Is Days Out the British equivalent of Days Inn?
Maybe OT: Are the tidal flats where King Whatshisname’s treasure wagons sank in the mud around there? That’s where those Oak Island guys should be digging.
That’s The Wash (and it was Evil King John of Robin Hood and Magna Carta fame) - which is the bit on the UK east coast that looks like someone’s taken a bite out of it - northern edge of Norfolk, in an area of the country called East Anglia. So just north of what’s designated the South East.
You’re thinking of King John losing his treasure in The Wash. The large squareish bay seen here.
And no, it’s East England, not South East.
My ancestral lineage has been traced to that area. Advances in DNA testing has my ancestors coming to the area from Finland around 1100 and adopting names from that area as surnames. Some came to America in 1634 and established towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts. A marriage between my great great grandfather and someone from another prominent family from the same area of England has allowed me to trace my heritage back almost 1200 years.
When I visited New England a few years ago, I was interested to note how many places were named for places in East Anglia (Ipswich, where my family is from, for example). And, of course, the original Boston is only a couple of miles from the Wash.
That could also be ‘The Blessing of Burntisland’ when a ferry containing the treasure of Charles 1st was lost in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh during the English Civil War.
There are is a lot of buried treasure to be found in the UK, lots of wrecks and ruins. It is easier on land and going off into the countryside with a metal detector is popular hobby. People do get lucky from time to time.
Local divers have been poking around in that mud for decades looking for this one and no luck finding the treasure.
https://www.burntisland.net/shipwreck/timeline.htm
Looks a very interesting area with a lot of history.
East Midlands, to be precise. I mean, The Wash is by East of England and East Midlands, but Sutton Bridge is in the Midlands. Just barely, but it is.
One of the few other places in this thread I’ve actually been to 
Well, “through”, more like.
Windsor Great Park is a really good day out for a walk. I also recommend Marwell Zoo and just going for a mooch about in Winchester which has a great cathederal.
I have a mental list of days out for this thread; and Winchester didn’t make the list - but simply because I don’t know it well enough. We stopped off for a few hours last year, on the way to Salisbury, and I really liked it - I wished we had been able to spend more time there. If I lead off with some thoughts, are you (@kferr) in a position to add to them? (Or anyone else, BTW.)
We got there late on a Sunday morning; Sunday is Market Day and Winchester has the best market I have seen in the UK outside of London. It was one of those markets which makes you wish you were in self-catering accommodation rather than a hotel, because that would allow you to buy loads of the fabulous foodstuffs. There were, I guess, more than a hundred stalls; just a joy to walk around.
We didn’t get to go round the cathedral, but we did see The Great Hall, which would be mighty impressive even if it didn’t have The Round Table on display.
OK, granted, it’s not The Round table – as in King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Guinevere and all that. It’s a 13th or 14th century “copy”, but quite a thing to see, all the same.
There are some grand old buildings and interesting ruins
The River Itchen flows through the city. It’s a chalk river - I recently found out just how rare these are. There are only about 200 in the world, and 85% of them are in south and east England. The water is fabulously clear, and there’s a lovely river walk which starts from Winchester City Mill, a preserved water mill owned and run by the National Trust. The Itchen is so pure and so full of fish that the mill has otters – in the city centre, mind – and an otter cam. You can watch the highlight reel on your visit.
They do wonderful cheese scones at the city mill, made by one of the ladies who works in the cafe there.
Weird Aside #1: as we were going into the mill, one of the persons at the desk asked the routine question, had we ever been there before? No, I said – and so they gave us a little background as first time visitors. The instant we stepped down to the mill race I realized that not only had I been there before, I had stayed there before, some half century ago. A quick google confirmed that yes, back in the day this had been a Youth Hostel*; we had stayed there on a family holiday. The space by the mill race was where the washrooms and toilets had been.
Weird Aside #2: whenever someone complains about health and safety gone mad, remember that half a century ago, if this child got up in the night to go for a piss, in the dark, there was nothing – nothing – preventing him from falling in a river.
That’s about as much as I know about Winchester. If anyone can add more, please do.
Streetviews:
The Old Bishop’s Palace: Google Maps
The Cathedral: Google Maps
The River Walk: Google Maps
Chalk rivers: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/habitats/freshwater/chalk-rivers
j
* - On the way out I fessed up that I was wrong about not visiting before. The desk staff got terribly excited, and wanted me to submit my memories of staying there in Youth Hostel days, because they were planning a feature and looking for first hand accounts. Sadly, all I can remember is in this post.
