If it’s Tuesday it must be Hidcote

Between the plane ride, and the time change, and the travelling about, not to mention writing every day about what happened yesterday, I tend to get a little confused about what day of the week it is. Right now it is Tuesday night, and I am writing about Tuesday’s day, although by the time I post this it will be Wednesday (at least).

I also lose a little track of what day it is because I am constantly thinking about what to do tomorrow, and the rest of the week, and before you know it I am mentally leaving the cottage on Saturday before the week is halfway through. It makes me feel a little bit like I am planning my life away, but without some kind of advance planning I fear I would not manage to do the very things I came here to do.

Now this makes me sound like some kind of anal-retentive scheduling Nazi, and I am not, far from it. (Compared, for example, with my friend and last year’s fellow traveler Pam, who had her plans and schedules laid out like a general’s war plan, annotated and cross-referenced, with a back-up plan for all contingencies. She is, I expect, probably hating me right now!)

Many people who know me might doubt that I am even a planner at all, given my tendency to fly by the seat of my pants in some circumstances. For travel, I like a plan of graduated complexity, starting with the most general of guidelines to begin with, and gradually adding detail as I go, with the flexibility to change the details (but not the master plan!) as circumstances dictate. (Actually, this is a lot how I live my life as well.)

I never leave home without affixing three things—destinations, transportation, and lodging. I want to know what cities I am going to be sleeping in every day of my trip. Equally important, I want to know what beds I am going to be sleeping in—hotels, B & B’s, cottages, all must be reserved and confirmed in advance. Finally, I need to know how I am going to get there and how I will get around when I do—airplane tickets, car rental, and a plan for train travel, whether it’s buying a Britrail pass in advance or buying tickets at the stations. Once I have these details set in stone, I am free to tinker with the day-to-day plans as my whimsy takes me.

Either before the trip, if I have time, or along the way—or both—I start to compile a general list of things I want to do. Walks, gardens, villages, other destinations, etc. I may check out opening days and times, consider where things are located in relationship to other places, then start to fit them into the puzzle of our daily schedules.

I started planning this trip (in earnest) a couple of months ago with a list of about 50 Cotswold country walks I wanted to go on. By the time I got here I had a general idea of which few would best fit into our plans, then I embellished the plan by adding a few early morning walks in the Chipping Campden area that I could squeeze in before we began our day proper.

My ideas of what gardens to visit really gelled when I picked up a wonderful pamphlet at the Tourist Information Center, called “The Cotswolds Year of the Garden—Gardens Guide 2007.” It describes the best of the Cotswold gardens, with opening days and times. This was a great help in narrowing down all my materials—selected pages from The Good Gardens Guide, the National Trust Handbook, and the The Yellow Book (National Gardens Scheme) open gardens guide. With this pamphlet I was able to pick out a few old favorites and pencil in some new possibilities to explore. I still may not get to every place I am interested in, because I also subscribe to a theory that you should limit yourself to two, maybe three, major activities in a day. Two open gardens a day is probably plenty, unless they are very small and near to one another. (In 2001 the entire village of Stanton had an open garden day, and we walked through the town from one garden to the next. However, only Stanton Court (Stanton Court Holiday Cottages) had a big estate garden; the others were smaller village gardens or even courtyards.)

Today, Tuesday, I began with National Trust Hidcote Manor Garden and its nearby neighbor, Kiftsgate Court Gardens. Both are old favorites that I’ve been to twice before, but couldn’t imagine skipping if I’m in the neighborhood (the neighborhood being the Cotswolds, of course). Hidcote is unquestionably the most famous garden in the Cotswolds, and that was evident in the rather full parking lot and crowds of people even before noon on a Tuesday. A lot of the visitors are American and Japanese tourists, of course, but just as many have English accents. Hidcote belongs to the The National Trust, so members get in free, which makes it an additional draw for National Trust card holders. (We purchased National Trust memberships for this trip. We actually got the American affiliate, Royal Oak Foundation, because the exchange rate makes it a better buy. It’s a toss-up whether we’ll get our money back in admission savings, since our trip is relatively short in the span of a year’s membership, but it feels right getting in with a National Trust membership and, since the cards are paid for already, there is the façade of getting something for nothing!)

