London

Friday, 8 July, 2010

London – Hampton Court Flower Show

After breakfast we caught the underground from Earls Court, changed at Wimbledon onto the South West line for Hampton Court and walked to Hampton Court Palace to visit the Hampton Court Flower Show which we were told was equal to the Chelsea Flower Show.

This was the 21^st year the show has been held and the theme this year was based on Shakespeare’s plays and the first area of the show we visited included small gardens, Shakespeare’s comedies scarecrow competition for children and all the entries were based on a Midsummer’s Night Dream. Nearby were gardens with themes from the plays, “As You Like It”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” and others. In front of these gardens a group of actors presented snippets from the plays which were very entertaining.

Our next stop was to the floral marquee which was over 200 m. long and contained displays from well over a hundred commercial plant and flower growers and most had produced very innovative displays, literally works of art to showcase their plants.

After lunch we visited another marquee featuring food and drink from small producers and many offering small samples of their wares, a sip of wine here, a piece of pork sausage there, some cheese, pickles, soup and many other little nibbles, we should have visited before lunch. Leaving the marquee we wandered past dozens of stands offering everything from floral “wellies” country clothing, gardening tools, sculptures, through to glass houses, outdoor furniture and cottages.

From the commercial area we walked through many show gardens with various themes, sustainable, bee gardens, the UK has lost a large percentage of their honey and bumble bees and there is a nation wide campaign to plant gardens to encourage bees. Other gardens showed the changes of plants over the past hundred years and what may occur if these trends aren’t reversed. A most interesting garden was the Shakespeare garden which was growing plants and vegetable that would have been found in the Bard’s time, one of the plants was the white carrot which preceded the orange carrot by a hundred or more years.

After walking past all the theme gardens we entered the rose marquee which as well as displays from many rose breeders and growers there were many other commercial plant growers’ displays. London has been experiencing hot weather over the last few days and today’s 30C+ temperatures have badly effected the displays and the roses in particular were wilting and dropping petals as were many other plants and with two more days to go the growers were very worried as they didn’t have back up plants or roses to cut for their displays. Visitors on Saturday and Sunday may be confronted by a lot of “dead heads”.

After nearly eight hours at the show we walked around 1 ½ km to the station to be greeted by rail staff telling us to form a queue to enter the station, the queue tailed back onto the bridge over the Thames and we had to wait nearly half an hour before we entered the station and were lucky to obtain a seat on the train. Arriving back at Earls Court ten hours after we left, our first stop was at a pub for two pints of the best and some fish and chips and then back to the hotel for a large pot of tea, we then felt that we had restored our fluid balance which in spite of drinking a lot of water at the show was at a low level.

Saturday, 10 July, 2010

London – Ham House

At home we have a book written by an acquaintance which is a modern day murder mystery and all the action is at Ham House on the bank of the River Thames at Richmond, as we had never visited Ham House before we thought it was time we did.

Ham House was built in 1610 and in 1626 William Murray, a childhood friend of Charles I leased the property and later as a reward for his services, Charles gave the freehold of the estate to Murray. After the Civil War and execution of Charles, Murray fled to France and left his wife Katherine and four daughters to manage the estate. After Katherine’s death the eldest daughter was able to retain the estate by apparently supporting Cromwell but all the time working to see Charles II restored to the throne. Following her father’s death, Elizabeth’s title as Countess was confirmed by Charles II and the house and estate remained in the family until the 1940s when it was passed to the National Trust.

Much of the original furnishings and room decorations remain almost untouched or had been restored by later generations so Ham House has many features dating back to the late 16 early 1700s. The Trust has also restored some of the gardens using the original plans and plants from these times, though the vegetable garden is probably only a tenth of its original size as the Trust depends on two gardeners and volunteers to maintain the gardens.

Leaving the house and gardens we walked down to the Thames to sit and watch “people messing around in boats” before returning to Earls Court and as it was still in the 30Cs we purchased some salad and cold chicken and walked to Holland Park to eat dinner.

Tomorrow we leave London.