An Oxford wander

Seems like hardly any of my posts are from London recently... You can't blame me though, can you, as I’ve seen enough of London to last me quite a while in the past 18 months. My friend H, who used to live around the corner from me, moved out of London earlier this year, and I’m so proud of us for managing to see each other about once a month since then. Oxford is a half hour train ride from her house, so on we the train we hopped, to go for an architecture walk in the Jericho neighbourhood. I’m always up for a visit there (still haven’t managed to go to Cambridge - which is crazy)! In fact H was scheming that we should retire there together, listing good healthcare, a smaller city, but still close to London and the countryside as good reasons, to which I added ‘a bikeable city!’. She did get me thinking. Just like in London the architecture is a varied mix - Georgian, Victorian, Brutalist and new. Check out this 60’s student accommodation block out next to, I’m guessing, an Edwardian building, now a very classy wine bar.

And here, a Victorian terrace. I always think streets without trees look so strange.

Maybe that’s compensated by these ornate window frames just yards away.

And this Georgian terrace looks very different from London ones, as they’ve been built in what looks like Bath stone, rather than brick.

We all like Georgian houses, don’t we? They really knew how to build proportionally back then. Although if you look closely you can see that this house isn’t perfectly symmetrical.

Had to snap this as I liked the colours and the pattern.

Just around the corner sits another modern student accommodation building. I like how they’ve matched the exterior stone with the older houses.

Look at that cool dining area to the right. Very stylish student digs I must say.

I wanted to get a picture of the Palladian exterior of this building, and cursed loudly about the white van blocking the view. The guy in the picture, who’s van it was, apologised profusely, and I immediately apologised about my outburst. We all had a good laugh about it. The building, St Paul’s, used to be a church and is now a bar called Freud. Funnily enough, I used to frequent the original London branch a lot in the mid 90’s. Oh boy, writing that previous sentence makes me feel old.

A bit further down the road this house caught our eye. Why did the front look like that, and didn't it look great? Turns out it started out life as a greengrocers.

Hence this old painted ad on the side of the house for Hovis bread.

We stood looking at this house for quite a while. We also really liked the planting. So jealous of people who have the energy to look after their plants that well.

Same road, different style. I love these arched entryways. Something about them is so cosy.

At one point we walked onto a little bridge over the Oxford Canal. I had to take one of my waving at each others reflection pictures there. Here’s another one from Venice.

Face!

In-ter-esting… I wonder if anyone ever does. I didn’t, but maybe I should’ve.

H, looking down a street.

An Oxford alternative to a window box. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it before.

Ooooooff. The brick colour and windows on this house. Niiiiiiice.

Before catching the train back to H’s house we walked along Oxford Canal. At one section the houses backed on to it, with the gardens going all the way down to the canal.

Nice, huh?

Talk about lifestyle goals.

Sadly the canal isn’t clean enough to swim in. And also, you’d feel pretty exposed with the opposite side of the canal being a public footpath. Still, really nice to see how some people live (university professors maybe?), and if you wanted to be more private, the gardens were deep enough to shelter you form people like us.

And finally, an eye catching ziggurat tower atop the Saïd Business School right next to the train station. It was so cool to go to Oxford and only walk around one residential neighbourhood and skip everything else. A bit like going to London, only to walk around Islington or something. Lucky us.

Day trippers

Right at the beginning of the summer holidays Oomoo suggested that we went to back to Hever Castle, bringing our friends C and A with us, and a bloody good idea it was too. Last time we went, three years ago, it was a scorching hot day, but no such luck this year. Heavy rain was forecast for midday, so we headed inside the castle straight after lunch. What’s the back story on this place then? Well, I’ll tell you (hahaha). The oldest part of the castle dates from 1270 (!), but has been added to for centuries, and is most famous as the childhood and family home of Anne Boleyn, King Henry the VIII’s second wife in the early 1500’s. Henry the VIII is probably the UK’s most famous king, what with his six marriages and the initiating the English Reformation. In the end he had Anne Boleyn executed on account of adultery (although it was never proven), and eventually gave Hever Castle to his fourth wife Anne of Cleves, who got away with a bog standard divorce (there’s a rhyme that most English school kids get taught so they remember the fate of the different wives that goes: "Divorced, Beheaded, Died: Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” - nice guy, eh?). Centuries later the wealthy American William Waldorf Astor (the richest man in America at the time) bought the castle and set about to restore it as it had fallen into decline. It’s now owned by a Yorkshire businessman who buys old historical houses and opens them up to the public.

