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Published: September 14th 2012
We have spent the last month travelling around England, Wales and Scotland visiting as many friends and family as we could. Rather than give a day by day account of our travels, this blog is a summary of our experiences. Apologies to those we were not able to get to visit. It is rather a long blog so you may want to get a cup of tea/coffee or a glass of wine before you begin.
The train journeys from Venice to Paris and then to London were unremarkable except for the failure of the air-conditioning system between Venice and Milan which meant the sleeping carriage was overly hot, even with the windows open.
We picked up the motorhome we hired for the next month from the depot near Luton, north of London, and headed for the little town of Wallingford, about 10 miles (15km) from Oxford.
Wallingford is an interesting town which has played a larger part in English history than its size would suggest. Much of the information below comes from a pamphlet “The Wallingford Experience” produced by the Town Council.
Wallingford lies on the first part of the river Thames above the estuary where it
is possible to cross easily. There is evidence of Bronze and Iron Age occupation and also of Roman settlement but it was not until the 9
th century that a fortified town was built by Alfred, the Saxon king of Wessex, to protect the area from viking attack. The layout of the main part of the town is still essentially that of the origianl 9
th century town and the remains of the saxon walls and moat can still be seen.
By 1066, Wallingford was the leading town in Berkshire and it welcomed the new Norman king, William, when he sought a place for his army to cross the Thames. One of his knights married the daughter of Wigod, the lord of Wallingford, and in 1067 began to build a massive castle to protect the river crossing.
When civil war broke out in England in the 12
th century between Queen Matilda and her cousin Stephen, Wallingford Castle was the main stronghold of the Queen and, after several sieges and numerous battles, a treaty was finally signed here in 1153.
By the 13
th century, Wallingford had grown extensively and boasted 11 parishes each with its own church but, by the
end of the next century, the Black Death had killed off more than a third of the townspeople and only 4 churches were left in use. The building of a new bridge at Abingdon also meant that Wallingford was no longer as important a town as before and it went into economic decline. It still had one more significant role to play, however.
In 1642 a dispute arose between King Charles and Parliament and Charles was driven out of London. He set up his court in Oxford and Wallingford Castle was refortified as part of a ring of strongholds. The king made several visits there and castle troops were engaged in many local skirmishes and battles. Events gradually turned against the king and by 1646 only Wallingford castle remained. After a twelve week siege, the king was defeated elsewhere and Wallingford surrendered. It was then garrisoned by Parliamentary troops but, in 1652, Oliver Cromwell's Council of State decided it was too much of a risk to allow it to remain and it was totally demolished.
Several famous identities are associated with Wallingford. William Blackstone, whose “Commentaries on the Laws of England” formed the basis of the United States
legal system, was a local magistrate. Agatha Christie lived in Wallingford from 1934 until her death in 1976. The television series “Midsomer Murders” was filmed in and around Wallingford and many locals have been extras in the series. The Wallingford Parish Church Choir won UK Choir of the Year in 2010 and have had a record released of their singing. It was their arrangement of “Jerusalem” which was used in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.
Our primary reason for being in Wallingford, though, was to visit John's youngest sister, Jacinta. She has been seriously ill for some time and we wanted to see her before she died. We were able to spend several days with her and were priviliged to be with her when she did die on the evening of Sunday, 26 August. She was supported and cared for by loving friends during her illness and the Wallingford Parish Church Choir, of which she was a longtime member, have all taken time from work and other activities to sing at her funeral on 13 September. By then we will be in Boston, USA, but it is more important that we were able to be with her
Wallace reunion
Jacinta is third from right.when she was alive than that we attend her funeral.
We had shared a secret with her which she was gleefully able to announce to the rest of John's family when we all met up for lunch shortly after we arrived in Wallingford. Four days before we left Australia, after 17 years together, we finally got married. She had arranged for a wedding cake to celebrate. As expected, once they got over the shock, the rest of the family was as happy as she was.
From Wallingford we headed west to Wales to visit John's nephew, Matthew, and his family in Monmouth. Monmouth Castle was also built by one of William the Conqueror's knights, William FitzOsbern, to secure the border between England and Wales. The town's defences were extended in 1272 to include the Monnow Bridge Gate Tower to guard the river crossing into the town. Today it is a small, picturesque town on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. We can highly recommend the caravan park which is literally a five minute walk from the centre of town.
