Minster Lovell, Rollright Stones,Roman Ruins Chastleton

WEEK ENDING APRIL 13th
Monday April 7th
Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed another delightful drive through the country lanes which abound in the Cotswolds. This drive took us to a village called Minster Lovell and the ruins of an old manor called Minster Lovell Hall. I had to ask a woman for directions and she told me, then said; You sound like that bloke..you know, the one that does the pictures. What’s his name?
I thought for a second then it dawned on me.
“You mean Rolf Harris?”
“That’s the one”, she replied.
I guess it must have been the beard.
Minster Lovell Hall was built in the fourteen hundreds and the village goes back to Roman times. The name minster means the church here was of some significance. The present church was built in 1450 and is named St Kenelm’s after the Cotswold prince whose effigy lies inside.
There is also a lovely old pub set on the banks of the Windrush River at the bottom of a street lined on either side with thatched roof cottages. Of course we had a quick one there.
On the way home we passed through the village of Chadlington which boasts yet another very old church, St Nicholas’ famous for its gargoyles. By then it was threatening to snow again and we headed back.
Today after lunch we visited the site of the “Rollright Stones” There are two villages, one Great Rollright and the other, Little Rollright. And nearby you find this remarkable circle of limestone rocks looking like rotten teeth, 77 of them, embedded in the ground. They’re believed to date back to 3000BC and legend says they were once human beings, and are known as “The King’s Men”. There is another legend which says that on New Year’s Eve they all go down to a spring near Little Rollright for a drink.
We drove another few miles to the town of North Leigh to look at the ruins of a 4th century Roman villa. What’s left today is a huge L shaped set of ancient foundations, but you can identify sixty different rooms, including heated baths, and a magnificent red and brown mosaic floor. The complex lies beside the River Evenlode, not far from a major Roman road from what was once Corinium to Verulamium. Today that’s Cirencester to St Albans.
Tuesday April 8th
A quiet day today. But we both joined the local gym because we’re getting out of condition. We’re getting ready to head off to Norway next Monday.

Wednesday April 9th

Not far from Chipping Norton is a marvellous old house called Chastleton. It stands in open parkland just over the border from Oxfordshire in Gloucestershire.
You walk down a rambling pathway and there at the bottom of the slope is this stone mausoleum of a building that is Chastleton House. Though it’s set in the centre of manicured lawns and surrounded by stone walls, the place looks like what it is, a typical Jacobean pile.
The walls are lichen covered and a bit grim. The place has seen better days. Inside, the grimness continues, large cavernous rooms with dark panelled walls, and roundhead armour and helmets for decoration, between portraits of seventeenth century aristocrats. There are also worn and in some cases tattered tapestries, bookcases filled with dusty tomes. The floors creak with age and the staircases too.
The house was built in 1602, replacing another house which was owned by the Catesby family. In 1605 Robert Catesby mortgaged that place in order to finance the Gunpowder Plot, which he organised, along with Guy Fawkes and others. The new owner Walter Jones, demolished the place and built the present Chastleton House. In later years the housed gained further fame because they drafted the the present ruled of croquet here.
Thursday April 10th
At last we are online. Did a lot of emailing and booked a trip encompassing Prague, Vienna and Budapest. But first Norway.
Friday April 11th A wet day so stayed close to home.
Saturday April 12th
Phone calls from home. Gym in the afternoon. Packing. Lunch with Fritha and Anthony tomorrow then London then Norway on Tuesday.

