Biggin Hill

August 17th - September

On Monday August 17th I read on the BBC News website that there was to be a Battle of Britain commemoration the following day. Eighteen Spitfires and six Hurricanes would gather at Biggin Hill the following day, 75 years on to the day from the ‘hardest day’ of the 1940 air battle to honour all those who took part. I immediately realised that this was be something quite out of the ordinary. It is unusual to see more than two or three Spitfires or Hurricanes in the air at one time, but just close to us in Oxted we would have the opportunity of seeing 24 of them in the air all at once. I immediately planned to visit Biggin Hill the next day to see them. It was unfortunately far too late to get any tickets, but I knew there would be a view from outside the airfield.

I should perhaps explain that Biggin Hill Aerodrome was a key station during the Battle of Britain, from which 32 Squadron were flying Hurricanes and 610 Squadron operated Spitfires. At lunchtime on August 18th 1940, nine Dorniers launched a heavy attack on Biggin Hill and Kenley that continued in waves throughout the day. Apart from landing to refuel and re-arm, the Hurricanes and Spitfires were airborne continuously long into the evening and despite intense damage to the airfield, at no time was it non-operational. As dusk approached, 32 Squadron had lost seven Hurricanes but not one pilot, and 610 Squadron had lost two Spitfires, also with no loss of life. Overall, on that day, the RAF lost 136 aircraft – but for the Luftwaffe, it had been a disastrous day, numerically and for their morale. On no other day during the Battle would either side suffer such losses.

The plan for the following day,was that the Spitfires and Hurricanes would fly a commemoration sortie with three formations, starting with a take-off at 1pm.

The first formation would head south to the Solent, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The second formation would head east to Dover, and the Battle of Britain Memorial on the white cliffs at Capel-Le-Ferne. The third formation would fly over former Battle of Britain airfields at West Malling, Detling and Gravesend.

August 18th this year was a really gloomy day, but it didn't deter us, or the thousands of other people who hoped to see this once in a lifetime display. The sky was so dark that photography was really difficult, and I anyway I realised I had no power in my camera battery so I only had the camera on the phone. The road up to Biggin Hill was really crowded, Paul had to drop me off and then find somewhere miles away to park and walk back, but at least I was outside the fence in time to see the first formation take off.

I am embarrassed by the awfulness of the next two photos, but it was difficult to capture the aircraft, especially as they took off from the opposite end of the runway from where I was standing. In the first photo, I didn't even manage to get all four aircraft.



When another flight took off, I did at least manage to get all four, albeit just specks in the sky.

With 24 aircraft and 3 flight formations, that meant there would be 8 aircraft in each formation. In practice they arranged themselves in two groups of four, so here you can see the four little specks.




You can also see what a terrible day it was and just how many people were standing outside the fence, crowded four and give deep in places.

Other people than me took better photos - or had better cameras, so this was more typical of what we saw in the sky. - not my photograph, needless to say!




A Daily Mail photographer took a truly wonderful photo of fourteen of them all in the sky at once, but I didn't see so many at one time. There are quite a few high trees near the fence where I was standing, so I might not have had the best view, but it was still exciting.

Actually, the Daily Mail photos were quite outstanding, some of them obviously taken from other planes in the air at the time.

Somebody else also took this marvellous photo, with the huge commercial airliner in the sky above. This was also a more typical view of the aircraft as they left.



I can't tell you how thrilling it was as those historic aircraft roared over our heads, more and more of them, all flying in close formation and then peeling off in the three different directions.

The formation which was only going as far as Gravesend were back first and they flew patrols over the airfield, just as the aircraft did 80 years ago to protect the others returning. This meant that we got a really good view of them as they flew round and round close over the heads of the crowds. I abandoned all hope of taking a decent photo and just concentrated on watching them. Sometimes they were so low you could see the pilot's head in the cockpit as they went over.




This is also somebody else's photo, but one I would like to have taken, because I really was that close at times.

