Trip to England

We got back from England on Sunday where we had a wonderful family time with my daughter and her family and we also met up with my nephew and family who were visiting from the States. So, it was all a little chaotic, but lots of fun, all planned around baby naptimes with lots of sticky hugs. We were wined and dined royally.

I had never spent much time in the Oxford area, so enjoyed trips to various places. The picture above is from Buscot Park. It is a National Trust garden and they had a really interesting mixture of gardens. This picture is showing the paths that went off for ages, very straight, but intersected by other paths and water gardens, there was really a long way you could walk around with interesting statues, ponds and water features. There was also a walled garden where they had an interesting mixture of fruit trees trained up the walls and flowering shrubs mixed together with runner beans and cabages amongst other things. Really, mixtures of plants and vegetables I would not have thought of mixing, but they actually looked quite interesting and sculptural together. Something to think of in future garden plans.

Another day we went to see the Uffington White Horse, which you can barely make out in this picture, but it was visible for miles around as it was cut into the chalk hills. We walked up the hill to see it close up and see the spectacular view of the countryside from the top of the hill. It was so lovely to see the green of the countryside and we even enjoyed the clouds and sprinkles of rain - something we have not seen since April in Doha. In fact, I dont even think there were clouds when it sprinked with rain there - it just seemed to come out of the blue sky. I took lots of pictures of clouds while I was in England and lots of pictures of green fields and trees!

Another place we went to in the area was Avebury, where they have huge stone circles made out of smaller rocks than Stonehenge. They are really spread over a wide area and we walked around quite a bit of it. Interesting to see a few stones missing where there was a lovely stone house nearby - I gather the same thing happens near the great wall of China! I had wanted to visit Avebury for a long time and was well worth the visit. It is certainly a very historic area with excavations that looked like it might have been a moat and barrows in various places in the countryside. A very ancient place.

We also went to Oxford. I had been there a very long time ago and had gone to the Ball there with an old boyfriend. I really could barely remember it although I am sure it hasn't changed much. The buildings are just as old and lovely as always. One place I hadn't been to before was the Pitt Rivers museum which is the picture above. You get to it through the natural history museum. The Pitt Rivers is mostly about different cultures, but it is arranged in an interesting way with like items together, so you will have a case full of baskets from N. America, Africa, etc. then the next case will be pottery from different places. An interesting way to display it. It was the complete opposite of our museum in Doha, here there was so much stuff, everthing was crammed together. It was so dark you took flashlights with you to shine on things to see them. We had very little time before they closed, so plan to go back. The Natural history museum was also crammed full with tons of dinosaurs and rocks and various bits and pieces, stuffed animals, you name it - even a dodo bird. Definitely a place you could spend days in. The Ashmolean museum unfortunately was closed for renovations, so look forward to going there when it opens again. It was really interesting to explore a different part of the country as we usually just go straight to Devon. However, we spent some time at the house there and tomorrow I will show some pictures.