Week ending April 6th
A quiet Monday much of which was spent assembling an Ikea double bed which had apparently been cursed by some Viking god. Also we joined the local library.
Tuesday. We are now on the telephone, courtesy of British Telecom. Enjoyed coffee with one of our neighbours, a retired aviation engineer named Robin, who filled us in on people and places to visit in the area. We drove over to a town called Witney to do some shopping. The age of places just blows us away still. The church in Witney was rebuilt, (that’s rebuilt) in 1243. We’ve been boning up on the history of the Wychwoods, (there are three...Ascott under, Shipton under, and Milton under..) and they are in the doomsday book. Went to the local pub, the Swan for a pint of beer, and learned that it too is old (400 years). On the walk back, Barbara took the path across the churchyard, (the church dates back to 12th century) Along the way she picked a few daffodils which grow around the place. She’s done this a few times, but on this occasion a woman suddenly appeared in the doorway of her nearby house and shouted at her, that she shouldn’t pinch the flowers. Barb shouted back “Why?, and the woman rudely replied, Ït’s illegal, they’re wildflowers”. Barb took the daffs she’d picked and retired, having now identified the village busybody.
Wednesday: Today we drove to the town of Warwick about an hour and a half away. We spent the afternoon exploring a magnificent old castle known appropriately enough as Warwick Castle. The oldest part of it was built on the orders of William the Conqueror in the 11th century.
It has dungeons and ramparts and turrets, and an enormous history of bloodshed and intrigue involving plots to assassinate Henry the eighth. One section is described as a weekend with the Prince of Wales and is part of the more modern rooms which have been restored as if for a country weekend with royalty. You walk into the library and there are wax figures of the guests, among them, Edward the Seventh, a young Winston Churchill. Dame Clara Butt is singing in the drawing room, and there’s some retired Field Marshall dressing for dinner in the bedroom. Next door, a Victorian maid is running a bath for her mistress.

Meanwhile, in the lower reaches of the castle you can see Tudor knights gearing p for battle with lots of gleaming armour and clanging of swords and halberds.
And even deeper into the dungeons you can see the remains of some poor wretch who has been starved to death in an iron cage. All very grim.
On the way home I took our car onto the motorway for the first time. It cut the travel time down considerably and the car ran well but you have to sit on 70mph all the time or you are likely to get run off the road by a lorry.
Thursday: A very quiet day. Walked for several miles along the local river, Evenlode, then across open green fields with old stone farmhouses in the distance, then past a huge farm manor house with beautiful lawns and hundred and hundreds of daffodils of every kind.
Friday: We set out for Woburn Abbey in Bedforshire but realised it was too far away, so changed direction and headed for Cheltenham. The drive took us along winding lanes, some thickly wooded with the occasional pheasant crossing our path. Then villages with names like Little Barrington, Great Barrington, Wick Rissington and Lower Slaughter. We had lunch in the spa town of Cheltenham which featured lovely crescent streets of Regency style terraces. We only had time to visit the museum which had a collection of exhibits of incredible age, swords from the bronze and iron age, Roman pottery, medieval relics, and seventeenth and eighteenth century artifacts and much more. We will go back again to visit the spas and the grand houses.
Saturday April 5th; Sunny day but cold. Went shopping, then across to The Swan in the cosy bar to write emails.
Sunday April 6th

Awoke this morning to a totally white landscape. It had snowed overnight and left a carpet of soft powdery snow blanketing everything. We got up and dressed very quickly, before taking the camera and going outside.

The sky was mostly bright blue, but the air was freezing, as we hurried around the village taking pictures and then plunging our hands back into our pockets. I’ve added a few of those pics, here. After breakfast Barbara walked across the graveyard to attend the C of E service at Holy Trinity while I cleaned up and finished this blog. This afternoon we’ll drive around the countryside, get some more snaps and perhaps enjoy a cosy pint at the Swan. More next week.