Hidcote was created in the early 20th century by Major Lawrence Johnston. He is described in the brochure as “a private man who never married, and shared his interest in gardening, painting, and tennis with a close circle of friends.” After serving in the Boer War he came to Hidcote with his wealthy mother in 1907 at the age of 35. (Must be handy to have a wealthy mother if you want to spend your time gardening, painting, and playing tennis.) He established the main outline of the Hidcote garden by 1913. Hidcote is famous for its series of “outdoor rooms,” each with a distinct atmosphere, character, and planting scheme. Many of the rooms are divided by tall manicured hedges with openings leading from one room to the next. While some of the garden rooms are extremely formal and severe in style, most are planted in a lush, overgrown English style, which might be off-putting to unimaginative people who like a tidy, soulless planting style (you know who you are!) Those of us who are inherently a little messy and like things colourful and somewhat flamboyant will appreciate Hidcote’s planting scheme, not the least for its ability to disguise weeds!

My mother and I wandered through Hidcote, map guide in hand, occasionally trying to determine what “room” we were in, but not trying too hard to make sure we saw every little thing. As I said to my mother, I’m sure I’ll be back to Hidcote again someday, so there’s no need to try to do everything today. We did make sure to visit the Rose Walk before leaving—the roses were just beginning to bloom—and waited patiently, then less patiently, for an oblivious couple sitting on the bench at the end under the wisteria to finally move their behinds and let somebody else have a turn sitting there for a photo op.

Hidcote is practically next door to another lovely garden, Kiftsgate Court, just about half a mile down the long drive, and to me visiting the two gardens goes hand in hand. But for some reason Kiftsgate is less well-known and less visited and never as crowded as Hidcote. (To me, that is a good thing!) I think I even like Kiftsgate a little more than Hidcote. It is a little smaller and less overwhelming, with exquisite plantings in a flow of interconnecting gardens. Kiftsgate has an incredible espaliered rose garden—unfortunately the roses really aren’t in bloom yet—with the rose canes looped and trained over metal hoops, arches, and trellises. The garden drops steeply over a landscaped bank to overlook a serene view of peaceful patchwork fields.
My favorite part, though, is the patio surrounding a pool and fountain, bordered with perennials and set with chairs and tables painted a vibrant cornflower blue (I call it Kiftsgate blue). I could sit there for hours with a book—that is if I weren’t on a semi-strict touring schedule!

My mother and I were visiting these gardens on our own, having earlier dropped my father at the railway station in Moreton-in-Marsh to catch a train for Oxford. (The rails were calling him.) We squeaked into the station just in time for him to jump on the 11:03 train—in fact the conductor held the train for a moment so he could get on. I never thought we would even make it there by 11, since we got a few minutes later start than planned (what’s new about that), and the traffic into Moreton was difficult due to the Tuesday morning market and road construction on the street into the station. We were only too happy to leave Moreton behind us on the way to Hidcote. Once again, we chose the narrow, little-traveled roads over the more-traveled main roads, finding them more scenic, peaceful, and really more conducive to a stable blood pressure!

I must say that English drivers are maniacs. On any road other than in the middle of a village they drive at break-neck speeds, taking any opportunity to pass someone going under 50 to 60 miles per hour. (I’m not kidding. I get passed all the time.) In the villages, where the streets are barely wide enough for one car to pass, and are frequently lined with parked cars and/or stone walls, they sometimes deign to slow to the posted speed limit of 30 miles per hour. These are streets where I feel nervous going more than 20. They do not hesitate to use their horn if they thing you are impeding their way or doing something wrong. And I know that sometimes I only go 45 or 50 on a winding two-lane road, so just sue me, okay!