So, let’s head in. Voila, the portcullis. Does it remind you of the Jaws film poster? It does me.

We had to queue for a bit in the courtyard before entering which gave us a chance to have a closer look at the Tudor style exterior of this section.

There’s quite a mish mash of styles in the house, some being more historical and other how the Astors had it. This pictures doesn’t do the room justice (it’s actually sectioned off, so you can’t enter it, and muggins here never has a zoom lens on the camera). It’s a lovely room, with beautiful intarsia wood panelling.

My lovely friend C, taking a pic.

A portrait of Anne Boleyn. I had to take a picture, because as a Swede her surname here made me laugh. Bullen = Bun. Trust me, it’s funnier in Swedish. If you’re 5. Or 46.

You know I have a window addiction, right? I can’t help it.

A view across to the Astor Wing, or Tudor Village as it’s also called (now a hotel), which was built by Astor and not the Tudors, in 1903, in the Tudor style. Confused yet? Tudor architecture was the architecture du jour during Henry the VII’s reign, that also had a revival in the late 1800’s when it was called Tudor Style or Mock Tudor. If you’ve been to London and to the department store Liberty’s you’ve seen Mock Tudor.

It got a bit busy in this room so I waited a bit so I could get this picture without any 21st century people in it. There was a moment earlier when a kid (8 or 9 years old) freaked out as the guided audio tour had just told him that this room was haunted. The sheer terror in his voice! Poor guy.

As I result of hanging back I missed going into this room with Oomoo, who has a fear of dummies like these. He’s never liked them, so I assume he walked past these guys quickly. This is Henry and Anne innit. And a monstrous hand (there was some sort of trail for younger kids to spot through out the house). Can you spot it?

Some nice light and colours in one of the corridors.

I think my taste is changing as I get older. I never liked this style of painting before, but I like the flatness of them now. I think being forced to look at different styles of art in the past 18 months has broaden my view.

This was once Astor’s daughter’s room, or maybe it was a guest bedroom - I can’t remember.. There was another room next door with flowery wallpaper on the walls, as well as the ceiling, and me and C ohh and ahhed over how much we liked it. C said “It’s happened. We’ve gotten so old we now like chintz”. Yep.

And here we are - the chintz liking ladies.

This room had horrible medieval weapons and torture contraptions in it. This iron mask was worn by women for months or years as punishment for adultery amongst other things, to humiliate and punish them in public. There were loads of different masks, specifically for women, and I asked the guide in the room (male) that it seemed a bit unfair that only the women got punished like this, and the men weren’t. He didn’t like the implication of my comment at all, and proceeded to proudly show us an implement that was used to slice women breasts off. It made me think he had issues with women, and would probably have really enjoyed being a man back then.

And then, the sun came out and so did we. Ciao castle!

Mazes are so a-mazeing. I want them to be larger than the ones I’ve been to - I want to get properly lost. Mr Famapa says there’s an order to how many lefts and rights you should take to make your way out without hitting a dead end, so walking them with him is always a quick experience. And here there was, once we got to the middle of it, a straight line out to the exit - which was a cheat.

Edgy hedge.

Piggy hedge.

I like the wildflower meadow planting that we’re all realising is good to have now.

At Hever there is also a water maze, which you walk through trying not to get wet if you’re an adult, and the opposite if you’re not. The maze is a circular stone tile walkway that sprays water if you step on the 'wrong’ tile. For some reason I didn't bring spare clothes for Oomoo (even though we’d been before), so he had to sit in the car for the two hour drive home afterwards completely drenched.

