Day Six – England/Paris Trip – More Cotswolds Charm

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post this one. If I keep taking so long to get this trip reported, I'll have to break for Christmas and New Years! Writing takes a long time with composing and sweating over each word, then picking out the pictures and getting them uploaded (a MAJOR bitch). I'm also trying to post my food reports over at eGullet in a timely manor. Today I was out most of the day visiting with old pals. So here we go - possibly my longest post ever (certainly the most pictures I've ever had to upload!). Mr. Kim's comments in italics.



Thursday, May 19th
We had a full day scheduled and didn’t want to waste a minute – so you would have thought that we’d have rushed out the door the second we were dressed. But there was something about the cottage and the quietness of the village that forbade rushing and bustling.

Before we left the States, I told myself that I needed to spend this entire vacation enjoying what we were doing when we were doing it – to stay ‘in the moment’ to use an execrable expression. No worrying about being late, or lost; no fretting about what comes next. No getting aggravated at little setbacks, or even big ones. This was going to be difficult for me, I thought. I am all about worry and fret and impatience. But, with the help of being in the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, I really did manage it. There were lots of plans that didn’t come to fruition, lots of things that we didn’t see, of course. But I honestly didn’t have one single serious regret the entire time. We ‘wasted’ a lot of time, in the sense that we did a lot of aimless wandering. But not one moment was truly wasted. The fact that every 5 minutes I said or thought, “I’m in ENGLAND” attests to that. The sense of quiet exultance permeated the whole trip for me.

We really tried to pack light (could have gone even lighter), so by this time we needed to do laundry. The cottage had a very new washer and dryer. I’d been warned by Craig that English washer and dryers take an interminable amount of time, so I started a load before we went to bed the night before and put them in the dryer as soon as we got up. There was an instruction booklet with very clear directions that seemed to indicate that you could dry things for up to 7 hours. That is not a typo. SEVEN HOURS. !!!!!!!! I figured that I must be reading it wrong and set it for an hour at the highest heat and went off to make breakfast and get ready for the day. Now in the States, dryers energetically spin the clothes around, getting them all fluffy while they dry. This dryer (and Craig’s too) lazily flopped the clothes for a couple of minutes and then let them sit for a few more before starting the whole dilatory process again. At the end of the hour, I couldn’t detect any progress. Not even to my silky underthings that are practically dry at the end of the spin cycle in the washer. I turned it on for another hour and the heavier things still needed more drying when we got home that evening. When we finally got them out – dry – before we went to bed they looked like someone had balled them up and left them out in the sun to dry. Wrinkled? Lord have mercy. I decided that English people must either spend all of their disposable income on dry cleaners or spend all of their free time ironing. And what a LOVELY way to do spend your free time it is, too!

So, anyway, breakfast was some more of that lovely bacon on toast. We then hit the road for Chipping Campden.

On the way to Chipping Campden:






I should say here that the place and pub names in England equally charmed and amused us. And, of course, being who we are (as well as being heavily influenced by Bill Bryson), we had to come up with our own names – Buggering Bishop, Bourbon-on-the-Rocks, etc., etc. Which brings me to Mr. Kim’s alternate names for Chipping Campden. Chipping Campden is absolutely gorgeous and charming, as you will see. But….there was an odd, unpleasant odor in the air when we were there. While I was waiting on the High street for Mr. Kim to park the car I noticed it. There was a young man painting at the next building and I assumed that it was his paint. But as we wandered around, it was pretty much everywhere. That will explain Mr. Kim’s sobriquets – Ass on Swine and Stink on Shite. I apologize to the citizens of Chipping Campden, the Cotswolds and the entire United Kingdom. We are silly and tend to bestow nicknames rather liberally. It was weird, but certainly didn’t interfere with our sightseeing. Truly, some of the prettiest flowers and most charming vistas were to be found here.


This is really a gorgeous village with a picture perfect High street. Beautiful Cotswold stone buildings, bakeries, shops, intriguing little alleys everywhere:








But, the Hokey COKEY???:


St. James’ Church is gorgeous and right on the edge of lovely fields:






In the churchyard, we fell into conversation with some folks who were visiting from Milwaukee. They were doing almost exactly the same tour as us, only the other direction. They had just been in Winchester and Salisbury and were on their way to Oxford and London.

