Four Days in Jolly Old England! (First three days)

6.15am, slipping out of Alex's apartment on Rue Guersant, I squeeze myself (and back pack) into the very Parisian mini elevator cage and take the four floors down to the street. Waiting for me, a very handsome chap in a big black Mercedes ready to whisk me off to Garde du Nord and my next adventure. 

Eurostar is waiting as we travellers channel through English Customs and Immigration. Lovely to hear a British accent. Settling into my seat the train slides silently on its way at exactly 7.13am, picking up speed as we leave the city. Green wheat fields fled by until we slowed to descend into the Chunnel. Before long we popped out into the soft grey light of Old Blighty. Funny the countryside was exactly the same as France just there! 8.30am we slipped to a stop at St Pancras station London.

Kings Cross Station, London

St Pancras and ajoining Kings Cross station is pretty cool. Helpful staff point me in the right direction of the overland train that whisks me across the Thames to the Tate Modern.

First up is Matisse's Cut Outs. (see video of exhibit at this link) Sadly no photo's allowed. Very cool how this artist at the end of his career took the cut out technique he'd used previously to help with composition and turned it into a winning formula for the last great works of his life. We saw how his assistants painted the card, that he then cut out and affixed to walls or canvas. He drew at times with charcoal atop huge long poles.

The Tate Modern is laid out in four wings across three levels. Each focusing on a major art movement or theme, exploring its origins and how contemporary artists have responded to these ideas. My tour took me from top to toe. I didn't love the Tate. Odd as I gravitate to gritty industrial spaces. Its a big stark ugly building which is being renovated. MoMA in New York has the edge with more elegant galleries, more important works and that stunning sculpture garden....Or... perhaps my art experience is so biased towards American modernism, expressionism and contemporary works that I simply didn't appreciate the plethora of unfamiliar and rather bleak European art on display. Hmmmm!

After a whirl around London in a open top double-decker, next stop was Waterloo Station. A sprint across the Thames from Westminster and I puffingly made the train to Gillingham with three minutes to spare. An hour and half later I was being swept through utterly romantic hedgerows frothing with roses, cow parsley and campion in a low slung Bentley Continental driven by my distant cousin Richard. No lanes could be narrower or prettier! Richard's wife Cathy and daughter Ella welcomed me in their gorgeous low beamed, stone flagged, Aga warmed kitchen in their uber charming home Bulpits House. Once a rope millers cottage, a few centuries of additions to the original stone house had created a true gem of English rural history and charm.

Water bubbles from the ground in this part of Dorset which borders Wiltshire, the river Stour begins near by and is made famous by neighbouring Stourhead Park. In front of Richard and Cathy's house is a long tranquil leat (long shallow pond), once used to soak and soften the hemp or material used to make the rope. Today it's a stalking ground for graceful herons. Parklike grounds surround this lovely house, Cathy's english border burgeoning with spring growth was a glorious tapestry of textures and colours against an ancient brick wall. Roses clamber up stone walls. Gravel crunches underfoot.

Rambling over Bulpit's 9 hole golf course, complete with quaint brick club house we are surrounded by the aching green of England in spring and the sound of rushing water. 

The following day and 7 hours of walking later Cathy and I have circumnavigated the Capability Brown designed park and lakes at Stourhead, taking in the house tour and a pub lunch along the way. I had just read a wonderful book about the history of ice-cream and ice houses was tickled to see the old ice house at Stourhead pictured below. The deep well would have been filled with great blocks of ice which would stay frozen all year round. The ice boy would chip blocks off and barrow ice up to  kitchens of the big house for the icebox.

 The Park is full of vistas and follies, one is the famous Temple of Apollo, cresting a hill overlooking the lake which featured along with the arched stone bridge in the 2005 movie Pride and Prejudice starring Kiera Knightly and Matthew Mcfadyen.

The scene at the stone temple is shown in the video below. You may remember its when Mr Darcy asks Elizabeth to marry him for the first time. Both soaked by the rain.

Today, not a drop of rain, but the Rhododendrons were in full flight, the air rich with exotic perfume from towering bushes foaming with huge blooms. With temples and bridges, grotto's and statues, lakes and artful vistas, the 200+ year old planting is spectacular. Listed as one of the 6 greatest gardens in England. Sadly a number of old trees were lost in recent storms.

Notice the stone toadstools in the picture above at right. Staddle stones were thought to be used to support ancient granaries, hayricks etc off the ground. You see them everywhere in this area.
Below this pic is a typical farmstead, I believe it is the gamekeepers house, with stone walled animal runs pretty much as it would have been in days gone by, though Cathy and I thought there'd have been fruit trees and veggie garden back in the day!

 Building of Salisbury Cathedral began in April 1220

 The following day I toured ancient Salisbury Cathedral (read Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd ) where a copy of the Magna Carta is on show, then trained back to London and the waiting arms of the Great Northern Hotel perfectly positioned for Eurostar travel at Kings Cross. This gorgeous hotel, glamorous with huge chandeliers in the GNH bar, fab cut glass mirrored elevators and the Plum and Spilt Milk restaurant showcasing Mark Sargeant's (used to be head chef at Gordon Ramseys at Claridges) fab food. I indulged in creamy smoked haddock and poached hens egg (best fish pie ever tasted), then grilled cuttlefish with broad beans and chorizo. Simple and divine.

Creamy smoked Haddock with poached hens egg and sorrel

ps: all pics in England taken on iPhone 4* with varing degrees of success!! (*Hence the selfies!!)