More nice planting.

Best mates statue alert. I love how they’re just hanging out, having a chat.

Let’s see it from the front. It looks like the eagle is telling his pal about the time he accidentally ate a grumpy male guide in the castle 😉.

This is what a lot of summer in the UK 2021 looked like - April in other words. I’m so glad we ignored the weather forecast and just went anyway. If you’re looking for a day out outside London I say GO; I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it as much the second time, but I was pleasantly surprised. And if we hadn’t gone on a rainy day I wouldn’t have got this shot, and that would’ve been a shame.

A walk in Ramsgate

Like I said in the earlier post; at one point in our Ramsgate stay I went out for a walk on my own to have a look around. These stairs led the way from the marina walk up to the top of the cliff above.

I had no real idea of where I was going, apart from that I wanted to find the house that Vincent Van Gogh stayed in when he worked as a teacher at an all boys school here in 1876, in the years when he was trying to find his way, before he devoted himself completely to painting. It’s really interesting to walk around somewhere unfamiliar on your own, it feels slightly surreal, but also adventurous? Maybe one day I should go on a trip on my own, just for a different experience. I remember decades ago, when I used to work on a magazine, and I had to go to Folkestone for the day to take pictures. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Not for any reason in particular; just the strangeness of being somewhere new, with no one else to share it with.

Even as seed heads poppies are so beautiful - aren’t they?

A Victorian wind shelter being used.

I had no idea where I was going at this point. I just followed my nose. This flint stone church looked really impressive.

The Granville, a huge Victorian Gothic style hotel that was converted into flats in 1947. Apparently the tower used to be even higher, but got truncated at some point. So quirky!

This sign above the entrance to the Ramsgate Tunnels caught my eye. I mean, how could it not? The Ramsgate Tunnels used to be part of the Victorian railway, that went straight out of London to the Granville Hotel. In WW2, on today’s date in 1940, 500 bombs were dropped over Ramsgate, destroying over 1,200 houses, and as a result about 300 families moved into the tunnels, that had already been added to so it could function as an air raid shelter. People lived there for the next five years, turning it into a subterranean town with shops, barbers, an underground hospital, and it even held concerts. You can see old footage of what it was like here.

The Pulhamite rock garden on Madeira Walk, built to entice holiday makers to spend more time in the town. Pulhamite rocks are in fact not rocks, but rubble and cement put together to look like natural rock.

And to our 21st century eyes it’s obvious that they’re fake.

How’s this for a mishmash of styles? And why is the brown and pink house turned on an angle like that?

Getting closer to the Van Gogh house now. I thought this Art Deco (I’m assuming) block of flats looked cool.

And this former deli, now a house, looked interesting too. Look at all them vintage pendant lights innit.

Knitted ice cream bunting. Well I never.

Saw a few of these flint houses. This one was the cutest.

And, the colour of this pub got my approval.

Tadaa! And here it is - Vincent’s old digs. I don’t know if you can see them though the curtains on the ground floor, but there was a vase full on sunflowers there. Like an homage.

And from sunflowers to weeds. I was out for a lot longer than I though I would be, so I started on my way back to the house via the marina. You have to admire weeds for being able to grow pretty much anywhere, like through the cracks of the marina wall.

Time for reflection.

And finally, these strangers, having some fish and chips, with a seagull eyeing them up.

Dreamy Ramsgate

Hey peeps. How’s summer been treating you? Ok I hope - despite everything? I’ve found it a bit strange and melancholy. I didn't feel comfortable or quite frankly flush enough to go abroad, and the successive lockdowns feels like it’s quashed most of what was our social life. But hey, there has been some good things too, and good people, and some new places to discover much closer to home. At the beginning of July me and Mr Famapa headed down to Ramsgate to visit some friends for the day, and being there was positively exotic.

So exotic that for some people it was perfectly acceptable to walk around with your shirt off. Well I guess we were by the sea, so why not?

