Gertsamtkunstwerk

A short walk in the Devil's Punch Bowl

Last summer, we booked a short spa break at Lythe Hill near Haslemere. We set off fairly early to enjoy the local area before checking in.

It was a pleasant journey, pretty much A3 all the way, with just one bottle neck on the outskirts of London. A ride of sheer pleasure through the Hindhead tunnel, and then doubled back to visit Devil's Punch Bowl.

According to Wikipedia

The Hindhead Tunnel, opened in 2011, is part of the 4 mile  dual-carriageway Hindhead bypass that replaced the last remaining stretch of single-carriageway on the 68-mile  A3, the London to Portsmouth road. At 1.14 miles in length the tunnel is the longest non-estuarial road tunnel in the United Kingdom, and takes the road beneath the Devil's Punch Bowl, a Site of Special Scientific Interest...

...Tree felling was scheduled to minimise disruption to nesting birds and to other wild-life and in certain instances, animals such as dormice were removed to similar habitats elsewhere. After the works were completed, 200,000 trees were planted on the route of the old road.The restoration of the old road to nature removed a barrier that prevented the migration of ground-nesting birds, such as woodlarks and nightjars from one part of the nature reserve to the other.

We stopped for coffee at the National Trust coffee shop and were obliged to endure the bragging of the women at the next table, all showy off about things they were spending their money on and nothing about actually doing anything. Pretty ghastly.

We walked to the edge and gazed out over the Punch Bowl, a natural amphitheatre. It's not difficult to see how it got its name. Wikipedia summarises some Local Legends

 

The National Trust have done their best to make this visitor friendly, clearly signing several walks of varying length and degrees of difficulty. We set out along one. And didn't get very far.

We had the misfortune to be unable to escape the most ghastly party imaginable. Two self-absorbed mothers, one pushing a buggy, and several out-of-control children on bikes, trikes and scooters ignored by their miserable inadequate sub-human mothers. Lots of incidents, but perhaps the worst was the toddler on the trike deliberately driving it between us, then turning round to try and drive the trike through my legs. I haven't kicked a child since I was one myself but I was on the verge. Or the child on a bike, about seven, who overtook us on the path and turned round to ride at speed directly at us, slamming his brakes on just inches from our feet. The revolting specimens posing as 'parents' did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Carried on walking, heads down talking loudly about shopping for materialistic status symbols. Nasty crud. I don't know what you're supposed to do when physically harassed and assaulted by pre-school and KS1 children.

We turned back and managed to salvage the morning by walking off the path and onto the Common. That was enormously rewarding, not least because of the butterflies. Something magical happened last summer, and that weekend was its zenith. Later, at Lythe Hill, I stood by the tennis court and watched flocks of butterflies dancing in the sunlight. Such joy, and such a variety I have never encountered before. And many pollinators, too. 

What made this special was that we saw so many butterflies, wild flowers and bees on a piece of land that was only actually two years old, that had previously been the main London-Portsmouth Road. Very encouraging to see how quickly nature can reclaim itself.

We returned to the car park and had to endure further minutes of the vacuous bored housewives of Surrey doing their attention seeking shouty thing around the enormous fuel-inefficient cars they struggle to park, let alone drive. Pathetic little parasites.

Onto Haslemere town centre and the outstanding White Horse for lunch. This was the fourth time we've eaten here, and it's a lovely addition to any break at nearby Lythe Hill. Really good food - I had asparagus and pea gnocchi, perfect for lunch on a day when you've already booked dinner! The staff at the pub are lovely, too. Unfortunately, its clientele is also infested by the Smug Surreyness of the area.

Particularly hilarious was the loud over-sharing conspicuous consumers at the next table. Once they had finished shouting about their expensive holidays of conspicuous consumption and intellectual vacuity, they moved on to discuss a visit to some friends to who had recently moved to 'it has a Manchester postcode but it's really Cheshire' and how marvellous that place is. They could only be talking of Sale, my home town.

I'm not going to go all pedantic about the Local Government Act of 1974, merely observe that Cheshire's reputation (notwithstanding industrial towns and its fair share of rural poverty) is green fields, cattle grazing, market gardening, picturesque villages, National Trust estates, and spacious villas with paddocks and orchards. Sale, on the other hand, is an unremarkable commuter suburb, congested with traffic, dense housing, including 'rough' council estates, and a pre-dominance of two/three bedroomed semis and terraced houses, with a few patches of larger urban villas.

