There is nothing quite so English as.........

There isn't I tell you. There couldn't be anything quite so English as the English. I know it sounds like stating the bleeding obvious but it is true.
Firstly there is the game of cricket on the village green, clapping politely as the chap you would love to see heading back to the pavilion gets another boundary or just a good ball that doesn't have any bearing on the outcome of the game, cricket is all that is English.

The Village Game of Cricket

Of course the village could not have the game if there were no village and some of these are very noteworthy themselves even without any cricket. Even the names could only be in England, Upper and Lower Slaughter spring to mind. We were staying only last week in Eyam and our neighbouring village was ""Stoney Middleton" don't know where they got that from.

  

Stoney Middleton and, above that, our cottage in Eyam

We have moved on now to Aston something or other, there are lots of Aston somethings around here, we are in the Cotswolds and the English village really comes into it's own in the Cotswolds. There's another thing, all cottages need a name, in Eyam we were in Hawthorn Cottage and now in Aston something or other we are in Roseberry Farm Cottage. Anyway every English village really really needs a pub that is several years old, if we had just one of these pubs in New Zealand it would be famous throughout the land, but here you expaect one or more in each village. We went to one today, the Fleece in Bretforton, and it was a cracker. The National Trust own this one but it is run on a purely commercial basis.

The Fleece at Bretforton

Another very English thing we happened upon today is the Narrow Boat, about 3 feet wide and twenty yards long, these were designed to ply the canals which themselves are not much wider. They are very popular and the canals are liberally sprinkled with the aforementioned pubs which I am sure adds to the attraction of narrow boating. I would love to have a go at this past time, it looks like a lot of fun.

A Narrow Boat Marina

The boats seem to be kept in very good condition and are painted ever so nice and bright, often with some advertising on the side to remind us of the commercial origin of the canal system.

The English cottage garden is admired by all who come by it, and justifiably so. They are full of colour and seem to thrive much to Mrs Currin's puzzlement, why do they do so well when they have such short and severe seasons or maybe that is why they do so well and of course there is the rain and plenty of it so watering isn't a problem. It has rained every day since we have been here, tomorrow is supposed to be "dry". Here's hoping! People just say "Well this is England" and that explains it all.

A Kiwi Rose in an English Cottage Garden

The English Cottage Garden

Yesterday we met and dined with my distant cousins who live in Burton on Trent. It was just fantastic, they are a great couple and it was a pleasure that I would hope that we can repeat sometime.

  We Had a Lovely Lunch with Ray and Jane in Burton on Trent

 Anyway Jane is very much into folk music, it is her hobby, probably almost a passion, so I must be very careful about my next very English topic so as to not offend her, but really I cannot get my head around Morris Dancing. We came across a troupe or three at the Fleece today. I shall say no more.

Assorted Morris Dancers. (I thought the middle ones were a bikie gang till they stared jingling)

Anyway a good time was had by all so I am told.

 We went back to Chesterfield before moving south and I managed a pic. of the wonkey spire on St Mary's church. This is another of England's little eccentricities, wonkey buildings. Some of then seem to defy gravity, they look as though they should just give up and fall over. Just look at the back wall of the Fleece!

Was this a wonkey design or poor workmanship?

I have by no means exhausted the list of things which are so peculiarly English but maybe I will add to it as we go on. I would just like to say that I congratulate the All Blacks and whoever it was that beat Australia today.

All the best

David 

Weather Takes a Turn For The Better

Yes, we actually saw some blue sky today and the temperature briefly touched 20 C on the car's gauge, but soon after it was 15 so it may have been a bit of a hiccup. However it was very much OK for a trip down to Stoke on Trent, just for a look, and on to Biddulph Grange, Ashbourne and Tissington which are all worthy of a good looking at and so that is what we did.
Biddulph Grange is a magnificent garden run by the National Trust, created by it's visionary owner James Bateman with the plants he collected from his world travels including, so we are told, a flax from New Zealand.

Biddulph Grange Garden and House

The Lawnmower Collection

Tissington is a village owned by the Fitzherbert family who still occupy the hall, it is a charming wee village with some great little cottages to look at. We came across four people sitting on the benches at the front of their houses, reminded me of "the last of the summer wine", but they were friendly enough, wanted to know from whence we came.