Just next to the church, these ruins and lodges with a gate screen are all that remain of what must have been a magnificent manor house – Campden House, built early in the 17th century. It was apparently burned by Royalist troops to prevent it being taken by Parliamentarians during the Civil War in 1645:




Not sure what this is – it was over in the grounds of Campden House:


Chipping Campden Flowers:




















Some of the flower pictures were taken in two lovely secluded little gardens that we happened upon. One was the Ernest Wilson Memorial Garden just around the corner from the church. Born in Chipping Campden, he was a famous ‘plant hunter’ who worked for Botanical Gardens in England (including Kew) and even in the US. This tiny walled garden is cool and shaded with benches for peaceful, quiet visits:


The other garden ran out the back of a restaurant on the High street. There was no sign directing us, we just wandered back and found this charming garden walk:


More Chipping Campden:




Here’s another of my ‘How very English’ pictures (taken in the car park) – I loved the horse blanket, the L&M’s (do they even sell those here still?) and the half-eaten crumpet on a REAL china plate:


Next up were the villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter. It’s best to talk about them together because Upper Slaughter is so incredibly tiny. It is saved from being a hamlet only by the presence of St. Peter’s church (did YOU know that a hamlet is smaller than a village and has no church??? Amazing what you can learn on the internet). It has a church, a gorgeous manor house/hotel and about a dozen houses. Oh, and a beautiful pastoral walk through sheep meadows and fields by the River Eye to Lower Slaughter. We drove into Upper Slaughter from Chipping Campden and before we could turn around, we were out of it. A of picture of Upper Slaughter that I particularly love:


We parked the car in Upper Slaughter (seemed to be plenty of places to park, too!) and walked a section of The Great Cotswold Ramble. Modest, as far as distance (1 mile each direction) and gentle (no big hills – yay) to Lower Slaughter. This is a public footpath – a topic worth its own post. There is a whole network of these paths all over the country – most of them hundreds of years old. They must, by law, be kept open and available to walkers and sometimes horse riders. And use them they do. Everywhere we went you could see little specks toiling up and down the far hills and valleys. In the Chipping Campden post office we listened to a young man and an elderly lady (late 70’s probably) comparing notes of what sounded like a pretty strenuous trek. Even the young man she was advising seemed impressed when she indicated she had completed a 100 mile walk through the area he was asking about, although it wasn’t clear when or over how many trips. It sounded like she’d done it fairly recently. Speaking of the elderly. This is an ACTUAL road sign in England:

The first time I saw it, my mouth hung open in shock. No WAY would that sign exist in the US. I mean SERIOUSLY??? Bent over with sticks? But don’t they look LOVELY?

Sorry to digress. The footpath to Lower Slaughter was truly one of the best parts of our trip. Beautiful, calming and quiet – it slips back and forth between fields and the river side.






Some friendly townsfolk:




Along the paths there are clever little swinging gates that allow passing, but prevent livestock from wandering into places they shouldn’t. Here’s one that I found touching:

We saw these humble little plaques commemorating that other royal wedding many places. Tiny villages wanting to do their part in the celebrating of that joyful and hopeful event.

This is the beginning of Lower Slaughter:

where we had lunch at The River Café. The place is a combination gift shop, ice cream parlour, restaurant and museum. Other than the two manor house hotels, it seems to be the only commercial place in the village. And therein lies a juicy-gossipy story! Apparently, that’s the way the locals want it. The owner, a jazz singer from London is not a popular fellow in Lower Slaughter, it seems. I did some Googling and found a news story that told about the villagers’ resistance to extra car and bus parking, public restrooms and a tourist information centre. One of those ‘louts from outside muscling in to the village to make a buck’ stories. This article was dated 1999 and they must have gotten their way, because I don’t think any of those things exist still. And you know what? Good for them. They have something precious – why turn their gorgeous village into Disney on the River Eye? More villages should be that vigilant. I note that this lack of desire for tourism doesn’t keep the locals from working in the few tourist friendly places that exist. Although even without knowing this story I had noted that the shopkeep in the Mill gift shop was the least welcoming soul I met in any shop in England. That said, we very much enjoyed our delicious lunch at the Old Mill:

Nice baguette sandwiches with Cheddar and Pickle (not dill or sweet, but a delicious chutney-like spread). And we liked the ice cream cone afterwards. AND I found a book to buy at the gift shop – a mystery set in Lower Slaughter! The perfect souvenir for me.

