, 10 February 2017

We got tickets for this as it was apparently a revival of a significant 1968 play, was on a very short West End run and Mark Gatiss was in it, though it was a bit extravagant to go given that it wasn’t long after This House. It was OK though both Ruth and I were a bit underwhelmed by it. Here's a Guardian review. It's probably one of those plays that hasn't aged too well.

Susan Calman: The Calman Before the Storm [comedy]

Newbury Corn Exchange, 4 March 2017

Having chuckled at Glaswegian lawyer-turned-comic Calman's performances on Radio 4's The News Quiz, I started following her on Twitter a while back and we managed to get tickets for the Newbury performance of her 2017 tour. It was amusing enough, perhaps sensibly tailored more for a middle-class/aged Radio 4-listening audience rather than a gay audience.

America after the fall: Painting in the 1930s [exhibition]

Royal Academy of Arts, 18 March 2017

Went to this with Ray. Apparently it was the first time out of the States for Grant Wood's American Gothic. The blurb said "Experience the life of 1930s America through the many masterpieces in this landmark show."

Whitney: Can I Be Me [film]

Watershed, Bristol, 11 June 2017

I was never a huge fan of Whitters – I mean a great voice, obviously, but not really the sort of singing that appeals to me. However, Ruth fancied seeing this and it was actually very interesting, particularly in the way it covered her ambiguous relationship with her friend and assistant Robyn Crawford, and the clash between Robyn and Bobby Brown that seems to have led to Robyn’s disappearance from Houston’s life.

Queer British Art: 1861 - 1967 [exhibition]

Tate Britain, 1 July 2017

Very interesting exhibition. And I bought the book, which I don't usually, but it was reasonably priced. Shortly after the exhibition we caught a TV documentary about Hannah 'Gluck' Gluckstein, whose 1942 self-portrait features on the cover of the exhibition guide, pictured below.

Giacometti [exhibition]

Tate Modern, 1 September 2017

As per mention here.

Think that's all. Must schedule in some more stuff. Perhaps a ukulele orchestra next.

Walk from Theale via North Street and Englefield, 4.2 miles

24 September

Shortish walk out of ‘Rambling for Pleasure around Reading’.

Parked at the car park at the eastern end of Theale High Street. At this end of the village, the old route of the A4 can be clearly seen leading towards the M4 before ending in a dead end as it reaches the embankment carrying the motorway. There’s a pedestrian footbridge, presumably built at the time the road was cut off when the village was bypassed in the early 1970s, that leads over the M4 to Pincents Lane.

Old route of the A4, looking west towards Theale

Theale has the look of somewhere that was once quite a bit more significant than it is now – which it presumably was given that it must have once been on the main route from Bristol to London. The high street has quite a number of inns and some sizeable buildings, and the village has an unfeasibly enormous village church. Theale’s website claims that ‘Theale was a service station long before the advent of the motorways.’

From the car park we turned left onto a footpath and headed north, crossing a golf course, to the hamlet of North Street. Walked through the village and bore left towards the A340, crossing the road and heading straight on into Englefield. Passed the tea rooms, which we had been hoping would be open on a Sunday, but they’re evidently not. The gardens of Englefield House do open to the public, as Ruth and I visited a few years ago, but not at weekends (which I had forgotten). In fact the link states that they’re only open on a Monday, so it sounds as though they’ve reduced the opening hours further. Ruth went for a browse around the garden centre while I mooched about the driveway taking a photo of the 'Gardens Closed' sign.

The main driveway has evidently been designated as a Permitted Path (or so the walk book told us), so we walked down it and out through the main gates. Crossed over and walked down Englefield Road back into Theale.

Map of the route below:

(Almost) circular walk around Milton Keynes, 13.9 miles

27 August

Walked with Hai, Matthew and Sara roughly around the route of Heritage Cycle Trail A. The full thing is a 15-mile circular route, though in fact I bowed out slightly before the end, being knackered and it being a hotter day than I find ideally comfortable for walking.