She also boasted about how good the schools are. Surely if her friends were any good as parents, their kids wouldn't need good schools - an intelligent child with engaged parents can do well academically from a mediocre school. Good schools are great for the dim or for those who parents don't really care. Ultimately, I couldn't quite work out what she was boasting about or why, it was just boasting for its own sake. No mention of how the friends are settling into their new home, no mention of them actually doing anything. Just boasting about material status. No amusing anecdotes, no yearning to relocate or delight to remain. Just shouty boasting.

Surrey has some beautiful scenery, and the staff I have met at places like Lythe Hill and the White Horse, as well as elsewhere, are as nice as you'll find anywhere. But it's difficult to love Surrey when so many of its residents seem to be loud shallow bragging no-marks. I have friends that live in Surrey, and they're not like that, and I'm sure that plenty more Surrey residents - the ones you don't notice - aren't, either, but I've never been anywhere with such a dominant pattern of behaviour. It's the last place I'd like to live.

And, just because there's nowhere else obvious to post it, here's a moth I spotted in my garden a few days earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Afternoon Tea at County Hall

I'm blogging this to round off a short series. I am fairly certain there will be further Afternoon Tea outings but probably not until the winter - unless on holiday, although cream tea might happen. I was quite struck by the idea of sampling different offerings, 6 in the past year, but all things in moderation.

The Marriott at County Hall had a time-limited offer that wasn't cheap but included unlimited 'sparkling wine' . Not surprisingly it was booked solid on most of the dates we could do, except for one Friday afternoon in April, which I booked - and later  realised it was Good Friday. My constant companion was fine about that, but with one condition - no meat. He, like I, was brought up a Catholic, and for him it's important to abstain from eating meat on Good Friday (he is past the age where fasting is obligatory). I know that the theologians among you will point out that a champagne afternoon tea is not wholly in the spirit of penance, to which I will say 'Haven't you got better things to worry about?'

I rang up a few days before and asked whether a vegetarian option was available. (I decided to keep it simple and not mention fish - Himself is not a big fan of smoked salmon). I laid it on with a trowel that it was Good Friday, hence no meat. The calltaker was slightly non-plussed, but noted that we were veggie and all was in order when we arrived. I actually think the veggie option was a win: I've read other blogposts from this venue and whilst their sandwiches were good, ours were outstanding.

Like an idiot I didn't write them down but thy included a cheddar and pickle, beetroot, cucumber, tomato, and cream cheese. None of which probably seems that tempting but all exceeded my expectations/pre-conceptions. Quality fresh ingredients, used by someone with a sensitive intelligent understanding of flavours. Jimmy normally doesn't like cucumber, but enjoyed his cucumber (and, if I remember rightly) mint sandwich. I'm not a big beetroot fan, but this went down well.

We started with a rhubarb 'soup'. Again, I forget the details but it was topped with a foam of, I think, raspberry.

On arrival we were presented with a case each containing sample jars of a wide variety of different teas. I thought that was a great idea, you could choose at your leisure, and were encouraged to sniff the contents of the individual jars. It was a bit overwhelming in the end, though, as I dithered between Darjeeling or Darjeeling first crop (or some such). Better than being shown a box of cardboard boxes of teabags, though, or being presented with the exciting choice of English Breakfast or Earl Grey. Thoughtfully planned, but when the teapots arrived the waiter just poured the first cup without checking with me, or checking that it had brewed long enough, or stirring it. If you are making a big deal about serving afternoon tea it might actually help if you train your staff how to serve tea properly. I don't think I'm asking too much.

Much of the offer was truly excellent but in other respects I was slightly surprised at standards that were less than professional and/or luxurious. Noise.The musical accompaniment was down market commercial 80s pop. I'm a big fan of this genre but it was just wrong in this setting and for this experience. Arguably music isn't necessary, but if it has to be played, instrumental is best. Light orchestral, perhaps, or plinky plonk jazz piano that I only like in this sort of setting.

The sandwiches were followed, in time honoured fashion by scones, or, on this day a savoury scone and a hot cross bun. Usual clotted cream and jam to go with the hot cross bun; a cream cheese and chive for the scone.

We were seated in the 'quiet' room but the next table, several feet away, were a group of loud shallow ignorant Americans, having tea to mark someone's Marathon run. I'm sorry to serious runners who might read this, but they confirmed every stereotype of the dull-as-dishwater sporty type. No conversational skills, just an analysis of each mile run, an incredulity that friends were able to track the position of the runner (um, technology, quite probably American technology), and amazement that the marathon went to places that didn't seem to be London (I assume they mean Greenwich and Woolwich, which have been part of 'London' longer than the USA has been the USA).