As they returned, more and more of them landed until at least there was only one solitary Spitfire patrolling the skies above the airfield. He swooped low over the road and the crowds there and out over the hillside where it falls away down into the valley below the airfield, then he quickly did a victory roll before turning round and coming in to land. What a marvellous moment that was!

It had all been so exciting we didn't really notice we hadn't had any lunch.

The next few days felt rather flat after all that excitement, but I had several medical appointments and the following weekend all my family were back again. The Manchester family left just before the Bank Holiday, but my sister stayed on until September 1st, and we had visits from my other son with his wife and my younger grandson, so it has been a very busy family time. I'm still trying to finish the washing of sheets and towels as well as trying to get ready for when we go on holiday ourselves in a few days. This has not been helped by my having another attack of renal colic, which is acutely painful and is probably caused by yet another kidney stone. I only hope I can avoid having any on holiday!

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Borde Hill Gardens

Saturday August 15th

After our friends had left and before my sister came to stay again we took the opportunity of a dry day to pay a visit to Borde Hill Garden, which is just north of Haywards Heath. The garden was created in the early 1900s with plants gathered by the great plant collectors from their travels to the Himalayas, China, Burma, Tasmania and the Andes, and in one of the old greenhouses there is a very interesting display of their letters from all over the world.

I'd love to post some of the letters here, but I think the typing will probably be too small to read. However, I'll quote one, written in Tibet in 1933 by Frank Kingdon-Ward, a well- known botanist and collector who collected plants for a period of 50 years in Tibet, North Western China, Burma and Assam.

He encloses a few seeds, apologising that there are so few and explaining that this is because it is not seed-collecting season, and not much is currently in flower. He goes on:

'I am faced with the usual problem of transport and food supply in a not thickly populated country; and being about half way between the last village on this side of the snow range and the first village on the other with a 15,000 ft pass ahead does not make matters easier. At present we are in the clouds and can see nothing. It is wet and cold, and not very comfortable in small Alpine tents. But we keep pretty cheerful in spite of all the drawbacks.

The murder of my mail runner rather jammed things. In future my mail will probably go to Lhasa under the care of the Tibetan Government. But it is 300 miles from Lhasa to Shinden Gompa, so don't expect frequent communications!'

I think this gives a real flavour of what life must have been like in the plant collecting world 80 years ago. I'm not sure whether the viewing of the murder of one of his staff as an inconvenience points to the intrepid nature of his character, or just reflects a horrifyingly uncaring colonial attitude towards indigenous people.

The garden is divided into a series of outdoor 'rooms', each with its own distinctive character and colour. This is the rose garden, though it's unfortunately a bit late in the year to see many roses.




This garden, like the two other gardens we have visited recently, is also full of statues for sale. I don't think the fountain was one of them though.

The statues for sale here differed from one another in style. There were some stylised human figures, a rather different stylised horse, and the most dreadful highly coloured five foot long ceramic grasshopper. I gave that a wide berth!

The flowers below are part of the Mediterranean Border, which has plenty of colour, even in August.




We crossed in front of Borde Hill House, which is privately owned. It is very old, having originally been built in 1598 and extensively altered 300 years later when it was bought by Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke, whose family still own the property. It was this family who were patrons of some of the great plant collectors of the last century whose letters we read in the old greenhouse.

In front of the house was the strange stylised statue of a horse made from silvery tubes. I haven't posted it here because the photo isn't very good.

A tranquil path took us round towards the Long Dell.



From the far end of the garden we could see outside the garden wall and across the South Park to the lake, another beautiful and tranquil landscape.



I'm not sure if that's the normal colour of the tree on the left, or if it's already putting on its autumn colours.

We continued on to the ruins of old potting sheds. This has clearly been a garden that formerly employed a great many gardeners - apparently 27 at one point - who raised a lot of their own plants. When we were looking at the greenhouses earlier on, it was clear that most of them were no longer in use and a couple were completely derelict.

We carried on to the Italian Garden, a most beautiful space.