I went to Winchester for the day pre-Covid, and walked along the river to St Cross, a mediaeval almshouse community. All very picturesque:
http://autolycus-london.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-tale-of-two-cities-winchester-3.html
To be honest, when I go to a new place I’m more interested in finding good pubs than the history or architecture. But I have an interesting (to me anyway) Winchester story. Around 20 or so years ago I went on a motorcycle trip with a friend and his brother-in-law. We decided to meet at their in-laws house the first night. It just so happened that their father-in-law was the Arch Deacon of the cathederal and their house was the mansion behind the cathedral! My friend was married in the cathedral and has some stunning wedding photos with the big stained glass window.
Winchester is only a half hour away by train for me so I should plan another outing sometime.
My gf and a friend of hers visited London a few years ago. They visited pubs and cemeteries, that was it. They had a great time.
I’ve shared this thread with her and she’s going to ask her friend if she’d like to return to the UK to check out the shoppes, etc.
The Surrey Hills (Part One)
Sunday. We walked off St Martha’s Hill, down to the old Chilworth Gunpowder Mills and the (River) Tilling Bourne that powered them. In doing so we completed a Pandemic Project – this was our final section of the Downs Link long distance trail. Done it.
St Martha’s Hill is fabulous. The Surrey Hills are a hikers’ paradise, just a short trip from south London. There are (I guess) thousands of miles of walking; many largely unspoiled villages; pleasing market towns. There are vistas that are truly awe-inspiring. There is weird history everywhere.
They say that from the top of the tower of St Martha’s Church - which, incidentally, is in the middle of nowhere, no roads, nuthin’ – you can see 7 counties. The views are breath-taking. I can’t do them justice; these guys have a decent go:
When they do weddings, they have to off-road key personnel along a half-mile trail to get there. Similarly for funerals.
There are views like that a-plenty in the Surrey Hills. Here’s the one from nearby Newlands Corner:
Most vistas are south-facing, but from Reigate Hill you can see Docklands, London; and from Polesden Lacey you can see Wembley Stadium. From two different points on Box Hill you can see planes taking off from Gatwick and Heathrow.
St Martha’s Church lies on the Pilgrims’ Way (connecting Winchester and Canterbury), which may explain why there has been a church there for centuries. The current building is tiny and very lovely.*
Chilworth Gunpowder Mills are an eery and imposing ruin standing on the Tilling Bourne. Gunpowder manufacture was a major industry in the area. Supplies for the navy were taken by road the short distance to Shalford, and then by canal (Yes! The Wey And Arun Navigation! – see post #3) to Portsmouth.
Further down its course the Tilling Bourne provided the motive power for Shalford Mill, now a National Trust property. The thing I like best about Shalford Mill is that it was the headquarters of Ferguson’s Gang. Loosely styled on prohibition era gangsters, and made up of feisty young women (masked and anonymous, working under assumed names), Ferguson’s gang “terrorised” London Society, gatecrashing events for the purpose of making large, headline-grabbing donations to the then-fledgling National Trust.
Ferguson’s Gang was a group of fascinating women, some from troubled aristocratic backgrounds, others the daughters of wealthy merchants and industrialists.
They were fun and food-loving philanthropists, undaunted by bureaucracy and public opinion, breaking through legislation and gaining mass appeal. And above everything, they were dedicated to serving their cause of protecting England’s heritage.
When the Oxbridge Sanskrit scholar and adopted Cornish bard Margaret Steuart Pollard died at the age of 93 in 1996, her obituaries revealed that she had been Bill Stickers .
And then, they were almost completely forgotten. In the last few years, a new book has done a little to revive their memory.
j
* - But the tiniest and loveliest church in the Surrey Hills is the Mill Church on Reigate Heath. The local story (I used to live a short walk from it) is that in the days when the first son inherited, the second son had a military commission, and the third went into the church, a particular third son was so hopeless that no amount of money could buy him a living. His frustrated father bought a windmill, converted it to a church, and installed him there. This story may or may not be true, but the mill church exists (and functions as a church to this day).
Some links:
Pilgrims’ Way: Pilgrims' Way - Wikipedia
St Martha’s Hill: St Martha's Hill - Wikipedia
St Martha’s Church: St Martha's Church
Chilworth Gunpowder Mills: Chilworth Gunpowder Mills
Shalford Mill: Shalford Mill - Wikipedia
I used a couple of links from this site (the ones with the weird text boxes) – it’s a nice way to take a look around. Highlights of the Surrey Hills National Landscape
Polesden Lacey is a National Trust property. If you get to go there, take a moment to remember the work of Ferguson’s Gang. Polesden Lacey | Surrey | National Trust
Lovely! And it sounds like those ladies were masters of publicity.
Arundel (slight return).