It slowly dawned on me that I really didn't have to listen to every loud word they said, that I wasn't eavesdropping but I was rudely having this utter tedium forced upon me. I went over and politely asked them to be quiet. One of them spoke to me rudely and insultingly. But I shouldn't have been put in that position. I'm not sure what the answer is: it would be very odd if the waiting staff policed the noise levels from each table. It's probably too much to ask ultra-competitive dullards to consider the people round them. Still, the message went home, I didn't have to endure their mind-numbing monotony any more.

Scones were followed by cakes. I was somewhat non-plussed. The promotional material for this place shows cakes that have been carefully designed to appeal to the eye as much as the tastebuds. Instead, we got this

They tasted all right, but were really quite disappointing: no better (worse, really) than you'd expect from a small cafe in a town or suburb. It's like they couldn't be bothered, as it was a Bank Holiday. The sort of thing you'd run up at home.

So, on balance it was quite a mixed experience and I'm not sure I could recommend it. Noisy table mates in a 'quiet' area, cakes not up to the standard advertised, and pretty lousy service.  Another waiter was both incomprehensible and over-excitable. She listed the various items that were brought to the table, but despite asking her to repeat, and carefully reading her lips, I was still left in partial ignorance. Her enthusiasm was too much "You are having AFTERNOON tea, this is so FUN..." "You will ENJOY the cakes". You don't get that at lunch or dinner sittings at restaurants; there's something very odd - quasi-religious - about the Afternoon Tea culture, that you are instructed in how to feel and think. I saw a review on TA that described (presumably) this waiter as overbearing and inappropriate.

It was interesting being in the the old seat of London Government, County Hall. We sat in the 'library lounge' and I was amused by the selection of books, seemingly random, next to my seat.

I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of the Easter Egg tree in the foyer

When you arrive at the Marriott County Hall, the first thing you see is this, a cheap green carpet

There's a shop on Tooting High Road that sells carpet that more closely resembles turf, but I ask myself - you're a 5 star hotel in the epicentre of one of the world's great cities, couldn't you even be bothered to buy some real turf, or perhaps plant this structure with wild flowers, you know, to look like you give a toss? First impressions count! And this underlines the lack of attention to detail experienced in the Afternoon Tea.

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Hampton to Walton Riverside Walk

It was nearly mid-April and we were experiencing the third warmest Spring on record. A pleasant Saturday afternoon beckoned and pulled us towards the River Thames. Actually, it wasn't quite as warm as we expected. I wore a blouse and a spring-weight cardigan , which was okay for strolling in mid-afternoon, but we emerged from a pub after a late lunch/early supper and from five o'clock the temperatures fell and it became increasingly chilly. Nevertheless, the sunshine was welcome, as was the dryness of the day.

My app recorded the total distance walked Hampton Court railway station until a bus stop in Walton-on-Thames as exactly 5 miles. I attach a map of the route but it really is the easiest walk to follow - just walk along the River Thames, with no real interruptions or obstacles. The path was temporarily diverted a few yards inland for a short distance in Hurst Park but we could still see the river.

We encountered relatively few people en route. There were clusters around entry points, indicating that people go for just a few tens of metres along riverpaths before turning back and returning to their cars. None of my business, I know, and some people have good reasons - poor mobility - why they can't venture far, but I'm sure that many more, not necessarily physically lazy, have never considered venturing off into the unknown. Some people maybe anxious about personal security, and one does read of incidents, but they are almost all in the evening, often in the dark or twilight. I don't see too much of a risk on a dry sunny Saturday afternoon - although 'quiet', nevertheless we we were overtaken by cyclists or passed opposite direction walkers every two or three minutes. 

As I walked along I took a good few photographs. None of them is outstanding, but I think as a collection, they tell a little story about life beside this 5 miles of the non-tidal Thames.

Lots of houseboats moored on the river. Some of them quite fancy. I increasingly like the idea of living on a houseboat; or an an island in the Thames. Perhaps a houseboat moored alongside an island on the Thames.

 

Plenty of water fowl at different spots on the way - a Tufted Duck and what I'm pretty sure is an Egyptian goose

 

Some pleasant houses on both banks of the river - perhaps no more pleasant in design than those that stand only on roads, and, frankly, if you had a river view and mooring rights, would you care greatly about the architecture of your house!

  

It's not all idyllic, though. You might be stuck with a neighbour who conspicuously flies a UKIP flag. Or have an ugly pseudo-Georgian* mansion overshadowing you (*for all I know, or care, it might be a genuine historic building!)

 

Everything I have read (admittedly, not much) about this stretch of river mentions the view of St Mary's Parish Church Hampton. The site "is said" to be that of a Romano-British chapel; historical records of a church being here stretch back to 1342, 150 years before King Henry VIII (I mention him because of his close association with nearby Hampton Court). It's reasonably safe to say that this church, and its view, has dominated the entire history of civilised metropolitan Surrey.