The garden booklet mentioned that this used to be the family tennis court, and was only converted to an Italian garden in 1982. Apparently it is now one of the most popular areas in the entire garden. Around the pool are several unusual trees and shrubs and the Italian pots are filled with agapanthus which I'm afraid put my own agapanthus to shame. From the terrace there are more wonderful panoramic views stretching across the South Park and lakes.

The strange silvery thing you might just be able to see at the far end of the garden above the steps is another of the statues. This one is of a silvery woman with her arms outstretched and head tilted back, a figure of ecstasy. Clearly, she likes the garden too!

Paul was so taken with this garden he didn't watch where he was putting his feet, and fell into a little rill which feeds the pond. It was several inches deep and he had to take off his sock and shoe to empty out and water and wring out his sock. He walked round the rest of the garden with one wet trouser leg rolled up a bit and a shoe with no sock, which can't have been comfortable and made him look vaguely like somebody participating in some weird Masonic-like ritual.

On leaving the Italian Garden, we passed some wonderful dahlias. I know I just posted a dahlia photo in Chartwell, but this one was so spectacular I couldn't resist it!




We completed our tour round the garden, walking up to the so called Garden of Allah, created in the early 1920s with rhododendrons collected by Frank Kingdon-Ward, the writer of the letter I quoted at the beginning. There are also some very large trees, as well as magnolias and camellias. This is an area which would be at its very best in the spring.

We walked on into Warren Wood, which has many fine trees and continued for some time before we realised we had no idea of the extent of the wood or the length of the walk, so we headed back, passing across the back of the house and round into the Azalea Ring which is apparently a riot of colour in May and early June from a wide range of deciduous azaleas. Clearly, we need to come back!

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Chartwell in early August

August 12th.

Some friends came to stay with us for a few days. It was rather a shame that the days they chose to come were dull and often rainy, especially since the weather had been so beautiful for several days before they arrived.

At least it wasn't too cold for the visit to Chartwell, though it would have been nice to see the sun. However, even the dullness of the day failed to detract from the design of the landscape, with the swimming pool built into a terrace on the hillside and the lake in the valley below it.


The Nation Trust say that these hillside gardens reflect Sir Winston’s love of the landscape and nature, in fact they say that one of the reasons he bought Chartwell was for the water features he could create. The lake already existed but in 1924 a dam was built to create the upper lake. The swimming pool in the photo above was built in 1937, and apparently was heated, which I hadn't realised.

Below is the relaxing spot where Churchill used to feed his fish.



In this case, I've managed to include some of the fish as well. Somewhere there's a painting of Churchill as a very old man sitting here contemplating his fish, and it's easy to picture it in this atmospheric setting.

Churchill himself built some of the walls of the kitchen garden and just nearby is the Marycot, a playhouse designed for his youngest daughter Mary.


It's quite difficult to get into it because it's usually full of children. It has tiny child-sized furniture, and I imagine it would be very appealing to most children.

Just adjacent to the kitchen garden are some truly magnificent flowers.
There were some gladioli in wonderful colours.



And the dahlias must be among the best I've ever seen.



My mother used to grow dahlias, they're a lot of work with the necessity of lifting the tubers after they've finished flowering and storing them over the winter and planting them out the next year. So I guess this keeps the gardeners busy.

I know I've photographed this view before, but I never tire of it.



This is the view that is said to have particularly moved Churchill as he thought it showed the the essential England.

We saw all round the house - no photos allowed - and the painting studio - also no photos allowed, and thoroughly enjoyed our day.

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The Beginning of August

August 1st - 8th.

My family stayed with us until the 3rd of August, and this proved to be the start of a 'bed and breakfast season' for us, since our house was scarcely empty during the whole month, and coping with the sheets and towels has been quite trying.

After all the family left, we went with a friend on a visit to Sheffield Park Gardens, the first this year though we have been a couple of times before. Although it was a very dull day, we quite enjoyed the visit, as the trees and shrubs are quite magnificent.