Ahh the sea. I mean is this a view or is this a view? Our friends house is a truly eccentric beauty (more on that later), which they have done up beautifully . We thought we were only coming for lunch, but it turns out there was a miscommunication, and we were expected to stay the night. Luckily Oomoo was already on a sleepover, but unluckily I didn't have my glasses with me, or spare contact lenses.

So we hopped on bikes and cycled into the town centre, where at an optician’s I was kindly given some extra contact lenses for free (people can be so nice!!), and then got ourselves toothbrushes and everything else we needed from the chemist to see us through the night. At least I brought my camera, eh?

Lucky us though, because it meant we got to spend the night in this beautiful bed, with the view in the picture with the view that is a view.

The house used to be a photographer’s studio in the late 1890’s, and was built straight onto the cliff wall, as in the back of the house is the cliff wall.

And the whole front wall into the dining and living room area is just glass, with the most amazing light, or silhouettes - whichever you prefer.

A & E have impeccable taste, and I love how they salvaged a broken table football into a cool piece of wall art.

When they found the property it had been on the market for over a year, and I’m so glad they were the ones who got it, as they have turned into such a great space, with utmost respect to the house.

Yes, that view again.
Sorry (not sorry).

The lady of the manor, making me miss having short hair.

And this has to be the nicest shower room I’ve ever seen! Imagine the daily joy of looking out to a different seascape every day. Sigh.

Remember how I said the house was an eccentric beauty? Well, through a door from the utility room, off the kitchen, you come out into a set of tunnels that were old smugglers caves. There’s also a staircase in the rock wall that goes up to a hotel at the top of cliff, that Queen Victoria used to use (amongst other less historical hotel guests - all though probably not at the same time) to access the sea easier. In its heyday Ramsgate was a very popular sea resort, but the town has lost its glamour since the advent of charter holidays, like almost all British seaside towns.

Ironically, since I’m now a cold water lover, swimming in the North Sea is much more alluring now than any tropical beach. At one point in the day I took my camera out for a walk to check out the town and have a look at the architecture, but that’s a whole other post in itself.

Please don’t poo on me.

When I got back from my walk the house was asleep. All that sea air seemed to have tired everyone else out. As we didn’t know that we were staying over I hadn’t brought my book with me, so I had a look in the book shelves for something to read. To my surprise and relief I found the book I was reading! ‘Great Expectations’ by the brilliant Mr Charles Dickens. I managed to find where I was in it, but I also for some reason read the blurb on the back - which gave away the ending - doh. It was an old copy of the book, which might’ve explained why the publishers thought it was a good idea to do so, but a blurb should never give away the ending, right?

A had earlier in the day bought this puzzle in a bric a brac shop, and while I was away it had been put together, but with Ireland missing. A puzzling mystery indeed.

Once everyone woke up from their naps, we cycled to a pub for pre-dinner drinks in a nice spot by some sort of shallow pool and views across the sea (not in this direction obviously). Our phones thought we were in France and pinged with messages telling us so. If nothing else, my phone has at least been abroad this year.

Cycling back to the house.

Had to lie down for a bit and rest my legs and feet, from the walk and the bike rides.

A putting the finishing touches to our dinner that he had cooked outside in the wood fire oven.

The following morning, with the tide in, me and A went for a swim (I had at least packed my bathing suit!) in the +16c water, which was a perfect temperature. I stopped swimming in the Ladies Pond when the temp got to +19c in early June, as it was like swimming in soup and way too busy for my liking. But here in the sea we were the only ones in it, with people looking at us like we were crazy, or as one lady said as we got out to A: ‘Can I touch you? You must be Superman swimming in that cold water!’ A perfect way to end our 24hrs in Ramsgate - which now looking back on it felt a bit like a dream. Everything worked out perfectly, without us being prepared, and it made me realise how good it can feel to not have everything planned. To go with the flow. Must remember that as we head into an autumn/winter, wondering what’s coming next.