Hai, Matt and I were scheduled to meet at Matt’s house in Willen Park, though I got off the number 7 bus a stop too early (not the first time) so took longer than planned to get to them, so actually met them setting out towards the canal. Both sensibly wearing hats – it was a warm day but I’d managed to leave my sunhat back in Reading. We set out northwards up the canal towpath, meeting up with Sara near Giffard Park. Walked through Linford Manor Park and along the canal to the old railway bridge. Diverged from the Heritage Trail route to follow an alternative route Matt knew, coming out by the Grafton Street Aqueduct. Took a path on the opposite side of the canal from the towpath – I hadn’t even known you could walk up this side – coming out in the Secret Garden at Wolverton. We paused for some photos by this sculpture of an old couple, apparently installed in the garden in 2007.

We walked up into Wolverton and followed McConnell Drive for a fairly dull stretch as far as the H2. Crossed the H2 and walked into Bancroft Park, pausing by the Roman Villa before walking along to the concrete cows, which Hai had particularly wanted to see. We lingered a bit while she attempted to mount one of the larger cows, before giving it up and mounting a calf instead.

Bancroft Roman Villa	Me at the Roman remains

After leaving the cows we passed under the H3 into Bradwell Abbey and followed a path down to Lodge Lake. We stopped in Loughton for a short snack – I think Matt would have happily powered on the whole distance without stopping, but Sara kindly suggested we stop, probably hearing my laboured breathing behind her. From Loughton we walked south-eastwards to Furzton Lake, passing through Shenley Lodge with its collection of interesting houses. Didn’t know anything about the Energy World project before, but perhaps must go for more of a meander around the area. One of the more striking houses we saw is mentioned in this interesting 2014 piece on the architecture of Milton Keynes (which also mentions Wolverton Park).

Hai with a cow	Some cow love
Calf mount	The cows

Hai, me and Sara with a cow

We were only at Furzton Lake quite briefly, but it seems quite pretty. Busy on the day we were there. Stopped for a welcome ice cream/lolly. Made our way back up northwards towards MK Central station, passing the National Bowl - I was dimly aware of this but didn't know much about it, but it seems as though some quite eminent people have played there. By the time we reached the station I'd had enough, so took leave of the others and caught the bus back to Wolverton, leaving them to tramp on through Central MK and Campbell Park back to Willen.

Map of the route:

Here’s the pace vs. elevation graph. There generally isn’t much elevation on a walk around MK, but looks as though we reached a reasonable pace at times. As expected, Matt and Sara were the pace-setters, with Hai and I some way behind for most of the walk, though the front-runners paused periodically to let us catch up. Some people just have to rush everywhere.

Birthday week

Took a few days off for my birthday back in August. For the day itself (a Wednesday), booked myself in for a Spa Day at Aqua Sana Woburn Forest, Center Parcs' newest 'village', opened in 2014. Had been quite impressed by my visit to the spa at Longleat Forest back in 2009; also had heard a number of glowing reviews of the Woburn Forest spa from people at the OU, especially my colleague Jill, who actually spent Christmas at Center Parcs a couple of years ago and recently spent a Luxury Spa Break there with her husband to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. The LSBs are rather expensive but I've tried hinting to Ruth that one might be nice for some special occasion, but have so far got rather a lukewarm reaction.

Have set up an Aqua Sana account, just in case I may want to go again. According to the copy of Spa Escape I picked up, the revamped AS website offers 'a fast track to spa bliss'.

Spa Escape also noted that, although spas are attracting more men than they used to, the UK still lags far behind the rest of Europe when it comes to spa-going. I saw a few men there, most with their wives or girlfriends though I did see a group of three chaps together making their way to the restaurant. My boss Judith recently told me a story of a work trip to Germany she once went on, where it was quite the done thing for work colleagues to go to the spa together after work, presumably in much the same way as Brits might go to the pub. Clothes were apparently not worn. Both our minds boggled somewhat at the thought of sitting around naked with your workmates/superiors, but I suppose it’s normal in context … Tricky to give someone a stern talking-to about their work progress the following day though if you’ve been nude in front of them the evening before??