Even though it was such a dull day, there was no wind so the reflections in the water were wonderful, as you see. After a morning spent wandering through the trees and shrubs and a swift lunch, we crossed to the other side of the road to see the parkland area which we had never visited before.

This area was completely different, just open fields grazed by animals and sloping down to the river Ouse and we did not find it as interesting as the gardens. I think another time we'll just concentrate on the gardens.

The friend pointed out to us that another friend was likely to have a stall at a fair in Wadhurst in a few days time, so on Saturday we dropped in to see her before going on to Pashley Manor Gardens which are reasonably nearby.

Mr and Mrs James Sellick are the owners and current inhabitants of Pashley Manor, a Grade I listed timber-framed house, dating from 1550. They opened their gardens to the public in 1992. They and the team of gardeners pride themselves on the magnificent herbaceous borders, elegant rose garden and historic walled gardens, the productive kitchen garden, the woodland paths and the tranquil vistas that form this garden, not all of which I seem to have photographed, sadly.

I did manage a few photos of the magnificent herbaceous borders, though in August they are not at their best.




The roses were also past their best, but I did photograph the entry to one of the walled gardens, which must be spectacular when everything is in bloom.



As for the tranquil vistas, you would find the one below difficult to beat.


The strange figure to the left of the trees is a statue. This seems to be one of the many gardens where sculptures are on display, and you can buy any you really like - always supposing you have a few thousand pounds to spare!

The sculptures are less abstract than those in Riverhill, and I liked many of them. A particular favourite was the badger, which was really lifelike.



I think he would really need a wooded area though, and we lack a suitable one - not to mention being unwilling to pay the price asked!

Many of the sculptures were very realistic, like the little boy below.


I could just picture him sitting somewhere in the garden here.

I was particularly taken with the swimming pool, especially since it was such a hot day. I did wonder if it was difficult to keep the garden visitors from jumping in, it looked so inviting.



As you can see, there are further realistic sculptures at each corner of the pool, and a particularly lovely group which you can't quite see at the far side of the pool just behind one of the two chairs. There's a girl sitting on a bench with her face turned up to the sun, obviously enjoying the wonderful sunny weather, and a dog with a long feathery tail which looks rather like a red setter looking up at her and obviously hoping she will come and play. I can't remember the exact cost of each, but I seem to remember the group cost in the region of £20,000, so you'd need quite deep pockets if you wanted them!

I really enjoyed this garden, and regretted not having a bit longer there, especially since it was such a lovely day. Next year, we'll go again somewhat earlier in the year and stay a bit longer.

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July

July 2015

My calendar shows me that July was too busy for us to do much visiting, so this posting is likely to be shorter than the last.

I was delighted to be home again, and we enjoyed the lovely weather. Even the High Street in Oxted looked good in the sunshine.



By mid-July we had more or less finished unpacking, organising and putting away all the things we had taken to Manchester, and we found a little time for a day out to Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, which are not far from Oxted, along the A25.

As befits something called a Himalayan Garden, the hillside on which it is situated is very steep and necessitates a lot of climbing. It was originally bought In1840 by John Rogers, a scientist and classics scholar who was a friend of Charles Darwin, also one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day. He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs.

Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners were employed at Riverhill. Since then, however, lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost.
The estate is now owned by the great-great-great grandson of the original owner; he and his family live in the adjoining house, and have been working to restore the gardens, which they re-launched in 2010.

As part of the re-launch, a partnership was set up with a local gallery and various pieces of British sculpture can now be viewed in the gardens.



I'm not sure whether the sculpture above is a permanent piece or whether it's for sale, but I suspect the former, since it seems to fit in here so well. The summer house you can see beyond is a popular place for sitting admiring the view.

There are even more spectacular sculptures in other parts of the garden, and you can see from my photo below that this is not one of the best maintained areas of the garden.


These particular statues are for sale, though I recall they were extremely expensive. This was the first time I had encountered sculptures being displayed for sale in a garden, though not the last. The ones in this garden were all very modern, and I was far from sure about some of them.