Tissington Hall

A couple of Cottages in Tissington

Tissington is best know for the annual event known as "Well Dressing". This is not, as I had thought, a ritual akin to Morris Dancing where people dress well in oldy worldy costumes and make prats of themselves, rather the dressing of wells, you know the sort that you get water from. It is thought to have originated as a way of thanking the Lord for the unending supply of clean water that the wells provided and it is thought this could have prevented the plague. Whatever, it is carried out each ascension week and the wells are decorated with petals and cones and whatever else pressed onto a board which has been soaked in the village pond and covered in clay. Some 50,000 visitors come to see the spectacle each year, so there!

Hall Well, 1 of 6 which are dressed for Ascension Week

That, then, is all we have been up to over the past couple of days. We did venture into Chesterfield the other day and we will be going back. I want to have another look, as it looks like it deserves a couple of our hours. It has a church, and this is it's claim to fame, with a crooked spire. It is very crooked and I had thought that it had been built this way, you know as a point of difference, a bit of a touristy thing but no, it seems that green timber was used and as it dried it twisted into the crooked spire it is today. I shall get a picture of St. Mary's crooked spire, I shall.

Well that is all that I have and so I will leave you in peace.

All the best and look after yourselves

David

Arrivederci Italia, Hello Brtain

Bye Bye Italy, we are ready to move on once more and so it's on to Leonardo da Vinci airport to board our Alitalia flight to Heathrow, didn't start off to good with about an hours delay due to a "technical" problem..oh well. Not the best airline we have traveled on, but not the worst either. Having gone from Berlin to Dubrovnik with Germanwings which is Lufthansa's budget airline we expected Alitalia to come up winners in any comparison but Germanwings far exceeded our expectations, maybe something to do with having a nutter pilot fly one of their planes into a mountain. Can't have passengers thinking bad things about our airline! Anyway, I digress, we arrived in Britain on 3 June a little late and so did not get to our hotel in Maidstone until a little later than we would have liked. The reason for Maidstone was to give us a head start in going to the Dockyard in Chatham which I had visited on a previous trip and wished to complete. Mrs Currin was going to accompany me on this occasion, but we could not justify the more than $50 each admission for something I had already seen and to which Mrs Currin was not actually busting to go to. A few other sights were on our list in the Kent and Sussex area but we found that we had already been there as well, so really a wasted day to start our Britain visit, oh well again. We needed to get up into Suffolk that night as by Wednesday we were due to stay with some friends from one of our river boating trips and they live right up in Lincolnshire in Stamford a charming town built almost entirely from the local honey coloured stone.  Nearby is Burleigh, famous for the horse trials but we had visited on a previous trip so spent some time being shown around Stamford, they have the most amazing Ironmongers there which I thoroughly enjoyed browsing around. Patrick, our host, now 80 had been a bit of a big wheel in the brewery and had worked in the local branch at some stage of his career. He had done a full brewing apprenticeship which included  a few months learning the art of cooperage having made a Ferkin as his test piece. He is a very interesting fellow and him and wife, Barbara, proved to be most excellent hosts. We stayed only two nights but had a most wonderful time including a lunch at the "George" which apparently has a reputation second to none in the area. Friday morning and it is off to Eyam, known as the Plague Village.

The history of the plague in the village began in 1665 when a flea-infested bundle of cloth arrived from London for the local tailor. Within a week his assistant George Vicars was dead and more began dying in the household soon after. As the disease spread, the villagers turned for leadership to their rector, the Rev. William Mompesson, and the Puritan Minister Thomas Stanley. They introduced a number of precautions to slow the spread of the illness from May 1666. They included the arrangement that families were to bury their own dead and relocation of church services to the natural amphitheatre of Cucklett Delph, allowing villagers to separate themselves and so reducing the risk of infection. Perhaps the best-known decision was to quarantine the entire village to prevent further spread of the disease.

The plague ran its course over 14 months and one account states that it killed at least 260 villagers, with only 83 surviving out of a population of 350. This figure has been challenged on a number of occasions with alternative figures of 430 survivors from a population of around 800 being given. The church in Eyam has a record of 273 individuals who were victims of the plague. Survival among those affected appeared random, as many that remained alive had had close contact with those who died but never caught the disease. For example, Elizabeth Hancock was uninfected despite burying six children and her husband in eight days (the graves are known as the Riley graves after the farm where they lived).^[13] The unofficial village gravedigger, Marshall Howe, also survived despite handling many infected bodies.