Lower Slaughter is much bigger than Upper Slaughter with a beautiful church, TWO manor house hotels and lovely riverside homes:













Lower Slaughter was where we started noticing what we began calling “The Haunting of the Doves”. I was paying attention (because I’m weird) and the very first English animal I saw was a pigeon. I was quite disappointed actually; I was hoping for a fox or a sheep or a pheasant (something very English) - all of which we did see, we just saw the pigeon first. We realized that virtually from the moment we set foot in England, we’d never NOT heard the cooing of pigeons/doves. From then on, it was the same. EVERYWHERE we went those doves cooed at us. Mr. Kim was a little spooked, but I thought it was lovely.

Sorry, sidetracked again. We ended up getting in late to our final destination that day – Bourton-on-the-Water (the inspiration for Mr. Kim’s “Bourbon-on-the-Rocks, of course). We wandered the street beside the River Windrush (how’s that for a name?), peeking into closed shops and down side streets.








We did manage to find a kitchen ware shop that was open (how lucky am I?). I am in love with English tea towels and they had a fantastic assortment. I managed to resist, because they also had a huge assortment of something that I intended to buy since before we left home: a tea tray. Have you ever tried to find a nice, big tea tray in the US? Almost impossible. My old wooden one was looking mighty raggedy. I had an embarrassment of riches to choose from – flowers, birds, insects, gingham, chintz, polka dots, hearts. In every style imaginable – vintage, ‘mod’, patriotic. I chose cupcakes – with a checked pink border (of COURSE I did).

We went ‘home’ via Cirencester (that to which all roads lead) and stopped at The Black Horse pub for dinner. Pork and Hereford cider hot pot for me and steak and chips for Mr. Kim. We were tired puppies and glad to get back to the cottage - me to start the dryer again and fold clothes and Mr. Kim to sample some more tea.

Mr. Kim Blogs - Chanteuses

A friend sent me a link to a youtube clip of Keiko Touge. I had never heard of her and watched it without any expectations. As soon as she opened her mouth and started singing, nerves and emotions I had not touched in decades were immediately exposed. Teenage angst and possibilities and dreams were with me once again. The woman has perfect pitch.

More importantly, Keiko sounds 98.6% like Karen Carpenter.

When I was young, I listened to the angelic alto that was Karen Carpenter in her pre-illness prime, just a girl of 19 when she hit the charts. She had what I still to this day believe to be one of the five most incredible pop female voices of the last century. Karen was, in my mind, in the same league with Judith Durham, Rosemary Clooney, Eva Cassidy, and Ella Fitzgerald. (Yep, I said it, better than Barbra, Judy, Diana, Judy, Cass, or Jo. "My ladies" were in a class all by themselves.) And like the other four, Karen could absolutely embrace the texture and timbre needed to own a song, to make the listener sniffle in sympathy or bop along in childlike joy. I have always heard perfect pitch, even if I could not sing it. Hearing a singer claim a note just an eighth of a note flat or sharp still sends me climbing the walls. Each of these ladies could nail it. I bathe in their music each time it finds me.

The Carpenters’ music itself has been described by some, including at least one woman I have married, as insipid. As may be. God knows, I lost enough bus stop fist fights with “friends” for admitting I listened to “faggot music”. Ah, youth. All I can say is the songs helped articulate the emotions of an unpopular, gangly boy struggling to define what was important in life. For that, I am still grateful. Add to that the voice of an angel, and you have a shrine, lovingly locked away in my inner psyche. Here is an admittedly lip synched sample of her voice. Pure tone. Beautiful. I wonder to this day what she would be singing today if she had lived, whether she would have survived the transition from 30ish pop artist to adult entertainer, whether she would have left her persona and her duo act in the dust and moved on to something else, or whether she would remain as she is – a footnote in music history and an example of how bad 70's music was, for some.