One thing not provided by the company which rented us the motorhome was a list of van parks
and campsites where we could stay so, halfway on the road to Edinburgh in Scotland, we realised we had no idea where we were going to stay for the night. We stopped at several rest stops on the motorway north intending to use the free wi-fi facilities to find a campsite but none of them was working and no-one was capable of fixing them even though I could tell them what they needed to do. Eventually we took the plunge and drove off the motorway just north of Lancaster hoping that a campsite we had identified on our map would be able to let us stay for the night.
Waters Edge caravan park was a delight. Situated among rolling hills and between two small streams, it was set around a large duck pond. There was a pub cum conference centre within walking distance which served very good food (though you took your life in your hands walking along the road to get there). The park itself had a small bar where we whiled away the evening talking with a group of older people from Preston who were escaping their sheltered accommodation for a few days.
Next day we
headed off for Edinburgh again, stopping in Carlisle on the way to acquire a couple of books listing UK van parks and campsites. We were able to book into Mortonhall only a couple of miles from the centre of Edinburgh for two nights while we visited John's cousin Willie and his wife Margaret. As this was the time when the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was happening we were only able to get an unpowered site but with the additional internal battery in the motorhome this wasn't a problem. We had lights and gas and the water pump worked so the van loo was still usable.
From Edinburgh we headed back south. On the way we were able to visit Lindisfarne Priory on Holy Island off the coast of Northumbria. Holy Island is only accessable at low tide via a causeway and on other occasions when we had been here the tide was high so this time when we discovered the tide was out we took our chance.
Lindisfarne Priory was at the centre of the Irish missionary attempt to convert the northern anglo-saxons to christianity. It was second only to the west coast island of Iona as a focus
for christian worship. The first Monastery was founded in 635 by the Irish bishop Aiden but the bishopric soon passed to Cuthbert, a well-loved and pious local monk. He remained bishop from 670 until 687 when he died. For reasons which still remain unclear, the monks at the priory decided to exhume his remains in 698 and found that his body had not decomposed so they enshrined his body in front of the high altar in the priory and Lindisfarne became a centre for pilgrimage from all over Britain.
Unfortunately, as the fame and wealth of Holy Island grew, it became the focus for viking raiders. The situation became so bad between 793 and 875 that the monks fled to the mainland, taking Cuthbert's relics with them. Over the next hundred years, the relics were moved around the country as the monks were forced to flee from one location to another until in 995 they were permanently enshrined at Durham cathedral. Apart from a period between 1069 and 1070 when they were briefly moved back to Lindisfarne to escape the roving armies of William the Conqueror, the relics have remained in Durham ever since. In the 12
th century, monks
from Durham re-established the community on Holy Island and built a church on the site where Cuthbert is supposd to have been originally buried. The community lasted until 1537 when it was disbanded.
We stopped off briefly at York and Cambridge as we drove south. The park we stayed at outside Cambridge was in a village named Pidley which caused Sylvia great mirth. The site itself was very good. It even had its own five star restaurant, though we couldn't get a reservation for the night we were there. The next day we by-passed London and stayed at Marden in Kent where we watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics on a communal television before moving on to Birchington on the Kent coast which was the closest we could get to Broadstairs where John's brother Dominic lives with his wife, Barbara.
On the way we stopped in Canterbury to do some shopping and have a coffee. While in the Costa coffee shop, John noticed a copy of Kate Grenville's novel “The Secret River” on a bookshelf and swapped it for another book he had finished reading. The book is about the struggle of the british to come to
terms with the alien nature of Australia and is set on the Hawkesbury river which is close to where we live. (By the way, that description of the book does not do it justice. We highly recommend you read it if you can.) This book has cropped up several times in our travels.
Broadstairs was in the middle of its annual Folk Week.We spent the day with Dominic and Barbara wandering around the town observing the people who were there for the festival and in the afternoon attended an intimate concert given by Philip Henry and Hannah Martin. Look out for them. We liked them so much though that we bought two of their CDs and suggested they come to the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland.
