David's dribblings: July 2024

This year, in order to avoid going home during the Paris Olympics, we extended our departure date by spending two weeks jaunting around England. Most of that trip has been covered in a series of Facebook posts, leaving only our last few days in England to cover here.

Much of the second half of our trip entailed staying with friends from our days in Oman. It was great to catch up with old friends, even if only for a day or two each. In rapid succession we stayed with Cathy and Nigel near Bristol, Jenny and Ian in Worcester, Bob and Ali in East Markham and Mark in March.

Posing on the riverbank

The river Nene runs through March, and Mark's little house on the riverbank was quite a nice place to hole up for a night or two. March has a few interesting things - a fossil shop where I did not allow Katrina to go and buy fossilised dinosaur poo (again), a rather nice local museum and St Wendreda's church where the roof is held up by a flight of angels, 120-odd of them.

The river Nene and narrowboats

Tools of the Fenland.
Those on the right are for catching eels

Both St Wendreda's and the museum remember a WW2 Brisbane bomber pilot J.W. Hocking who, when his plane encountered difficulties over March, directed his crew to bail out telling them that he would follow once he had ensured the safety of the village of March. He did not get out and the plane went on to crash just outside the village.

The museum covers a lot of ground, with particular emphasis on rail and fenlands living.

Pilot Officer Hocking's uniform

Almost the full 120 angels - truly a flight

St Wendreda's has been the site of a church since the 7th century. The current church is not quite that old and the roof is lined with 120 wooden angels carved between 1523 and 1526. They survived the attentions of King Henry VIII's reformation commissioners by dint of the villagers plying the commissioners with food, drink and church silver. Thank goodness for human weaknesses as the angels are rather spectacular. I jave many photo's of the angels.

From March we journeyed on to visit Tranmer House (Sutton Hoo) and stayed in the rather lovely Wantisden park, in the middle of nowhere. Interestingly, the area around Sutton Hoo and Wantisden is where the series "The Detectorists" was filmed.

Our campsite at Wantisden Park

We spent almost a full day roaming the grounds of Tranmer House and looking closely at their exhibits. Sadly most of the things on display at the Sutton Hoo site are replicas, as all the most famous originals reside in the British Museum. What they do have though, are some fantastic replicas with interpretive material and some more recent finds (think 6c Byzantine bronze bucket), all set in quite nice wooded parkland. If you ask nicely (at the entrance gate) there is a volunteer guided walk n talk in amongst the burial mounds. Most excellent, my camera worked overtime even on the replicas!

The burial mounds

Byzantium bucket, discovered
onsite, with modern reproduction
alongside

That helm

Front of THAT HELM

Tranmer House

One of the interesting stories told, was that after Edith Pretty died her son Robert inherited the grounds and excavations continued sporadically. On hearing of a new find that had the archeologists excited and puzzled in equal measure, Robert travelled to Tranmer House to see for himself. He found the archeologists in animated discussion over a large unidentifiable metal object, unabe to agree on what it was, or speculate on a purpose. Robert asked to examine the item and to be shown exactly where it was found. Oh, I know what this is he said, they're my old roller-skates, Basil Brown (the original amateur archeologist of Sutton Hoo) let me bury them here, in part as a puzzle for future archeologists.

And then with our time in England running down we headed off to Canterbury, particularly to look in awe at the Cathedral. It was worth making the effort. Canterbury may just be the largest Cathedral I have ever been to. Sadly, much of the cathedral was closed off for graduations, so we only got to go into a limited area. Mind you the biers of Henry IV alongside Joan of Navarre, the Black Prince's bier and stained glass windows depicting the miracles of some guy called Tom were all accessible. Probably my favourite part was the St Gabriel's chapel n the crypt. When workers removed a wall around 50 years ago, they discovered original 12c ceiling paintings. The stone finials on the crypt pillars were also quite interesting, as they were carved very early in the cathedral's history and the stone masons were given more freedom over what they depicted. Many of the finial "heads" clearly represented pre-christian iconography. The heraldry on display, on the arched vaulting around the cloister is also quite amazing.

Inside Canterbury Cathedral

The candle marks the spot of Beckett's bier,
removed at the orders of Henry VIII during
the reformation of the churches

One of the many stained
glass windows showing
the miracles of
Thomas A'Beckett

Looking up the Black Prince

Underside of the roof tof the bier of
Henry IV and Joanne of Navarre

Heraldic display in the cloisters

And then, all too soon, it was off to our final campsite (and the only disappointing one) in England. Our final day was spent shattering the rule of one tourist destination a day, by visiting the white cliffs of Dover - very white, quite speccy - the Dover museum and bronze age boat, a lovely cafe (La Salle Verte) and a very quick driveby stop at the Battle of Britain memorial.