And what do I see? The more I look at it, what dominates the eye? Like a portrait taken with a blouse button undone or lipstick on the teeth - no, because they are inadvertent. I see a car park.

Regular readers will know my antipathy towards organised religion and my ambivalence about preserving old churches just because, and may also know that I embrace modern architecture alongside the historically interesting.  So more taditional or conservative people than I should be furious at this. All I see is a car park. No spot of land in this sometimes awful country is too nice, historic or strategic to prevent people parking their cars there. Often without paying and rarely paying full market rent for the land they so casually occupy. Well done careless car-driven people of Hampton. Your potentially beautiful church looks like the backdrop to a car park from Hurst Park. You haven't thought this one through, have you?

There are other sights along the way, such as a foot ferry from bank to bank, a little sign that the grand metropolitan river further east is becoming more rustic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took a picture of someone's delightful rock garden. It wasn't until I uploaded the photos at home I noticed the topiary teddy bear!

Outside their house across the towpath near their mooring they had sculpted a child riding a bird.

Further along, the houseboats were humbler. I felt it my duty to collect evidence of modern day slavery. Shocking. Those poor rag dolls, desperate for freedom.

 We passed a City of London coal duty boundary marker. I photographed it for future reaearch (reading Wikipedia). In brief, if you imported coal into London, you were liable for duty. The post served to remind you. The inscription refers to Acts of Parliament during the 14th & 15th years of Victoria's reign. There's an entire dedicated website City Posts.

 We came upon Sunbury Lock. Locks are endlessly fascinating. It was our good fortune to see two pleasure boats enter the lock to be transported downstream.

The lock lies by Sunbury Lock Ait (Ait means a small island in a river). The Ait is accessed by a footbridge. I used this as a vantage point for more photos up and downstream.

 

We stopped for fish and chips at The Weir. Very good they were, but there's a natural limit to the number of plates of fish and chip one can photograph. And I didn't get my camera out for the brisk walk to a more central part of Walton, and a bus stop. the Weir seemed a very nice pub, apart from the dog (off its lead, despite signs) that slobbered over Jimmy - not at his behest - and stained his trousers. Totally unacceptable in any establishment, especially one that serves food.

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My experience of attending 'faith schools'

Writing this because it's too long to Tweet.

In my long ago childhood, I attended two faith schools. One from 5-11, and one from 11-18. I could write about their flaws, but overall, they were good schools, with some excellent and many good enough teachers, and gave me a very good academic education.

I think it was wrong for my parents to send me to these schools, for several reasons.

They were not my nearest schools. Other children living nearby went to maintained Primary schools and, generally, one of the Sale Grammar schools. My friends at school did not live near me. While it's possible to maintain separate friendship groups in school and out, it takes effort, mainly from the parents. Why would a Sale Grammar girl want to hang round with me rather than her other Sale Grammar friends living just a few roads away?  And at the age of 12 or 13, how reasonable is it to hang out with school friends living in Warrington or central Manchester?

By choosing different schools from the very good local ones, weren't my parents sending a message to our neighbours  'your schools aren't good enough for my child' and implying 'your children who go those schools aren't good enough for my children'?

I had to get the bus, even to Primary School. This meant I couldn't hang out with my classmates or dawdle home on summer's evenings. Because of logistics, my bus contingent had to sit around in the school hall for half an hour or more (missing most of children's TV, in the days before videos).

Although I grew up in Sale, I went to school in Altrincham. Yes, the two towns are joined at the hip, like Romulus and Remus, Brighton & Hove, or Ant & Dec, but they are different towns. One is M33, the other is WA14. I think I can still walk around Altrincham while reading a book, but I have no muscle memory of Sale. Where am I from?

My parents were not particularly well off, but neither were they poor. I think they were probably typical of most people living in our immediate area. Decent but modest salaries, reduced to a level just above struggling by the cost of children, running one modest car, rarely replaced. Altrincham contains some very rich areas - I read only a few years back that the Altrincham & Sale constituency was in the top ten most prosperous out of 650.

Despite going to a faith school with a strong positive ethos of fairness, equality etc - the wishy-washy quasi-socialist aspect of liberal Roman Catholicism (of which I approve, and is an important part of who I am) - the prevailing culture of the school community was conspicuous materialistic consumption.

When your classmates have cottages in Wales, holidays in the South of France, several cars, often Jaguars, renewed every couple of years, and clothes from Benetton, it warps your perception. I was avaricious and resentful. Goodness knows how the very small number of girls on free school meals or in jobless households felt.

