Well, this week has been a whirlwind of activity! I kicked things off in Oxford on Sunday with a visit to the Cowley Road Carnival, where I ate lunch off the carts, listened to some live music, and took in a street performance or two. Then on Tuesday, I made a trip to Stratford-on-Avon for a tour of Shakespeare's birthplace, Mary Arden's house, and Anne Hathaway's cottage (see photo, above), which was overflowing with all the delphiniums, foxglove, hollyhocks, hydrangeas, climbing roses, and hybrid teas you could imagine, not to mention a gorgeous vegetable garden, orchard full of fruit trees, and a yew maze! I capped off the day with fish and chips at a pub along the Avon river, and watched King Lear performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Today I hopped on a train that took me up into the rolling hills of the Cotswolds, the area most people imagine when they conjure up scenes of pastoral England- narrow lanes edged with lavender, stone cottages covered in flowering vines, and sheep dotting the landscape behind them. After a brief consultation with Ben Jeffrey, the village ironmonger, who informed me that no, he would not be able to stamp me a cottage nameplate while I waited, but that it would instead take 9 (NINE) weeks to make, and also that no he did not ship them to the States, (or take too kindly to being asked that particular question), I picked up a walking map, had lunch at Tilly's Tea House, and set off on the "Public Footpath", which was essentially a tire track through miles of open countryside. I attempted to channel Marianne Dashwood on one of her slow rambles through Devonshire with Willoughby, but realizing that I was the sole human in a field full of cows encouraged me to pick up the pace. You see, there is some sort of shaky agreement here between land owners and county councils, which basically dictates that public footpaths will exist and be maintained right through, well, your backyard, essentially. These paths are known as a 'right of way' and anyone with a foot can travel them, take photos, etc. The routes are marked every so often with miniscule, (I mean, really tiny..) signposts and 'kissing gates' (google them), and are kept generally clear of overgrowth, although I think the National Trail people and I differ slightly on the exact point at which we consider a path to be overgrown. And if you should decide you do not want a publicly traversed path running through your pasture? And you think you will make navigating said path less convenient for the walkers? Well then, the walkers, a seemingly docile group composed of middle-agers with binoculars and expensive hiking staffs, will proceed to A.) remove the obstruction and B.) possibly vandalize you, because "once a highway, always a highway!" All told, my walking tour had me fairly convinced that I was, at any time, about to be bitten by a rattlesnake, clawed by a bird of prey, stung by a bee, snared by the horns of angry cattle, kicked by goats, and kidnapped by the big bad wolf, who was pretty obviously lurking just inside the boundary of the forest.
And lest you think I am pulling the wool over your eyes, (that's a little Cotswolds humor...) and I did not spend my morning traipsing through farmland, I leave you with the following piece of evidence. Yes. That is the path. See it? No? If you look I think you can just make out a kissing-gate ahead:
I hate you.
ReplyDeletewho is anonymous?
ReplyDeleteanyway, to add to your account of the cotswalds.. I had to spend an entire two weeks there with my dad and his girlfriend... yes we were in england and we spent the entire time in the equivalent of a cornfield but an english cornfield... and my dad gave me a dull pocket knife to tuck under my pillow in case I had to stab his then girlfriend Diana "if she came after me in the night." This was because he saw her reading a book titled "woman warrior". Those murdering feminists!