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!