Found my way to the Center Parcs site relatively easily but managed to become confused once inside and drove several times around a massive featureless car park, before retracing my steps to the entrance lodge in hangdog fashion, to be given directions by the friendly girl on duty. On arrival, discovered I was entitled to a complimentary coffee and pastry, which I didn't need to eat having in fact had coffee and pastries before leaving the flat, but did anyway. Changed and spent a pleasant few hours mooching about the various different areas within the spa, including a brief swim in the little pool. I had booked an Elemis Intensely Cleansing Salt Scrub (frangipani-fragranced), which was pleasant though more modest than the two previous all-over body scrubs I've had at spas, in that the therapist kept you partially covered by a towel the whole time (despite the paper pants) and confined the scrub to legs and the upper part of the back, leaving me - as I am, to Ruth's surprise, relatively unself-conscious in a spa environment - with a vague feeling that I hadn't quite got my money's worth. The spa itself is very nice with an impressive number of different rooms.

My first visit to Center Parcs was with a group of other young(ish) people in 1991. Can't seem to find a photo of myself, but here's a photo of two of the other women in the group, neither of whom I am still in touch with. The chalets have been poshed up a good bit since this. That visit was to Elveden Forest in Suffolk, at the time one of only two CP sites in the country, the other being CP's first village at Sherwood Forest in Notts. Sherwood's spa has evidently recently had a refurb and looks jolly nice. Already pondering how I might justify a visit.

On the Thursday, did some domestic stuff including arranging things in my lovely new Joseph cutlery organiser. Pic nicked from John Lewis, but I'm sure they won't mind as I've spent plenty of money there over the years. Drawer was certainly in need of a clean out.

Then went for a 7-mile walk via the new housing development at Oakridge Park, via Great Linford, where I stopped for a cup of tea at the Costa at the little shopping centre, and then into Central MK.

Grand Union Canal near Oakridge Park

Went down to Abergavenny for the weekend and baked myself some birthday fairy cakes to accompany a tub of gin and tonic-flavour icing I'd bought from Lakeland. Also baked a batch of regular fairy cakes, which Nia and Alys helped to ice and decorate - I'd purchase the tub of jelly diamonds imagining one per cake, but after Nia had arranged about eight on her first cake I abandoned the idea of there being any left over.

On the Saturday Mum, Ruth and I walked over to Abergavenny Castle to see a quite interesting exhibition in the museum on significant local women.

Castle grounds with Blorenge behind

Walk around Hurley and Temple, 6.9 miles

12 August

Bit of retrospective walk blogging.

Picked Ray up from the marina early and drove to Marlow. Parked in the car park off Institute Road and walked up to Bill’s on West Street, where Ray treated me to brunch as an early birthday present. After stuffing ourselves we waddled off down Portlands Alley to Pound Lane. Turned down Lower Pound Lane and walked for a while past what seemed to be the development of a flood relief scheme. As we passed the private house Pens Place Ray speculated as to whether there might once have been a larger and older house of that name nearby, but I couldn’t find anything on a Google search.

Reached the river and paused for a while for Ray to point out some planting across at Temple Marina that a friend of his had done, plus the new house owned by the marina owners. Walked on past Temple Lock and over the elegant footbridge, where Ray paused to ring his sister Sharon, who lives in the residential bit of Hurley Riverside Park with her partner Keith, to see if she was available for visitors – Sharon is currently laid up with her ankle in plaster following a fall down her decking steps. To give her time to get sorted we had a pleasant stroll around Hurley, including walking a short way down a footpath leading off the high street.

Old road from Hurley to Temple

This piece has some interesting stuff about an old tunnel running from the Olde Bell to the Priory. Didn’t spot the entrance gate pillars of the former driveway to Temple House referred to – will have to go back and have another look. The former Temple House looks to have been a big old pile judging by this photo. There’s now a new-build (though olde-style) house called Temple House next to Temple Marina, apparently formerly owned by the marina owners according to Ray but now sold as a private house. Rightmove picture here.

After leaving Sharon and Keith's, we walked along the old road - Temple Lane - leading from Hurley to the village of Temple - apparently this was an actual road for cars at one point though I haven't been able to find out when it was closed to traffic. Just before reaching Temple, some fellow walkers pointed out the jolliness that somebody had added to these slabs.

We continued on through Temple village to join the road that runs off the roundabout through Bisham and over the suspension bridge into Marlow. We had tea and cake at Satollo before returning to Caversham.

Ray on Marlow Bridge

Route below.

Here's the pace/elevation graph, though being mainly near the river there wasn't much elevation to speak of.