There were few flowers in bloom, but interesting shrubs and trees, and we climbed steadily until finally we climbed up to what is known as the 'Little Everest Viewpoint'. The view was certainly spectacular, though you probably can't really appreciate it from my photo.




The garden literature describes it as ‘one of the finest views in Kent’, and claims you can see up for to 20 miles across the Weald of Kent. It was a reasonably clear day, and we could certainly see for quite a distance.

Before you climb up to the viewpoint, you can see the Himalayan hedge maze, planted with horn beams in an intricate design based on the patterns found in Tibetan wood.




When we visited, it was full of families trying to find the centre, though, with the hedges less than three feet high, at least there would be no chance of them getting hopelessly lost.

After the school term ended, my daughter-in-law and children went off for a few days in France, and we drove up to Manchester to collect the rest of our belongings and give my son some help with his DIY. By the 27th we were home again, and getting ready to receive them all at our house for a week. My sister came as well, so we had a very busy end of July and beginning of August.

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Late June at Knowsley Safari Park

Late June

As a change from all the packing, cleaning and rushing around, my daughter-in-law thought it would be nice for us all to have a family outing before we left, so she chose Knowsley Safari Park, as our grandson was quite excited by the idea of seeing some lions.

We were not particularly early, so we went immediately to the safari area which you drive through in your car. It was not difficult to spot the lions when we reached their area because of the great queue of cars watching them sleep peacefully.



This scene is not unlike many I witnessed in the Nairobi Game Park where we often went in my childhood, the main difference being the colour of the vegetation. I've lost count of the many times I watched a pride of lions there lie sleeping peacefully during the heat of the day. It was rare to see them on their feet, though we did once when I was about 5 or 6. The whole pride were walking along the road beside the cars, and we were travelling in an old open car with a cloth roof and no windows (this was 1948 or possibly 1949). We were terrified, especially when one of the lionesses decided the front mudguard of our car was a great place to have a good scratch! We couldn't drive away because we were on a very narrow dirt road, completely hemmed in by other cars. And we didn't have a camera with us, so we couldn't take a photo! Mind you, all we had then was an old box brownie which wasn't great at taking photographs and hardly ever got used, and anyway I think we were all too terrified and concentrating on trying hard not to catch the lioness' eye; she was quite interested in us, looking into the car and we supposed she might be speculating as to whether we might be something that would constitute an acceptable dinner!

One animal I never saw during my childhood in Kenya was a rhino, so I was quite delighted to see these.



There are quite a few rhino in this safari park, so I think you have a good chance of seeing some. There are also supposed to be tigers, but we didn't manage to spot any in spite of looking very hard. My grandson was quite disappointed!

You can be fortunate and get very close to the animals.


This rather smug looking animal is an eland, another animal with which I am familiar through living in Kenya. I never got quite this close to one there though, they are usually more timid and nervous of people in the wild, which I suppose is natural if you have to beware, not only of predators with sharp teeth, but humans with sharp spears or else guns. Eland are very large and and consequently an attractive dinner proposition. Come to think of it, he's probably looking so smug because he knows he can look forward to eating dinner, rather than being dinner!

If you really want to get up close and personal with the animals, you can drive through the baboon enclosure. Paul and I elected not to do this, having lost both of our windscreen wipers to baboons on a drive through a safari park in Scotland about 40 years ago. However, my son was put under pressure by my grandson to get up close and personal with the baboons, so they drove through, and the car was soon completely covered with baboons, to my grandson's great delight. Fortunately they emerged later with windscreen wipers intact, perhaps because they elected to drive in my daughter-in-law's extremely elderly VW rather than my son's smarter car. I imagine the baboons are used to quality and expect a rather more expensive make of windscreen wiper, so they probably scorned something so decrepit!

The unusual animals below are Kiang, a wild horse from Tibet.



Apparently they are fairly new to the park and are said to have settled in well - I imagine the climate here is somewhat less testing than that in Tibet. They have been put into the area which also has bactrian camels and Père David's deer - I don't know if this makes them feel at home or not.