Plague Sunday has been celebrated in the village since the plague's bicentenary in 1866 and now takes place in Cucklett Delph on the last Sunday in August. Originally it was held in mid-August but now coincides with the much older Wakes Week and the well dressing ceremonies.

The Boundary Stone. Today Eyam has various plague-related places of interest. One is the Coolstone in which money, usually soaked in vinegar, which was believed to kill the infection, was placed in exchange for food and medicine. It is just one of several 'plague stones' that served to make the boundary that should not be crossed by either inhabitant or outsider. Another site is the isolated enclosure of the Riley graves mentioned above, which is now under the guardianship of the National Trust.

A reminder of the village's industrial past remains in the name of its only pub, the Miner's Arms. Built in 1630, before the plague, it was originally called The Kings Arms. Opposite the church is the Mechanics' Institute, originally established in 1824,^[17] although the present building with its handsome pillared portico dates from 1859 and was enlarged in 1894. At one time it held a library paid for by subscription, which then contained 766 volumes. The premises now double as the village club. Up the main street is the Jacobean-styled Eyam Hall, built just after the plague. It is currently managed by the National Trust and was opened to the public in March 2013. The green opposite has an ancient set of village stocks reputedly used to punish the locals for minor crimes.

Catherine Mompesson's tabletop grave is in the churchyard and has a wreath laid on it every Plague Sunday. This is in remembrance of her constancy in staying by her husband, rather than moving away with the rest of her family, and dying in the very last days of the plague. The church's burial register also records "Anna the traveller, who according to her own account, was 136 years of age" and was interred on 30 December 1663. A more recent arrival there is the cricketer Harry Bagshaw, who played for Derbyshire and then acted as a respected umpire after retiring. At the apex of his headstone is a hand with a finger pointing upwards. Underneath the lettering a set of stumps is carved, with the bails flying off and a bat which has just hit the wicket.

Respect for its heritage has not always been a priority in Eyam. In his Peak Scenery (1824), Ebenezer Rhodes charges that by the start of the 19th century many former gravestones of plague victims had been pulled up to floor houses and barns and that ploughing was allowed to encroach on the Riley Graves; that the lime trees planted on either side of Mrs Mompesson's grave had been cut down for timber  that the missing piece from the shaft of the Saxon Cross had been broken up for domestic use and that in general the profit of the living was put before respect for the dead.

An Interesting Painting by Constable of the Old Waterloo Bridge before it was demolished. The room in which it hangs at Ickford is made entirely of timber salvaged from that bridge.

Also at Ickford

Yesterday we went to Arkwright's Mill, a cotton mill from the 1780s and which is said to have been the real beginning of much of industry as we know it today. Prior to then all cotton had been spun by skilled women in their homes with a spinning jenny. Arkwright developed a mechanised method powered by water and operated entirely by unskilled woman and children. They worked a full 12 hour day, but with a generous quarter hour for morning tea and a full hour for lunch, both breaks having to be taken on site so as to be fully controlled by Mr Arkwright. Staff had to clock on and clock off. He provided their housing as well and so had complete control over his workers. Production was increased a thousand fold and his model mill was copied hundreds of times around the country, Mr, later Sir Richard, Arkwright owning a high percentage of them himself becoming a very very wealthy man.

We also went on a short train ride up the Derwent valley.

Train Driving

Other Eccentrics at Cranford by Arkwright's Mill

Today we lunched with an old Naval Colleague whom I had not seen for 50 years and had a most wonderful time reminiscing, well maybe not Mrs Currin nor Mrs Dick, but for Clem and I there was a lot of catching up to do.

REA Currin RNZN with CEA Dick RN

The weather since arriving in Britain has not been the greatest to be quite honest, raining a lot and quite chilly, although the locals keep telling us "but it is still quite warm". When we arrived in Eyam on Friday night it was as if we were driving along a river such was the down pour. Still this is England we keep reminding ourselves.

