Blighty Pt 1

Aberystwyth in flood, the morning after we arrived.

Rumour has it that the ‘summer’ function failed to install on the UK hard drive and the Bureau of Meteorology recommended “turning it off then turning it on again”. Consequently, after a couple of sunny weeks in May we were thrust back into winter again for a while before the sun returned a few days ago, when the mercury finally hit 20C for the first time in weeks.

Of course, now that summer seems to have found its feet at last*, we now only have a week left in the UK before heading home to work, midwinter, and warring children (‘I feel like all I do when I go home is clean’, complained Rhiannon of her non-house-trained brother – ‘welcome to my world’, I thought). Hmmmmm, so much to look forward to.

Luckily, our travels weren’t too seriously impaired by the weather and we’ve managed to fit walks and sightseeing in the dry bits between storms, which were endured from warm, welcoming friends’ homes and various licensed establishments.

Walking up Winchester Hill with mum and dad.

Our three days on the Isle of Wight, for example, were wonderfully sunny and warm and we swam in the sea twice (surrounded both times by wetsuit-clad locals who looked askance at the weird foreigners). At the time we were more worried about the dangers of Weever / Weaver Fish, for which we’d seen warning signs but without description or details of the actual threat. Did they bite you, brush against you with poisonous tentacles or stab your feet from below?

To be on the safe side, we shuffled into the water and only flapped around for a few minutes before retreating once more. So much for the tough, fearless Aussies…

Bumblebee at work.

http://www.marine-conservation.org.uk/weaverfish.html



One of the fritillary butterflies.



Keeping up the colonial spirit, we tried to redeem ourselves by laughing in the face of bumblebees, sauntering past squirrels and even walking past a hornets nest (before we were told what it was, anyway).

It seems the British countryside is under threat from all manner of attack – mites that defoliate Horse Chestnut trees, phytophthera fungi that is killing off spruce trees – and there is much concern about the apparent imbalance in the bird populations: some raptors have doubled in numbers while sparrows are scarce and we noticed far more finches than normal. Lovely to look at but no-one can quite figure out why some species have see such monumental population shifts.

At the cricket with Nick and Abi

However it was wonderful getting my feet back on chalk downs; they felt right at home there among the cowslips and bluebells, and we even saw a few orchids. The Needles on the Isle of Wight were surprisingly impressive and even the painfully touristy bits were good in their own way.

One wonderful discovery we’ve made on this return visit is how much English pub and restaurant food has improved. Local food producers are well supported by both shops and restaurants and, as a result, a lot of newcomers have joined the movement, making great cheeses, smoking locally grown meat and fish, keeping bees, growing a wider range of vegetables, fruit and herbs and making lots of interesting condiments as well as yummy meals. As we’ve noticed in Australia, this has been matched by a renewed interest in heritage breeds of cattle and varieties of fruit and veg, and in ‘rural’ crafts, such as coppicing timber, hedge laying and dry-stone walling.

A great beer-veg swap idea...

A map on the wall of a pub we loved in Godshill (IoW) showed how far all the produce used in the kitchen had travelled, which included eggs from chickens 20m away in the back garden up to 8.5 miles, which was how  far the lobster and crab had come from the harbour.

Fixing my gardening addiction with Claire.

Having just planted out my first garden allotment in Australia, I was interested to see the many different allotment schemes around England, most of which have larger plots of land but fewer shared assets.

I was disappointed with the Australasian section of Wisley gardens though, which has a few Eucalyptus trees, an Alyogyne, a couple of grevilleas and some NZ pittosporums, but the rest of the garden was excellent. Callistemon (bottlebrushes) and grevilleas are by far the most common Aussie plants to be seen in gardens, with a few scaevola in hanging baskets.

Stowell Park with Neil.

Poor John has been dragged around many gardens over the past few weeks, all with good grace and only occasional frustration. On the Isle of Wight we visited a National Trust-run property that has been experimenting with growing warmer climate and southern hemisphere plants in preparation for climate change; in the Cotswolds we were given a personal tour of Stowell Park’s gorgeous hilltop garden by Lady Vestey’s head gardener, Neil (the walled kitchen garden includes five 20m-long rows of asparagus – droooool); and up in Alnwick (pronounced Annick, apparently) we explored the relatively new garden created by the Duchess of Northumberland, which is set up as a charity and includes dozens of water features and a poison garden. Add to that all our friends’ gardens and dozens of hedgerows, woodlands, coastal downs and moors, and we’ve seen a fair range of Britain’s spring and early summer vegetation on this trip.

Silver leaf.

Great to see British wildflowers in such profusion, both in the wild and within gardens.

OK I’ll end here and add in some photos, then in future blogs I’ll describe some of the other beautiful corners we’ve explored – the Cotswolds, Wales, Devon, the Lake District and Norfolk – plus some of our general observations on how the UK is evolving after being away for seven years.

Butterfly orchid.

The nudist end of Sandown Beach, IoW.

Flags out for Jubilee celebrations, Burford.

Asparagus patch, walled garden, Stowell Park.