It really was a slight return, as well. We were really on a trip to Littlehampton, three miles south, on the coast, and a nice place for a stroll along the prom. Here’s a view from Google Maps . But jeez, the town. Struggling seaside resorts were discussed upthread. Here, in the center it’s a mess of barbers, nail bars, betting shops, vape shops - and those are the ones that haven’t closed; on the seafront it’s just tat and terrible snacks. The stink of frying hangs in the air. Not so much faded elegance as faded forced jollity. But I digress. We decided to head for home via Arundel - but Sunday, June, Fathers Day, some Medieval Event in the Castle - no parking to be had, we stopped off at Amberly instead, a few miles upstream. And here, on the levels, we walked the levées - surrounded.by the hills of the South Downs. The river is to our left, pasture to our right.
j
[quote=“Treppenwitz, post:9, topic:963956”]…
you’ll see one with a functional phone, but generally the idea is redundant these days. Quite often you’ll find that an old village phone box is now used as an informal library/book exchange.
[/quote]
Off topic, but I know when someone is laid off in the UK, you say he was made redundant. Now, you’re saying phone booths are redundant these days, which sounds a bit odd to me. Does "redundant’ get used as a synonym for obsolete all the time? Just curious.
Not obsolete, but simply no longer needed or in use. A business may no longer need workers and they are made laid off according to redundancy laws. Old public phone boxes have become redundant because of everyone seems to carry a mobile phone.
I used to design computer networks and link redundancy was an important element of design. It can mean unused and held in reserve. The old red phone boxes are regarded as design classics and attractive items of street furniture. So they get adopted by community groups and turned into little book exchanges. Some people bought them for their gardens.
Redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing. There is usually a generous payoff.
Bonfires!
It’s getting towards that time of year here. One bonfire you can go to and one you can’t.
Brockham is one of those places that gets mentioned when the subject of “prettiest village” crops up. The village green is certainly splendid – here’s a streetview look over the village green with the North Downs in the background.
At this time of year, however, Brockham looks kinda scruffy, on account of all the heaps of garden refuse left by the side of the road – plus old shipping pallets, busted wooden furniture and what-not. We were there today, and from time to time a tractor and trailer would chug past and collect these piles, then wheel back towards the village green. Even in these health-and-safety-gone-mad-times kiddies, with-or-without parents, were riding in the trailers as well. Here’s where they were heading:
True story: when I first moved down to these parts, I diverted my commute to go through Brockham at dusk on a late October day, expecting to see the bonfire I had heard so much about – and came away disappointed, not having seen it. My problem was that the tree-sized, tree-shaped and tree-colored thing I had driven past (in poor light) wasn’t a tree…
Brockham bonfire is a barrel of fun for all the family. Farmers open their fields for (paying) car parking for miles around, and the roads into the village are closed off, so it’s a safe walk in. The pubs set up outside bars, there’s a hog roast and a huge firework display – which you can also watch from Box Hill (in the background of the above photo). Kinda odd to be looking down on fireworks.
Here’s a video (with annoying music – sorry) which captures the experience pretty well.
Brockham’s in the south of Surrey; a little bit further south and you’re in Sussex, and that’s real bonfire country. Lots of villages and towns have unreasonably large celebrations, but the biggie is Lewes, and that’s the one you can’t go to. Really - they close the roads on Nov 5th.
“So I’ll go by train!” you say.
No you won’t – the trains don’t stop at Lewes station for most of that day. Or nearby stations. And BTW you’ll have a hell of a job trying to walk in because they close the roads a long way out from Lewes; and if you walk along the roads you’ll be stopped by the police. And if you do get in, good luck trying to get out. (Travel restrictions 2022.)
These days, short of a commando style exercise across open country or rafting down the river, the only way you’re going to manage it is by an inside job – you’d have to be staying with a resident. Maybe you can hole up in a hotel, I don’t know. I mean, if you want to try, good luck. Getting there on the day used to be possible (if insanely dangerous). We’ve been twice.
Insanely dangerous? Yep. Let me explain. There are seven bonfire societies in the town, plus guest societies from nearby villages, who march through packed streets carrying blazing torches (and worse), so close that the heat off them is painful, whilst playful wags toss “rousers” (explosives) around for fun. You think the police want bigger crowds?
Our last time, I guess that went on for a couple of hours, after which the Societies disperse to their own bonfires. We followed one, without ever knowing which it was, and ended up in a field where two men in ecclesiastical dress and wearing welders’ masks, read from a book (shouting their heads off, unamplified) to a riotous crowd which pelted them with fireworks. You think I’m kidding?
Here are some of the nutcases explaining themselves, including the rather unsavoury supposed background to it. Plus further video of the madness.
(In Ottery Sy Mary in Devon they play with burning tar barrels in the street. They may be Lewes’ only serious competition.)
BTW, by daylight Lewes is even prettier than Brockham. More of that in a future episode, if I get round to it.
j
Aficionados of Jane Austin’s Emma will recall the picnic on Box Hill. If you are there for the fireworks, a picnic is compulsory although you can manage without the servants.