Banbury at night and a trip to Upton House

So the rest of the troops did car moving yesterday and I spent the day at the boat feeling a bit dizzy - better today I'm glad to say.

I had taken this picture the night before - just before 10.00pm - of the reflections from a building right next to the canal in front of our mooring.  I really like the colours!

Anyway, today we did some food shopping while Chris and James went off to look at Tooley's Yard - a yard which had been in place since the canal was constructed in the 1700s.  I bet some of the tools are original! It has a set of all sorts of equipment used to make wooden hulled boats as well as more modern boat equipment.  James and Belinda were off to see friends for lunch fairly close to here, so Chris and I went and collected our washing and then went to Upton House, a National Trust property about 7 miles from here.  (We had the car here so that was easy!) 

The house was owned by Lord Bearwood who bought it in 1927 and who amended the house that had existed on the plot when he bought it to make it much bigger and to show off his collection of artwork.  He was a Trustee of the National Gallery - I wonder how buying materials for the NG worked as opposed to buying art for himself! There was a good collection of Dutch paintings including some Breugel's and Hieronymus Bosch.  The fineness of detail of the paintwork was amazing, and it was good to be able to see them close to. There were also quite a lot of early religious paintings and also a Tintoretto, though that had gone away for restoration. 

We spent an hour or so looking around the art in the house - there were very few house artefacts to see.  And then we had lunch in the courtyard outside the cafe as it was really lovely weather today.  The gardens at Upton House are quite extraordinary. 

This is the view from the edge of the back lawn - where the bricks are in the foreground there is a 10 foot drop to the path in the garden below.  It's charmingly called a Ha-Ha.  I really don't think you'd be laughing if you fell down it!  The Mirror Lake was dug out as was the garden and the lawn was laid on  on a plateau made from the soil extracted from the lake and the effectively artificial valley below.  The garden design was by a woman called Kitty Lloyd-Jones who studied agriculture and plant sciences at Reading University and got the job by personal introduction. 
This is the view looking along the wall at the bottom of the Ha Ha - a walkway with borders either side.  Apparently the national Aster collection is here and is really spectacular in the early autumn.

Chris is walking along the path between the lake and the hill.  The house is to his right.  Mirror lake it would be without so much pond vegetation, I feel!

Looking back up the garden towards the house, the cedar trees on the left are really magnificent.  You can just see three little bumps on the sky line to the right of the cedars.  Those are the chimneys on the house! I imagine there are great plans afoot for the areas of open soil you can see here, but they are big areas which will take a lot of work.
There were some nice wild bits in among the planted beds.  These bluebells were still in flower on a slope underneath some hazel trees.

The cedars we'd admired from the lake are really impressive close up.  They are growing on a significant bank, which I assume they are stabilising rather than causing to fail.

I enlarged this view of the hills across the valley.  I really liked their shape and the trees. 


So this is the view of the house as you first arrive, looking down the drive. It certainly was the home of a wealthy family who enjoyed the benefits of their wealth but who seem to have given quite a lot of things to good causes too.  

So we returned to the boat and when our friends returned we moved our car to Cropredy so Chris can leave from there in the morning to go to see his sister and brother for his brother's 70th birthday.  Belinda then dropped James and Chris back in Banbury to join me to bring the boat up to Cropredy and then she walked to meet us and we all then travelled to Cropredy for the night. Boat logistics can be quite complicated!  Dinner in the pub was good, and so we are all set for a mixture of activities in the morning.  Three of us with take the boat up to Fenny Compton and Chris will drive to Hereford and back to meet us there.  

Best laid plans ..??? We shall see!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up the canal to Banbury, and a boat rescue!

Image
It was a bright morning again when we had had breakfast, and so we were happy to set off in the dry to Banbury.  The boat was moored in an internet dead spot, so we had to hope that our original expectations of the weather as being only showery were met.  We did have the pleasure of conferring over breakfast about the cuckoo we had heard a little while before we had early morning tea! It must have been pretty close to the boat. Much of canal was rural today, and it was quite a surprise to see these cows in the water. They didn't seem to fussed to see us!  Looking at this picture that I took from further back, I thought there was a building on the skyline among the hedgerow trees, but enlarging the picture it is clear that they are just a few unleafed trees which look as though they ought to be a tower of some sort! A very bucolic scene!  We had to cross the Cherwell again today, and there was quite a lot of water passing over the weir, but it didn't have too much of ...
Read more

Nearly back to Gayton Marina

Image
As I hoped, the light at the end of the tunnel (which had not been turned off) where we had moored overnight was wonderful this morning. There was a fairly constant stream of boats going past, mostly going into the tunnel, but there were a few going the other way too. The occasional pile up ensued!! The boat closest to the tunnel was diffident about going in as a boat's headlight could be seen coming towards the tunnel exit, but the boat behind was not happy to have to wait, but couldn't practically get past the first one.  It can be a bit stressful at moments like this!  But we only had to wait and watch!!  But you can also have moments of calm to enjoy, too! The men went off to move the cars - pick up one from Napton and then leave one at Weedon and come back to the boat.  Meanwhile we washed up and then moved the boat along the flat section of water out of the tunnel and up to Norton Junction. It's a straightish section of canal but does have a number of bridges o...
Read more

Back to base and back home

Image
 Sunday morning was a bit overcast, but not raining which was pleasing.  We had a little way to go to get to our first lock - it is a flight up to Stoke Bruerne which is a little village with a significant canal culture centre - there's a museum there and also the start of the Blisworth Tunnel which is a feature of interest. We left our Cosgrove mooring and came to this bridge which is very unusual. The shape is interesting with a path on both sides of the canal under the bridge. We were following a wide beam boat for this section and you can see that it pretty much fills the canal in front!  The canal guide talks about the carving on the bridge - it looks a bit damaged to me, presumably worn away over the last two hundred years. There had been some rain overnight, and the canal levels seemed pretty high. The bottom of the lock flight is a few miles further on.  For the first time for a long time on this route, there are actually 7 locks within walking distance of ea...
Read more