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!!
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| 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!
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| Gardens |
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| 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 . . .
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| Church Steeples St. Ives, Cornwall |
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| Bus negotiating Streets of St. Ives, Cornwall |
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| 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!)!!
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| Crop Circle near Badbury Rings (at top) |
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| Entry to Crop Circle |
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| 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..
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| Winchester Cathedral Interior |
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| Winchester Cathedral Crypt |
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| Winchester Cathedral Tomb |
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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!
