Summer 2014 - South London

What a wonderful 2014 summer – eating from a garden that we didn’t even plant, taking the train into Central London in about ½ hour, a huge park off the back yard that Henry VIII rode thru to visit Ann Boleyn, concerts, pubs, food, new friends, and an excursion to, into and around a crop circle – a real one!!

Rear of S. London House

We were offered the opportunity to house sit in a small “close” of homes in a very pleasant small town in South London. Our responsibilities were tending to the fantastic vegetable/herb/flower gardens, and lawn – and keeping the house in good condition and clean, and collecting the mail and reporting on it and other local news via email. Tough job, but someone had to do it!

Gardens

 

Neighborhood Fox

We flew to Heathrow a week before we were to meet the owners and drove out to Cornwall - down to St. Ives then Penzance and around Land’s End . . .

Church Steeples St. Ives, Cornwall

Bus negotiating Streets of St. Ives, Cornwall

Polperro Harbour, Cornwall

 . . . Then back up to the Exeter area. We knew we'd be getting into crop circle territory then, so we had searched the web for a current one and found a possibility. Our information was that it was near the ancient hill fort of Badbury Rings (seems most of them are near ancient mysterious sites), but until we asked in the parking lot there we had no idea how to find it. It was within a mile, marked only with a little arrow on the back of a road sign. We drove into a small parking area, and paid a modest entry fee (for losses to the farmer and some donated to the local church) to the farmer’s niece who was sitting in a van at the entrance to the huge barley field. So, google Badbury Rings Crop Circle to read more if you’re interested, but this is what we found – it was huge (it was harvested later that week – lucky us!)!!

Crop Circle near Badbury Rings (at top)

Entry to Crop Circle

Crop Circle from Ground

Having 6 weeks in one place was great – gave us an opportunity to explore nearby sites such as Oxford, Darwin’s house, Elthan Palace, Winchester and it’s outrageously beautiful cathedral, Dover with it’s bronze age boat, Roman House and WWII hospital caves under the castle and cliffs, Avebury and its accessible stone circle which we love more than Stonehenge, Devizes (with its crop circle museum), and much of London that we hadn’t explored before. We got really familiar with the bus routes and rode them lots, we walked the canal that passes right thru the northern part of the city and goes thru Camden Town with it’s fab international food court, spent time in the Jewish Museum, the Jewel Tower next to Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the Serpentine Gallery, Freemasons Museum, the original British Tate, Sloan Square Church noontime concerts, Albert Hall, Saatchie Gallery, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, Pace Gallery in the Royal Academy of Art, we explored the fantastic RR stations in different parts of the city (arrived at them from different stations in and around So. London), were awed by the huge and peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration (and the police without any guns!!!) that we happened into on our way to a concert in St. Martin’s-in-the-Field church and on and on and on..

Winchester Cathedral Interior

Winchester Cathedral Crypt

Winchester Cathedral Tomb

London is so so wonderful – it was a fantastic summer. We thank the owners of the lovely house and garden for allowing us this opportunity!

Seems it takes us longer and longer to post our news....

This post starts with Thanksgiving 2013 in Asheville, NC – our home town.  We were delighted with our role as ‘organizers’ of the Thanksgiving dinner that 50 people enjoyed in our Unitarian Congregation.  We are planning on doing it again in 2014….after so many Thanksgivings with lots of folks in our house, this was a ‘no-brainer’ for us and was great fun.

The day after, we left – in our new little and environmentally friendly KIA Rio - for our next house-sitting assignment in Portland, OR and after a night of venue hopping in Nashville, we headed west.  On the way we had a good visit with David’s brother and wife in Lincoln, Nebraska (they drove up from their home in Manhattan, Kansas - the Little Apple).  After Lincoln and an overnight in Cheyenne, we planned the next stop in Western Wyoming, but a scary run-in with a huge snow storm ended with an unplanned stay in Rawlins instead.  So, our visit with son John & his wife Sutton in Salt Lake City was shortened by a day.  From SLC we crossed southern Idaho into Oregon, made it thru another big snow storm in the Pendleton area and finally arrived in Portland – this is one HUGE country where the weather is, indeed, at times, as big as the country itself.

Lisa and Paul, owners of the house we were going to care for are delightful folks with a wonderful story of their own and live in a lovely renovated home in a great ‘hood in Portland.  

 They were off to Asia while we really took advantage of being in that great town:  had Christmas dinner with an old friend, attended many performances of music both before and after Christmas (this was a 200 strong tuba concert),

attended lectures at the University, saw plays. Enjoyed a visit with Kendra & Jim Golden who were passing thru in the motorhome we had shared with them for several years.  We met friends-of-friends and had several great lunches and dinners with them and with other couples who we met thru other connections.  Had a visit from son John who just happened to have an appointment in PDX while we were there, took walks marveling at the lovely Portland gardens – even in the mostly mild winter - and enjoyed being within walking distance of Whole Foods and the big in-town mall (with a skating rink where little kids had lessons that we became addicted to watching).

Time flew by and before we knew it Lisa and Paul returned and we were off to explore the exciting and wonderous Route 1 down along the CA coast – we loved it in years past but it had been a long time since we had done that drive.  We stopped in Eugene for dinner with a friend and a fun impromptu concert in a consignment shop; we stopped in Mendocino for a eagerly anticipated visit with our friend Shirley Frerick who lives in a gorgeous spot on magical land…while there we had a great visit with the folks at the Ford House Visitor Center on the headlands where we volunteered as docents for a summer a few years ago.  We had lunch at Nepenthes at Big Sur, stayed in San Luis Obispo, stopped in Venice Beach and went on to Borrego Springs for another visit with the Goldens. Then on to Tucson.

Except for Susan’s nasty cold/virus that just wouldn’t quit we had an exceptional time in Tucson!  We were treated to a get together by the IONS Tucson group, had lunch and dinner nearly every day with some of the wonderful friends we had made during the 7 years we lived there.  It was a really wonderful visit and so so good to see these really special folks.  On our way back to Asheville – 3 ½ months after we left – we did that endless drive thru Texas (but the presence of wind turbines gave us great joy) as did the spring flowers (like the dogwoods in Vicksburg) – the earth’s coming alive is so exciting, although winter and spring seem to fight it out during March and early April - here in Asheville the greening is breathtaking.

Now that we’ve been back awhile, David has been working on rebuilding the “purple” room downstairs that had to be dismantled because of the failed waterproofing on one wall (see the 'big dig' a prior post) – so, the framing, insulation, sheetrock and tiling are about done, and then with the taping and painting done we will have yet another room that we’re not sure what we will do with…

we’ve installed an outdoor shower and just love, love, love showering under the stars or in the sunshine.  We are open for guests after August 13th and hope you will consider a visit…..we are off tomorrow morning (1 July) to the UK to do another house sit...with a week in Cornwall and Devon first....crop circles here we come.  We'll try and report sooner about this new adventure....bye for now.

Many hugs, S&D