There's an area of the park you can walk round, and one of the great attractions as you go in are the meerkats.



They seem quite oblivious to the people, concentrating on the sky to see of there are any birds of prey. I wonder what they make of aeroplanes.

As we were so late, there wasn't time to see everything. The giraffes had already gone to bed, but at least we managed to see the elephants.



There were quite a few of them, but I think they were tired of people because they looked to me as if they just wished we would all go away and take our cameras with us.

I was glad to get a view of the capybara, an animal which I had never seen and always wanted to, ever since I read about it in a book by Gerald Durrell about 50 years ago. It's a big rodent, rather like a sort of chunky hamster, but the size of a large dog. It was so far away that I'm afraid my photo was rather disappointing, but at least I saw it.

My photographs of the sea lions were also quite disappointing, they swim so fast it's really hard to photograph the whole animal; I've got a lot of photos of just the tail, and when I did manage to capture the whole animal it was moving so fast it was usually out of focus.

I'd really like to go back on another occasion and spend the whole day there, instead of having to rush around so quickly, but anybody who reads this blog will know I really enjoy looking at animals; no doubt my grandson might get bored.

That was how we spent Saturday 27th. On Sunday we finished most of our packing, and on Monday we completed the cleaning of the flat and handed in the keys. We had intended to drive back to Oxted in the afternoon, but I suffered another kidney stone and we had to stay the night at my son's. Fortunately, it passed before I had to go back to hospital, and though I had another the next day, it was nothing like as bad and we drove home.

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June 2015

Early June

June was a very busy month for us. The beginning of June brought a visit from my daughter-in-law's mother, and though she didn't stay with us, we were busy helping to take her around Manchester. A few days after her arrival, we were off to drive down to Oxted again as we both had medical appointments and I had a Board Meeting to attend. This trip gave us the opportunity to fill the car with things I thought I could do without like spare bedding and clothes. We had taken several car loads of belongings up to Manchester when we arrived, and I was anxious not to have to make too many trips back when we left. As soon as we drove back to Manchester on June 12th, we had to make a serious attempt to pack up as we were due to vacate the flat on the 29th.

Consequently, there was very little time for visits. However, we did manage a quick visit to Reddish Vale Country Park, where we had a walk of several miles.

Reddish Vale, which straddles the border between Lancashire and Cheshire, was not originally designed as a country park, it more or less evolved. This seems to have been because the steep sides and boggy floor of the valley meant it was not heavily used for agriculture, manufacture or quarrying, though each of these activities has left some marks on the landscape. During the 19th century, the area was already a much loved place for a day out, and was apparently noted as a source of rare and interesting wild flowers.

It became a managed space in the early 1980s and paths were improved and vegetation managed. The whole area has now become very important for conservation, and is especially noted for water birds. There are five ponds as well as boggy areas, so habitat is provided for many species. We walked right round the five ponds, though for some reason I don't seem to have taken any photos of the many waterbirds.

Next, we the set off for the woods, first crossing the wide flat open valley. The railway line crosses the valley here on a viaduct which is quite monumental. The tiny people at the picnic table on the far right might give you an idea of the size.



This part of the park, being so flat, is not so interesting, (none of the wild flowers seemed to be in bloom) but we soon approached the river Tame, which is very pretty.


The river meanders slowly through this flat area, but as we climbed into the woods we could hear the increase in its flow through the trees beyond the path. On this part of the walk, there were woods on both sides, though occasionally there was a more open view on our left and we could see a housing estate in the distance at one time. It was very quiet, with not a soul in sight.


To our right the trees seemed impenetrable and the valley sloped down to the river. Apart from initial steep climb, the path seemed level but eventually we became aware that the river was well below us. We could hear the weir before we saw it, and Paul went down to look at it, but by that time my back was hurting and I sat on a convenient seat while he went to look at it. It's always a complete mystery to me why Paul can never take a photograph worth looking at. I found a good photo on the web, but I'm afraid it's rather small, and loses focus if you try to enlarge it.



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