Exbury Gardens, 2026: The Rhodo Porno Continues, 2

 One more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

Just in case you'd like your own rhododendrons, the huge garden store
can satisfy your every need

Wisteria City

Very large fern tree

More laburnam tease

Part of an incipient Monkey Puzzle grove

A great handkerchief tree

Looking toward the river Beaulieu

Eat your heart out, Claude...

In spring, 1944, a German reconnaissance plane was shot down over 

Exbury; had it gotten back to France, the Germans might have figured

out that the D-Day landings would occur at Normandy, instead of at the

Pas de Calais, where everyone expected...

Because it was in this region primarily that the great Allied armada
was assembled; the plaque above commemorates the landing craft
crews whose troops attacked the beaches at Arromanches...

Again, the river Beaulieu, low-tide, near the coast

Love the cascades

Lastly, Exbury House; not open to the public

Facing the river

Exbury Gardens, 2026: Rhodo Porno, 1

We first visited Exbury Gardens in 2022 and were completely blown away. Like the Gardens' founder, Lionel Rothschild, we fancy rhododendrons, and there is no other place in GB, or anywhere else we know of, where they are more spectacular. Rothschild himself was more than a garden dilettante and financed expeditions to bring new and exotic specimens to Exbury. I can't possibly out-do my pix from 2022, here, and here, so I'll limit this post greatly. We were at the Gardens pretty much all day May 15th and took 310 pix between us. Though limited in scope, if not size, Exbury is one of the world's great gardens. We were there just past prime bloom--it's been a strange spring--but it was still pretty breathtaking. Alas, the photos never even approach doing justice to gardens like these. N. B. The Gardens have free wheel-chairs and rental scooters for those with disabilities.

The Exbury train engine and coal car chug by...something for the
kiddies, mostly, we surmise

Most burled tree ever, so far

Many such paths...

Another laburnam tease...

Other trees

Other flowers

Us, there; yes, it was cool, and later in the afternoon, the drizzle began...

Lunch, on-property, as we say in Orlando; quiche, salad, grains, pretty good;
we both had the same...most unusual

Winchester Cathedral, 2026

Winchester Cathedral is one of our three or four favorite English cathedrals...its great age and size, its architectural complexity, the many cultural treasures it contains, its salvation from near collapse at the end of the 19th century.... This was at least our 4th or 5th visit, and I won't attempt to give any sort of over-view of this historic and beautiful structure. To see pix from our previous visits, just enter "Winchester" in the search box. This visit, and one or two of the earlier ones, we took the tour, which was amazing and not to be missed.

Nave

A chapel with 12th century paint

In the north transept, Romanesque meets Gothic;
the Brits don't use these terms, of course; instead, Norman, for
Romanesque,  and a variety of terms for Gothic, mostly
perpendicular, which corresponds to rayonnant, and decorated,
to flamboyant 

The huge altar piece at the head of the choir (quire); there's
also a small screen at the bottom of the quire, where it's
supposed to be; the Brits were out of the loop by the time
the Council of Trent came along

Looking abaft...avast!

Monument to St. Swithun, bishop at Winchester, 852-862

Most of Winchester's oldest windows were destroyed in the Civil War,
then reassembled into more or less meaningless reconstructions; this
is a later intact set

In the Lady Hall (Mary cult)

Anne Boleyn (running gag)

In the aforementioned altar piece, Victorian age, hence
the Queen is included

Nave ceiling boss...the dice the Roman soldiers were casting
at the Crucifixion

Crossing, with one of the great organs

Now in the crypt, often closed in the spring because of flooding

We had to go back to feed the meter...on the way...peer-led education
underway

A favorite sign outside the west end of the cathedral: "walk this way,"
"pray this way"...to discourage townsfolk cutting through the great
church to save a few blocks' walking 

After a so-so lunch in the new refectory, we are in the cathedral
museum in the upper floors of the south transept...which
features, incidentally, the only cathedral elevator we've seen
in Europe

Model of the Norman church

Later, a mix of Romanesque and mostly Gothic (perpendicular/
decorated...)

Old ceiling boss, dragons biting each other's tails

Late 1800s photo of the south wall, threatening collapse;
some of the cracks were said to be wide enough for a small child
to crawl through

Enter William Walker, the diver who, "by his own hand,"
saved the cathedral, spending five years repairing and replacing
its under-water east-end foundations

In the Fisherman's Chapel and its shrine to Izaac Walton,
author of The Compleat Angler...

Among the beautiful William Morris windows

And the Jane Austen memorial