That is all for now, look after yourselves and best wishes,

David

A Flurry Of Hilltop Towns

The time has come when we must say "arrivederci" to Italy and move ever onwards to the next adventure. We have thoroughly enjoyed our stay here, but it will be nice to be able to get familiar food and to be understood. I had to top up my phone the other day and so off to the WIND SHOP we went where we were handed over to a fluent English speaker. He promptly asked "You are not English where do you come from?" "New Zealand" I replied. "Ah that is why I can't understand you, please speak slowly." He was extremely helpful and sorted my phone in no time flat, but we have been asked if we are German and all sorts. This was over in Abruzzo where not many tourists go, I can't understand why as it is a fantastic area and so much cheaper than Rome and the regular tourist spots.
In Rome we, Jill and I, kept our appointment with Papa Francisco, but the cheeky sod didn't turn up so we had a look around his home and garden while Lee and Murray dodged lightening bolts. There is a fantastic sense of history in the Vatican and the art work, of course, is priceless with works by Boticelli, Michael Angelo and Raphael by way of frescos. Rodin's "Thinker" sculpture is also here (as well as in the Louvre). There are seven kilometers of museum collections and so it is impossible to see more than just a fraction of it.
My personal favourites were the hall of maps and St. Peters Basilica. I probably should include the Sistine Chapel, but having seen so many pictures etc of it I guess it is a matter of familiarity breeding contempt. Besides a Japanese TV network paid for the restoration of the artwork and hold the copyright on it so NO PHOTOS.

By Raphael

Guards by Switzerland

The Magnificent Ceiling In The Hall of Maps

Rodin's Thinker

With Murray and Jill's departure we headed east to Abruzzo, the area of Italy less traveled and completely unknown to us. It has many hilltop villages and towns and they are spectacular, we just love them as they give a glimpse of how life used to be in Italy. One of our favourites was Civitella del Tronto where we  over nighted in a pleasant B&B. That night we went up to a restaurant and overlooked our B&B, next door was a flock of sheep being tended by a shepherd. Cicitella del Tronto was founded around 1000 years ago and it ran through my mind that this scene was also at least that old, that was, at least, until the shepherd hopped into his landcruiser and went off home for the night. That is not the end of it though as the illusion reappeared when we noticed that he had left the flock under the charge of two dogs, not one sheep strayed and dogs and sheep all settled down for the night. There are still wolves, and allegedly bears, in the nearby woods and this truly was a scene from Biblical times.

The Flock of Sheep with Rover 1 and Rover 2 to the left. They look like two more sheep.

(My apologies for the poor quality of the picture)

Civitella del Tronto

And so our tour of Abruzzo, and later Umbria, continued with more gems uncovered by the hour. Another bonus of touring in this area is the cheapness, with coffees costing 1 Euro and a meal for around 6.

Last night we spent in another hilltop town where we also spent most of today. By chance there was a gathering of the Fiat Club d'Itallia and what a colourful sight that proved to be. I remember these little machines in abundance on the autostradas back in the sixties when I first came to Italy and it is great to see them still going strong.

It is great to see these wee beauties.

But not quite so great to see this on the steps of a cathedral.  

Is this the modern face of religion? 

(They were all around the Vatican as well.)

On that note I will bid you farewell, that is until we set up camp in  Britain, so take care and all the best.

David

Hvala Hrvatska (Thank you Croatia)

It has finally come to pass that we bid our farewell to Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast. We needed to be at breakfast by 06:30 so that we could catch our ferry across the Adriatic to Venice. The Hotel breakfast that morning was probably the best we had encountered, we have been getting a little tired of cheese and salami and bread. There always seems  to be oodles of bread, but no toaster, Murray hasn't found a coffee to call his own and the tea is, at best, mediocre so Jill, who drinks hot water is the only one guaranteed a drink to her liking. Even then they will sometimes put a tea bag in her hot water so even that has it's perils. Back to the ferry trip to Venice...after the aforementioned breakfast we trundled our very heavy bags down to the departure point  by the required 07:00 only to find a lengthy queue winding it's way from a wild west style ticket office where one was to exchange ones voucher for a ticket. As with everything over here there was passport checking to be done by the ticket people and then outdoors once more to a holding pen in a car park type area where the, yet to appear, ferry was to depart. The cheerful man (he had no right to be at this time of day) told us to join a queue and all would move very quickly once it got going. It may well have done but still no ferry, due to leave at 08:00. Finally ferry arrives at about 07:55 and things did happen quite quickly except happy man came and told Murray and Jill there was a problem and took their passports away and only just managed to return them in time for sailing, all stamped but with no explanation as to the problem.