Settling in & Visit to Stratford on Avon

Week ending March 30
March 24: We spent the morning trying to get the phone connected via our mobiles. British Telecom is as bad as Telstra and we kept losing the connection. Eventually we got it sorted and we’ll have a phone and broadband in a week’s time.
We met Glen and Oscar, the farm dogs. Glen is a border collie and he’s a working dog. Oscar is a sort of teddy bear on four legs and he’s the house dog – anybody’s house will do, and he just trotted into our house as if he owned it. Very cute!
We are getting to know a few people, who are very friendly. Chris and Janet Badger run Crown Farm where we live and are very nice. We met Robin who is one of our neighbours. Then there’s Alan who runs the local produce shop, and his wife Julie, both very friendly. Julie has offered to give us any furniture we might need. Her brother died some months ago and she’s got a house full of stuff to dispose of.
This afternoon we walked a mile and three quarters past cottages and farmhouses, to the next village, Shipton under Wychwood. Around every bend we encountered green fields and vistas of daffodils. Spring is here but most of the big trees are still stark and bare against a mostly chilly grey sky. Tucked in every roll of the hills were more houses and cottages, until we reached our destination. We passed a few more substantial places, great manor houses surrounded by high sandstone walls; places with names like “The Grange” and “Mere Folly”.
Barb and I stopped off at a pub called the Shaven Crown, a fourteenth century pile with a monk’s head sign outside. We enjoyed a coffee and cheese and biscuits in front of the fire, while eavesdropping on the chat of a number of locals scoffing pints at the next table. We didn’t understand much through their strong burring Oxfordshire accents.
Then back along the road to Ascott and a pint at our own pub, the Swan.
Tomorrow we catch the one train which stops here daily for Oxford, and hopefully we’ll collect our car and take to the road.
Tuesday March 25th
We got up early this morning and waited on a chilly station for the 7.44 to Oxford. This is the only train which stops here and you have to flag the driver to stop. We arrived in Oxford and wandered around looking for a place for breakfast before taking a cab to the car yard out of town.
We stumbled across the local market and bought a week’s supply of meat for much more reasonable prices than in the supermarkets. Then we had a hearty breakfast in “Brown’s Cafe”, a slightly run down caf in the market. Sausages, baked beans, bacon eggs etc, washed down by what the Brits call coffee.
Then we took a cab out to collect our car. At last we can travel where we like. The car is a diesel VW estate van. So far it runs well and fuel, though expensive, is much more economic than standard petrol. With the help of “Geraldine” we drove through the Oxfordshire countryside, stopping at a supermarket to stock up. This was a Waitrose market which stocks just about everything and we spent about fifty quid. We even found Vegemite on the shelves so all is right with the world.
Once home we managed to bugger up the heating system and had to get someone in to get the gas boiler going again. We also now have TV thanks to Fritha and Anthony, although it’s not great reception. And the programmes are just as bad as at home.
Now we just need to get the phone on, and broadband and we can start planning trips and tours. Then I can put all this stuff on the blog. I’ll try and put the updates on once a week from then on.
Wednesday March 26th
Almost the last of our furniture arrived today, a sofa, a chest of drawers and two bedside tables. We just need a bed to replace the inflatable mattress and we’re set. This afternoon we drove over to Chipping Norton and shopped for cheap crockery and a few other bits and pieces. I got a couple of pictures in a bric a brac shop and they make the lounge look more like home.
Walked a hundred yards over to The Swan for a couple of pints with the locals. We’ll both be sounding like Pam Ayres if this keeps up. Dinner, a bit of tele, then bed.
Thursday March 27th
Today we went to Stratford upon Avon, a drive through green patchwork fields and tiny villages, some with thatched roofs. Stratford itself is only thirty miles away and we arrived there in time for a lunch of sandwiches and fruit by the canal. The town is a strange mixture of trendy shops, takeaway food placesand sandwiched in between, very very old houses and inns.
We joined a two hour historic walk around the old parts of Stratford, along the river to Holy Trinity church where Shakespeare is buried, his birthplace, the fifteenth century Garrick Inn, the house where his daughter lived.