From Broadstairs we travelled to Rottingdean, near Brighton, to visit John's father, Joe, and stepmother, Margaret. After two nights there, we moved on to Horsley in Surrey to see our friends Wendy and Ian and then to Bury, near Arundel in Sussex, where John's sister Pauline and her husband Graham live.
We spent a few more days back in Brighton saying farewell to Joe and Margaret and also took the opportunity
to get a train to London to visit John's cousin, also John. Back in 1969/70 the two Johns had travelled overland to Australia together. While the author of this blog had stayed there, the other John had eventually returned to the UK and become a successful dealer in South East Asian books. The reunion was tinged with some sadness however as cousin John's brother, Geoffrey, had recently died and John was in the throes of arranging his funeral. Set against that was the pleasure of meeting John's delightful wife, Wendy. Although they have been married for some years, we had not met her before but within a few minutes it seemed that we had known her forever. She is a well-known author in her own right and naturally our conversation turned to books and authors we enjoy. I mentioned reading Kate Grenville's book referred to above. It transpires that the two of them are good friends. Small world! As we could only stay in London for the day, we agreed to meet again the night before we leave London for Italy to pick up the freighter to Boston.
By now we had been travelling non-stop for nearly six weeks
are were feeling pretty exhausted but there were two last things we had to do before leaving Brighton: visit Choccywoccydoodah and take Joe and Margaret for a meal at the Queen Victoria pub in Rottingdean.
I think Choccywoccydoodah might be Sylvia's most favourite shop in all the world! It had its own television series which she avidly watched every week for as long as it lasted. It is not a large shop - maybe four metres by six metres – and is hidden away in the Lanes of Brighton but it produces some of the most amazingly spectacular scupltures you are ever likely to see made of chocolate. Needless to say they are hideously expensive. We managed to afford a packet of marshmallows to take to Jacinta when we returned to Wallingford but that was all.
The last time we were in the UK, we ate at the Queen Victoria pub in the main street of Rottingdean, near the sea. It was revolting! As we wandered past it this visit, the menu in the window intrigued us so we thought we would take a chance and see what it was like this time. We found that it had
recently been taken over by new owners, Philip and Ian, and they had completely redecorated the inside and replaced the old “pub” menu with locally grown and locally sourced food. The menu varies from day to day based on what is available. Even the alcohol is a local as possible. Sylvia had a cider made from fruit grown within a kilometre of the pub. Joe and Margaret endorsed our evaluation when we took them there, so we recommend it to you if you are in the area.
We had packed up the motorhome ready for our last trip to Wallingford to say farewell to Jacinta before returning it to the depot in Luton. It was going to be a fairly long trip so John decided on a precautionary visit to the loo before we left. As he was walking along, a woman going in the other direction suddenly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Needless to say he was a little taken aback by this unexpected behaviour until his brain got in to gear and he realised he knew who she was.
Five years ago, we swapped our house in Australia with
a couple from Brighton, Jim and Lynn, and we had kept in touch with them since. We hadn't tried to see them on this visit as we knew their house was being renovated and they were out of the country touring Scandanavia and Estonia and other eastern European parts. John's unexpected amoureuse was Lynn. They had been advised by their builder that their renovations had finished early and they had returned to England in readiness to move back in in a few days time. In the interim, they were staying at the same van park which we were about to leave. If John hadn't decided on a last minute loo break we would have missed them completely. Three hours later we finally had to head off but it was a joyful surprise and a happy way to leave Brighton.
We spent the bank holiday weekend in Wallingford with Jacinta and other members of the family. She was still lucid and alert when we arrived on the Friday and we were able to spend some time with her though she was confined to bed. She deteriorated quickly on the Saturday, however, and died, as I mentioned above, on the evening
of Sunday, 26
th August. Jacinta was always a control freak and we believe she had waited for us to return from our travels before she let go. Vale dear sister.
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kangaroojack
The Ts
Condolences and Congratulations
Hi John and Sylvia, it sounds like you Packed a lot into your UK trip, firstly We are sorry to hear about your sister John, thankfully you were able to see her before she died. Also many congratulations to both you and Sylvia on getting married, I do hope that you have many happy years of travel ahead of you! Take care KJ