The Road Goes Ever On

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Petworth, 2022

Our spring, 2022, visit to the UK is primarily about gardens, which we'll visit mostly in the southern coastal counties and Wales. We're in mid-spring here, the camellias and bulbs and such just at or beyond peak and beginning to close out, the azaleas and rhododendrons and wisteria and much more coming on strong. It's largely a matter of species and micro climates and such, but it appears we have once more been fortunate on the timing. Plus, as I write, we've been on the island a week and have seen only an afternoon of light rain, and that while driving from Sevenoaks to Dibden. Oh yes, we rented a car at Heathrow, a VW Polo, and are driving ourselves around, myself feeling fairly pleased and accustomed to it all, even the left-handed shifting bit, Vicki constantly terrified as always. She'll be better now that we're out of the hedgerows and holloways and passing bays of Sussex and Kent.

Anyhow, in addition to the gardens, we'll do a great house or museum or cathedral now and then, favoring our favorites and adding something new when it appeals. We visited old friend Petworth on May 6th, a major art museum doubling as one of the greater great houses. We were there mostly for the art and because it was nearby and also for old times' sake. There have been a lot of old times...

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2009/10/petworth.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2013/06/petworth-2013.html

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2013/06/petworth-paintings.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/05/petworth-house-2016.html
https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2019/07/petworth-again.html.

All the best pix of the past decade or so are in the above, but a few new items warrant posting...sorry for any repeats...

Any concern we might have had about missing the height of
rhododendron season was allayed here

The weighing chair at Petworth...common in other
houses, but I don't think we've seen this here;
interpretations vary as to why guests were weighed
coming and going...maybe to ensure you ate and
drank well...maybe to ensure none of the silver was
leaving with you

Statue recently identified as that of a youthful
Nero, one of only three known

Just one of the twenty Turners, Hulks in the Tamar, c. 1811

The Leconfield Head of Aphrodite, attributed to
Praxiteles, fourth century BCE

Love the continuing use of Turner watercolors
to illustrate room uses and histories...

Full spring

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Woolbeding Garden, 2022

I've looked at the two posts from Woolbeding I did in 2016--https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/05/woolbeding-1.html and https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2016/05/woolbeding-2.html--and, with just a couple exceptions, don't have anything better to add. It is, as I said, an extraordinary contemporary gardener's garden. I would add that the little parish church is the oldest thing there--mentioned in the 1085 Domesday Book--and that the thing I called a "rootery" is actually a "stumpery," something we've since seen elsewhere on a couple occasions.

In 2016, Woolbeding did not have its kinetic Glasshouse, an octagonal sort of pyramidal glass house that opens out, flower-like, more or less daily. Below are a few pix, closed, the interior, and open. And, if Google and the local wifi cooperate, a stunning 5 minute video...

The video is at my YouTube channel, https://youtu.be/MFMfOa76oEg.

Midhurst, West Sussex, 2022

We were in West Sussex' Midhurst in 2016, camping at the Grange car park, a base for visits to the Woolbeding Gardens and to Petworth House. We were in Midhurst again this year, same basecamp, but this time staying at an AirBNB in town for four nights, enjoying the beautiful old market town as well as the major sites nearby. We did Woolbeding and Petworth again, too, but also spent a day just exploring Midhurst.