I think it warped my ambitions to an extent that I was determined to follow a career that paid a high salary rather than one that fulfilled me personally - and, to an extent, that's where I am. My salary is well above the London median, and I could have followed a career path into a six-figure salary; thankfully I chose not to. I frequently get some personal fulfilment from work, and appreciate the money/time to pursue other interests.

I could be disparaging about the ideological religious agenda of Catholic Schools - for example, we had a visiting speaker from SPUC, the militant anti-choice pressure group. However, I am pretty certain it backfired. Because we had been taught to think and challenge, and because of the liberal feminist ethos that was quite advanced for Thatcher's Eighties, most of the bright girls, the opinion leaders, were angry at the propaganda and brainwashing, and inspired to form cogent arguments to defend a woman's right to choose.

But I think the lasting damage of going to a 'faith' school was the lack of community. When you're a child your geographical horizons are narrow, and it's difficult to build solid lasting friendships with people who live across the A56, or in another county. Selective 11+ schools divide a community; religious apartheid adds to this.

The prosperous Irish diaspora dominated the culture and there were relatively few real Mancs or Cestrians. If you weren't Irish enough there was a slight hint of being a lesser person! I grew up thinking that everybody was Catholic or Protestant, and white, except for the one friend who was Muslim, with prosperous Pakistani parents (and whose companionship did open my eyes).

I'm not sure the non-faith schools in the area at that time were more ethnically varied, but I would have learnt not to categorise people by which church they go to, because most don't. I would have seen it's possible to be a normal decent person who judges the difference between actual right and actual wrong on how it affects other people, rather than being a nasty person who follows The Rules.

This is not a criticism of the schools I attended, and perhaps it reflects on the passive, over-protective, anti-social attitude of my parents, who saw no need to mix with non-Catholics (except Grandad!) or to pursue structured or unstructured social activities outside of school and church (and then, barely).

I'm sure more enlightened parents, then and now, who choose faith schools also ensure their children take part in sporting or cultural groups outside the narrow faith community, and will organise playdates and encourage hanging out with friends from different social circles. Interestingly, my partner who grew up in south London, and whose parents had no interest in academic achievement, also insisted on the Catholic apartheid system they brought with them from Ireland, and he too suffered the no-friends-locally/long-journey-to-school syndrome, and neither of us is able to maintain deep friendships (although superficially we are both quite gregarious and 'friendly').

I don't criticise anyone who chooses to send their child to a faith school because they can select (by parental attitude); but I have observed too many schools whose self-proclaimed 'Christian ethos' is a complacent assumption that bad things such as bullying don't happen.

There is a problem when a parent's desire for a 'faith' school sends out a message of inherent superiority. It's also a problem when many children are driven or bussed to their faith schools, when too young to understand or decide whether they have a religious faith, and many others are driven away rejected by their local taxpayer funded school because of their parents' non-attendance at church.

It was often church schools that introduced education to poor areas, but that was 150 years ago! That doesn't make it necessary to fund such schools now - although, frankly, abolishing them would be a policy, legal and administrative nightmare, so it's no surprise no government has tried. I find it preposterous when certain people attempt to explain the special status of Church schools by 'but the parents raise funds for them' - almost as if that doesn't happen in (supposedly) non-religious schools.

The irony of parents fighting to send their children to specialist christian schools is that every school in England that isn't a specialist Christian school is by default and by law a Church of England school. Of course, this law is honoured more in the breach than the observance, but the time has long passed where Catholic parents (often of Irish ethnicity) demand special schools to keep their children away from the quasi-paganistic practices and beliefs of a state-sponsored Protestant school. I'm sure if such an arrangement happened in a foreign (not former British Empire) country, we'd laugh and call it an archaic and probably corrupt foreign peculiarity. But in England, it's the norm.

Chez Bruce birthday lunch

Last summer we went to Chez Bruce to celebrate Jimmy's birthday. So long afterwards, there's not anything meaningful I can say, especially as the food was superb and the service was faultless. Also, I drank quite a lot for lunchtime, and it was the hottest day of the year. We sat on Wandsworth Common for a while afterwards; back home, it was stifling indoors even with a through draft with both front and back doors kept open (and hotter outside).

I enjoy the photographs I took:

I started with a Gazpacho with marcona almonds and basil oil

 

My main course was Cornish hake with grilled squid, sautéed black rice, bisque vinaigrette and fennel

I'm really rather pleased of that photo of an obviously photogenic dish.

Cherry and pistachio tart with clotted cream

And, because I was quite squiffy, I took a couple more photos.

Very nice; I would highly recommend it. I must go back again soon!