So Keiko. Keiko Touge apparently has a one-track career. She plays the part of Karen Carpenter reborn. A woman of some lucky talent, she sounds a bit like The Lady herself and indulges in the comparison. Here is a sample. (Please try to ignore the awkwardness of Richard Carpenter in the clip. He is a lost soul, and perhaps the lessons of his post-Karen public life are worth a post on its own merits.) It is obvious to me in this clip that it was really important to Keiko that Richard approve of her interpretation. I hope she got the approval she wanted.

And I hope she finds her own muse so that she can own her own soul and can learn to live without Karen’s.

Listening to Keiko, then listening to other clips by both women, I felt like I was eating butter. It is such a gift to be able to touch memories and find that they still mean something. Even if they mean nothing to anyone else. The songs carry emotion, and the voices themselves are pure joy. I hope you find them to your liking.

And Donald: if you are still out there somewhere and want to resume our bus stop discussion about my musical taste, I warn you -- I have developed a wicked right hook.

Day Five – England/Paris Trip – The Incomparable Cotswolds

(Internet picture)

I am almost dreading putting this part of the trip down in words. I know that there is no way that I will do it justice. I will use the same descriptive words over and over and I fear that folks will tire of my repetitiveness. Ah, well – I can only try, I guess.

Wednesday, May 18th

We woke early, eager to start our first day in the Cotswolds. We had tea and toast in the cute little snug at the cottage:


Our hostess, Anna, had supplied the cottage with a few basics – bread, milk, butter, tea, etc. I mentioned before how much better even ordinary grocery store bread was than ours. I later found the exact bread in a grocery store that we stopped at and it was just plastic bag mass produced bread. But it was so good – big (I had a hard time getting it into the toaster), firm, thick slices that were so much more substantial than our white bread. We ate and wrote some postcards and then hit the road.

The first stop was a Tesco (grocery store) in Stroud. I know that to normal people, it sounds odd to spend part of my first day of my much anticipated trip to the Cotswolds of England in a grocery store. But, then, I’m NOT normal – I’m a food-obsessed whackaloon. I adore grocery stores and always love to visit them in a new place. Visiting one in a new country is a special treat. Also they are a great place for take-home gifts. We got one of our favorite gifts that day – Royal Wedding commemorative tins of cookies that we each took to our offices. We also got a good stash of our favorite English candies: Crunchies, Flakes, Smarties, Jelly Babies, Maltesers, etc. While some or maybe all of these are available in the USA, the chocolate that is used on the British versions seems better. At least to us. I love the stores because they offer something different from what I see every time I walk into a Kroger or a Food Lion. So what do we see first thing?

(sigh)

We DID see some satisfyingly odd and unusual things. This gave us a giggle:

Do you think it was intentional?

Also, England wins the award for most bizarre chip (crisp) flavors:


Stroud was the scene of the recently infamous and inadequately marked pedestrian mall that we tooled through in the Toyota rental car.

Getting out of Stroud (all pedestrians and baby carriages intact, ta very much), we made our way to Painswick. I should say that this was my favorite place in the entire trip. And if I ever win the lottery, my first expenditure will be a cottage here. Painswick has about 2000 residents, feels completely in the country, but is only about 10 minutes from Stroud (a good sized town, with all the amenities) and only a couple of hours from London. And this is what it looks like in February:

(Internet picture). Could heaven improve upon that?

Some Painswick scenes:










These are some of the 99 yew trees in the churchyard of St. Mary’s:

We met a delightful 90 year old gentleman who was the host at the Visitor’s Centre in the Town Hall. He explained the significance of the 99 trees to us. It seems that it is traditional to only plant 99, because legend has it that the devil will kill the 100th. This fellow was so friendly and willing to chat; he told us that the town hall used to be a workhouse (during the wool days) and then a schoolhouse. The Visitor’s Centre was on the second floor and he led us to the window to show us the sites from there:

He was also anxious to share his own history – a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and the father of a one time resident of Austin TX. He’d been to Texas and liked the US very much. He seemed anxious to talk with us, almost lonely. We could undoubtedly have spent the afternoon talking with him, and it was only the draw of the town itself that pulled us away.