Our guide was a mine of interesting information and the two hours flew. I’m still coming to terms with British traffic rules and the way the roads and roundabouts work. The sat nav is a godsend. It’s raining steadily tonight. More tele! Bed!
Friday March 28th
More furniture arrived today; a very good sofa bed which won’t fit through the doorway so must stay in the lounge (sitting room). So we are going to sell the other one which we bought a few days ago. When our bed arrives on Monday we’ll be totally set up.
Saturday March 29th
I think we are being sucked into English country life. How does this sound. Bacon and eggs for breakfast, followed by Barb doing the ironing while I vacuumed the house. Then coffee at eleven and dozing off in front of the tele while watching replays of this week’s Coronation Street. Then shopping in the afternoon in the town of Witney. I found some nice pictures in an Oxfam opshop to go on out sitting room wall. Then over to The Swan for a couple of pints of “Hookey Norton Ale” and in the evening around to the local community hall “Tiddy Hall”for a folk singing night. Fritha and Anthony are coming tomorrow for lunch to bring us back to Aussie reality.
Sunday March 30th
What a great night we had at Tiddy Hall. We walked the few hundred yards to the venue, although it was wet and cold. Then inside to a crowded hall. I’m sure the entire village population had turned out and there was a great buzz of conversation, encouraged by pints of beer and cider on sale at the bar. Just like in all those Thomas Hardy novels except for the time difference, there were ruddy faces and country accents, men in corduroy and tweed, and women in sensible skirts and tops. Barbara stuck to orange juice but I tried a pint of cider which I nursed through most of the evening. The show started with a single folk singer who encouraged us to join in some very rustic songs about ploughmen and cart drivers and all sung in the distinctive Oxfordshire burr as in Änd they calls I, Buttercup Joe”.and “Moi horse is willin’ and “I be a jolly cart driver”.
This was followed by a solo singer unaccompanied who delivered his songs, some of them very earthy, in a powerful tenor. The main act was a group of players calling themselves “The Omega Three”. They played multiple instruments and specialised in comic songs. With a break half way through, the night ended at 11.30, pretty late as we changed to daylight saving overnight and we had to get up early this morning.
We drove across to a very pretty town called Burford, a few miles away, to Mass at the small Catholic church. The congregation seemed to be made up of elderly citizens, most of them in tweedy outfits, and most fitted also with hearing aids. Then back down country lanes past farms and fields of daffodils and little pubs, all under a perfect blue sky, to get ready for lunch.

Fritha and Anthony arrived and we shared a very pleasant lunch of fresh bread,thick slices of ham and a selection of cheeses with lime and chilli paste, along with an agreeable bottle of white wine.

We walked that off with a stroll around the village and finished up with a final pint at the Swan, before our guests had to head back to London.

This has been another lovely day, enhanced by near perfect weather.