However, those complaints are mainly about cars going in the same direction as me. The English also have a (moderately) good sense of politeness and fairness toward oncoming traffic. Since so many roads and streets are only wide enough for one car, everyone is willing to pull into turnouts or open spaces to let the other car pass, and a little wave is de rigeur to thank the other driver for letting you by. Sometimes they’ll even back up, if that’s what it takes to get you through. I’ve pretty much perfected the wave, really a lift of the fingers of your right hand (which is the one closest to the oncoming car, of course), without actually lifting your hand off the steering wheel.

After the two gardens, we drove into Broadway for afternoon tea. (I like to spread my tea business around). We went to a little tearoom I’d been to last year, called Tisanes, for cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and, of course, the usual scones and cream. The weather today was sunny enough that we sat outside in the tea garden and I was only a little cold a couple of times when the sun went behind a cloud.

We got back to the cottage with enough time to relax a bit, before heading back to Moreton-in-Marsh to meet the train. The trip was so much less congested in the morning that we got to the station by 5:00 easily, only to find that the train wasn’t due till 5:20 and then was a little bit late on top of that! At about 5:25 the train pulled into the station where I was waiting on the platform, and my father hopped off the train reporting a great day in Oxford. In fact, he thought this was the first time he’d been to Oxford. I wasn’t sure about that; I was sure I’d taken him to Oxford in the past but it was possible that we’d only been to Cambridge.

It was still quite pleasant and warm when we returned to Chipping Campden around 6:00, and I packed up my computer for an evening’s work on my bench (at least until I ran out of battery power). It was a nice evening and my mother walked into town with me and sat for a while on the bench watching people go by.

The whole day had been primarily sunny and warm, even at 6:30 a.m. when I left the cottage for a walk to BROADWAY TOWER. This was an easy route because it followed the Cotswold Way all the way from Chipping Campden to Broadway Tower (and beyond), and the Cotswold Way is very well marked. While easy, it started out rather unpleasantly as I hadn’t planned for the long grass in the fields I was crossing to be so wet with dew. By the time I emerged from that part of the route, my legs were soaked up to the middle of my thighs. Although it felt rather cold and miserable, I vowed to bear it, and in fact, it was not so bad after all due to my fabulously quick drying Columbia pants. I don’t know what they’re made of, but they’re a miracle fabric. With half an hour my legs were entirely dried except for a couple inches around the hems. As I was walking along a portion of the walk called the Mile Drive (I keep thinking of it as the Long Mile), I wondered how far the trip to Broadway Tower really was. I had estimated 3 to 3½ miles each way, based on the scale of the map, but it was hard to be sure. The time it would take me to walk was not necessarily reliable, as walking speed on footpaths is often slower and more interrupted than ordinary walking. I was disgruntled to realize I’d left my pedometer back at the cottage, so I wouldn’t even know how many steps I had taken in this long walk! Part of the route was familiar, as I’d walked to Broadway Tower last year from Saintbury, and it was indeed a fast and easy walk. Soon I was climbing the hills to the tower, taking the usual view pictures, and turning around to head back to Chipping Campden. (Broadway village, seen here in a view from Broadway Tower, was only about a mile further on, and I was tempted to go onward, but knew I would eventually regret the extra time it took, so regretfully turned back.) On my return trip over the mile drive I met several people walking with their dogs, including a couple with two miniature dachshunds, a short-hair and a wire-hair. (These miniature dachshunds were not too tiny, however!) Apparently miniature dachshunds are as popular in England as they are in the U.S., as I seem to keep running into them, at least in Chipping Campden! I got back to the cottage at a little past 8:30, so it seems that my estimate of 3 to 3 ½ miles each way is probably pretty accurate.

Tomorrow—Wednesday—will be Kelmscott Manor - and a walk along the River Thames (yes, it’s up here too!)