Arrived in Venice just before lunch after our ferry turned into a tour bus and we had to endure a lecture, in German, on what all the people in the tour were supposed to do. We still had to get a water bus to the bus station then a land taxi to our hotel all with our heavy baggage once more. Boy! it is lucky that we like travelling. Anyway mission accomplished we were in Venice.  Oh did I mention returning the rental car in Porec. It was within waking distance of the hotel but took around two hours to accomplish. First Tom tom sent us into an area of roadworks which we tried to by-pass via a churchyard and a bit of a drive along a footpath, the workman just watched on with concealed amusement and still just watched as we had to retrace our steps over their roadworks, along the footpath and back through the churchyard. This was followed by a route around a large car park, one side of which had the name of the street on which Fleet rentals office was located but search as we might on our many laps of the car park Fleet rentals would not show themselves. We resorted to smartphone and google maps which revealed the error of our ways, it wasn't in the street on their brochure but in a small one off the street  off the the one in their brochure. Of course it was, we should have known. Trouble not finished yet, sign on door say closed away doing a delivery, so we had a cuppa at a nearby cafe, Murray's undrinkable mine OK, still no sign of Fleet man. Went back to the office which had a phone number..."no you not bring back until five, and I come to your hotel and pick it up, no can't change it". Oh well might as well return to our wives and wait. Back to the car, looks like there has been a bit of an accident, people standing around looking at damaged cars, old lady gabbling away at me in Croatian, I smiled, not understanding a word of it, then we noticed the dented car was actually in contact with our, as yet, undamaged rental. Fortunately any damage we were able to rub off so no problem. So that is how it can take around two hours to return your rental car a few hundred meters down the road.
We are in Venice and have done a hop on hop off water bus tour over two days, very good.
We now proceed by FIAT 500!

Not All Hotel Views Are Equal

A Croatian Farewell Diner.

Anyway, Venice it was for two nights before proceeding on to Lake Coma by way of Verona and Bellargio. Como is but about 10km from the Swiss boarder and it was the intention to just nip over the boarder for morning tea so that Murray and Jill could tick off another country on their CV but in reality they decided that they could do without it so on to Milan we went. Now Milano was hosting the European Premier cup winners final on this very day so the town was really buzzing which meant that a hop on hop off tour was about as much as we could manage before heading down to Genoa for the night. We have passed Genoa by on a few previous visits to Italy so it was a real pleasure to experience a little of this historic city's delights by way of a noddy train tour.

There Are Still Gondolas Available For Those That Can Afford Them

Murray Engaged In Some Serious Retail Therapy

Milan's Beautiful Cathedral

Chris. Columbus's Birth Place In Genoa

His And Hers

Historic Waterfront Genoa

One of the highlights, at least for Jill and I, was the Cinque Terre walk, taking in the five towns along the coast between Levanto and La Spezia, hard work but well worth the effort. Many thousands do this walk every  year. We were lucky in that we had an overcast day and it was a bit cooler than the 30 + C that we had been having so all was good. Only problem was that the last two legs were closed as they have been now since flooding in 2011 but these are quite short so never mind.

The Villages are Spectacular

The Track Can Be Demanding, Especially The Steps

These Two Aussies Couldn't Let A Bar Go By

The Emergency Evacuation Transport

Another Of The Cinque Terre Villages

Murray and Lee were to meet us at the last of the Villages we were doing, Corniglia, but texted us to advise a change of plan in that they would now see us at the railway station. We could see why.

Some of the hundreds of steps up from the station to Corniglia

And so that was Cinque Terra, it was just simply fantastic.

We have moved on now to Rome, it has been a whirlwind tour of Italy, but this has been of necessity as Murray and Jill must fly out of here on Thursday and so there will be only Lee and I then so maybe there won't be happy hour each evening and I shall be able to keep my blog up to date, just maybe. But we will miss them, there I have said it, but it's true.

Going for an audience with Papa Francisco tomorrow, at least Jill and I shall be. Murray and Lee said something about lightening and being struck down, so it's just Jill and I again.

And so that is that for now,

All the best

David