First Days at Stable Cottage

W/E 23rd March
Hello everyone. I am writing this from our home in the Cotswolds, well our home for the next 6 months. It’s Good Friday and we’ve been in England since Wednesday.
Going back a bit, our flight to the UK was pretty much uneventful. Travelling business class was well worth while as was a one night stopover in Tokyo, or rather in the airport city of Narita.
We enjoyed Japanese meals served by the oh so polite Japanese airline staff.
The only notable points to mention were as follows. The toilet in our hotel room was unbelievable. To sit on one was a treat in itself. The seat was electronically warmed and hydraulically adjustable to your weight. On the side of the bowl there was a set of buttons to control the temperature of the bidet which was incorporated in the set up, as well as the water strength. You got a choice of a spray or a straight jet of water up the fundament. I chose the latter. Very satisfying! Let’s just leave it at that.
The other memorable moment was on our departure on the second leg from Narita to Heathrow. As our 777 jetliner taxied up to the start line, the two ground staff guiding the pilot stepped back a few metres, then as one, they bowed deeply in formal Japanese style as we got under way.
We had seats that reclined as beds so we were able to relax en route, arriving in London 12 hrs later, having never seen nightfall all the way. They just shut all the blinds and we pretended it was dark outside. The plane had a camera mounted in the nose and we could monitor the scene outside. We flew across the top of Russia over Murmansk and Archangel and watched an endless landscape of ice and snow sliding away below us.
It was around 3.15 pm we touched down at Heathrow, went through the usual customs and immigration procedures and got on the train to Paddington, there to be met by Fritha. Even though she lives about ten minutes walk away, we took a cab to her place rather than lug seven pieces of luggage up a cobbled canal side walkway.
Fritha was ecstatic to see us and cooked us up a lovely meal of chicked and olives and tomato, while Anthony forced us to drink several large cans of local ale.
I realised later that when we finally got to bed, it was 4.30am Tokyo time, which we were still on.
Needless to say we slept in the next morning. After breakfast, (including toast and vegemite) Barbara and I took the tube into Regent street to collect our bank cards and do a bit of shopping. Although it’s early spring here, the weather is still bitterly cold and a bit rainy.
We took a train to Kilburn High Street to pick up an inflatable bed which Fritha had ordered from a store called Argos. It’s a massive warehouse and everything is ordered on line. You just give them the order number and collect the goods. It’s also very cheap.
After that we went back to Fritha’s, then across the road for a couple of pints, or a couple of chardies in Barbara’s case, while we waited for Fritha and Anthony to come home.
We went around the corner to another very cosy little pub called the Warwick Arms for a dinner of steak and kidney pie and mashed potatoes. Yummy!
Today we slept late again,before walking for an hour along the canal. Another bitterly cold windy day, despite signs of spring all around. Daffodils are bursting into bloom, and all the trees are in bud. By the time we got back it was time to pack everything into F and A’s car and head for our dream cottage in the Cotswolds. The drive, once we were out of London was breathtaking. The countryside is so green and so full of the promise of spring. We passed miles of rolling patchworked fields with sheep and newborn lambs. There were even pheasants feeding at the side of the motorway. In fact we saw one which had grazed too close to the traffic and ended up on the radiator of a four wheel drive.
The roads began to narrow and we were in sunken lanes hedged in by rows of hawthorn and practically no visibility on either side.
We drove through tiny villages of ancient and mossy stone cottages and equally ancient and mossy names, until we saw the signpost pointing to Ascott-under-Wychwood and there we were.
This place is everything we had hoped it would be. The cottage, or rather the converted stable in which we now reside, is lichen covered and rustic. It’s around five hundred years old and the rooms have exposed beams. It stands on one side of a courtyard with the main farmhouse at righ angles to us and a barn opposite. The kitchen window looks straight down the street with stone cottages on either side. Through the laundry window a few metres across the lane are tumbled tombstones in the graveyard of the sixteenth century church. Beyond that is the Swan pub which also looks very old and very English. We have yet to see the interior.
March 22nd
Last night we had a lovely dinner in a sixteenth century pub where Fritha and Anthony are staying. It’s called the Old Mill and one section is even older. The stone floor of the original mill dates back to the tenth century.
Went to bed on our inflatable mattress at around ten and slept wonderfully well. Our cottage is fairly sparsely furnished at present but we are settling in. It’s well heated thank God, because it was very cold outside. After breakfast this morning Fritha and Anthony picked us up and we went in search of a car. After a number of unsuccessful visits to car yards around Oxford, we found a 12 year old VW Golf station wagon which fitted our needs. It’s diesel powered which will give us about fifty miles to the gallon. Anthony checked it out for us and we decided to buy it after a good test drive.
We drove many miles around the countryside, enjoying the scenery of little villages and rolling green fields, forests and farms. The weather was cold and a bitterly sharp wind made it even colder. And then it snowed, at first just in flurries swirling across the road, and then in quite a steady fall. The snow didn’t stay on the ground however, although the forecast is for more tonight so we may wake up tomorrow to a white landscape.
We found a secondhand furniture place outside Oxford and bought a sofa, a chest of drawers and a couple of bedside tables. We’re getting there.
In the meantime tonight we dine at the Swan.
March 23rd
The Swan proved to be a delightful place and we enjoyed a good dinner and a glass or two of wine.
An early night and awoke in the morning to a landscape of white. The yard outside, the rooftops and the grounds around the next door church were covered with snow. Given that there had been no snow here throughout winter, we felt that the overnight fall had been put on purely for our benefit. It was a beautiful sight.
Fritha and Anthony joined us at around nine thirty and we went looking for open shops in the neighbouring towns of Chipping Norton and Banbury. Being Easter Sunday, nothing was open but we did get to see the famous Banbury Cross and some beautiful snowy landscapes.
We took Fritha and Anthony to lunch at the Swan. Traditional roast beef and Yorkshire .pudding followed by a delicious dessert.
We also met our landlords, Janet and Chris Badger who proved to be very nice. They have a friend who wanted to dispose of some furniture, so we gained a recliner chair, an arm chair and a sofa bed, all for fifty quid. Once we’ve taken delivery of the bed we have ordered, we’ll be completely set up. We also met a New Zealand girl who waits table at the Swan who may be prepared to take over our lease and the furniture when we leave in October, which would save us the business of selling or giving away our stuff.

Things are working out so well it’s getting scary.
After lunch we wandered across to the graveyard of the Holy Trinity church over the road, to marvel at tombstones dated as far back as the sixteen hundreds.
Fritha and Anthony then headed back to London, while Barbara and I took a stroll through some of the lanes and paths around the village, walking off the roast beef and trimmings.