We had a pub lunch in Painswick – at the Royal Oak Inn. Lovely place:

We had a good lunch – a selection of local cheeses: stinking bishop washed with pear juice, also with nettle rind, stilton local, Hereford hop cheese (with hop rind) and a good, crunchy baguette. That was great, but what was truly lovely was our visit with the locals. You always hear, at least in America, about the British reserve – how stand-offish they are. We never saw it. True – we never had anyone introduce themselves to us by name. But chat??? Good God, they chat! The owner/chef came out to bring us our lunch and told us about each cheese, what order they should be eaten in and where they all came from. The server told us she’d lived in LA and brought us a fresh blackberry sundae on the house because she’d accidentally made an extra one. How this could be true is a mystery, since we were at that point the only patrons in the place. It may have been a gift to apologize for not having the blue cheeses we originally ordered, or the spare could have been legitimately a duplicate of one that was intended for the proprietor. Who knows? It was delicious, no matter the provenance. Another local couple came in to eat and chatted about their trips to the US (Washington, DC especially) and Paris, when they heard we were going there, too. This little pub lunch was what I’d dreamed about back home and here it was happening exactly as I’d hoped. The only thing that was missing was the offer of a fabulous job for Mr. Kim (thatched cottage included, naturally). Sigh.

I don’t think I’ve talked about England’s post offices yet. In the little villages, at least, they are VERY different from our post offices. You can, of course, purchase stamps and mail packages and all that. But they are so much MORE. Every one that we went into also were little shops with postcards, maps, souvenirs, snacks, etc. I believe that they still have saving accounts also. The Painswick post office was probably the most beautiful and charming one that we saw:

(Internet picture) This 15th century timber framed building is the last surviving building of its type in the village. No other PO in England is housed in such an old building.

I had read about a Roman Villa ruin near the village of Chedworth that I thought sounded like something that Mr. Kim would love, so we headed there next. The villa was a bust (they were almost at closing time and besides were renovating – odd, that, renovating a ruin???), but the drive there was gorgeous:




This little fellow was doing some sightseeing of his own:


The village of Chedworth was lovely and hilly and picturesque and I couldn’t resist taking this picture:

The two of them with their wellies, him in his shooting coat and the lurcher were just so VERY English.

Chedworth has a beautiful church, St. Andrew’s, with a graveyard in a bit of a state of disrepair:



and overlooked by these folk:


The church:


And this rather unexpectedly posh domicile next door:

NOT the vicarage, certainly, but the gate is between the churchyard and their garden.

More flowers:


Sadly we didn’t get to Bibury this day. We had driven through it on the way to the cottage from Oxford and were captivated:

(Internet picture) This completely charming place, called by William Morris “the most beautiful village in England” is home to the Bibury Trout Farm where you can fish, eat, tour and shop. I was sorry not to get here, both to see the lovely village and to get some smoked trout.


Went ‘home’ via Cirencester – called the ‘unofficial’ Capital of the Cotswolds. Cirencester, with a population of almost 20,000 people is small to us, but a good sized town still, and too big for what we wanted to do. Nevertheless, we ended up driving around it at least once a day – looking for ‘regular stuff’ – gas, drug stores, etc. (apparently all Cotswold roads lead to Cirencester). It has a beautiful church (yes, ANOTHER church – and we aren’t done yet, my dears) – St. John the Baptist:


With a gorgeous graveyard:


We thought about trying to find somewhere for dinner, but decided to go back to the cottage. We’d picked up some goodies in Stroud and I was LONGING to prepare even a simple meal in our little cottage. We had some cheese (blue Stilton, Laurel Farm Red Leister), some of that great bacon, crusty bread, lovely little tomatoes, Cox apples and strawberries:








Everything was delicious and I had the best BLT of my life (minus the L):



Dessert:

Dark chocolate shortbread and a raisin scone. Lovely.

I explored the cabinets and found four or five boxes of tea bags. I tried them all over the few days we had, and decided that drinking tea in the evenings is a perfectly lovely thing to do.

When the sky finally darkened at ten o’clock or so, the temperature really dropped outside and in. We bundled up under the duvet and fell asleep listening to the sounds of the wind in the trees and our noses filled with the faint smells of the dust from the centuries old beams the mixing with the tang of the cooked bacon and the nectar from the flower garden.

England/Paris Trip - Food Blogging

I've made a start on a more food-centric report of our trip at eGullet. You can find the post here.

Bon Appetit!