Our England trip continues, quite busily. I've already talked about arriving in Newtown Common (Tuesday) and visiting Oxford (Wednesday). But our little house in the woods proved a good jumping-off spot for lots of other destinations.



For example:

Coombe Bissett (in Wiltshire) has a nice pub called the Fox & Goose. About an hour's drive from Newtown Common, it was an ideal place to meet up with a friend who had come from a place about an hour in the other direction (on a very cool motorbike). Given that pubs in England and Wales closed at the rate of 50 per month in the first half of this year, you kind of feel you're doing a community service by supporting them...



Coombe Bissett also boasts a lovely old church called St Michael & All Angels, which would also be a good pub name (or a good pop-group name). Bits of this church date back to somewhere around 1100; the chancel was built in the mid-14th century; the tower originates from the 15th century. Ancient churches, just sitting there in little villages as though they're the most ordinary things in the world, are one of the things I love about England.





On the way home, we stopped off briefly in Salisbury, whose cathedral has the tallest spire in Britain (amongst many other notable things, such as the best-preserved original of the Magna Carta, but we didn't go in, so we didn't see that).



My trusty diary tells me that we went to Salisbury at the end of 1992, when our train trip to Bath was cancelled because of flooding. I remember it was Christmas time. There was a guy selling plastic reindeer antlers for GBP 1 a set ("Antlers! Antlers! Get your antlers here!"). And there was a band playing carols.

I also note in that entry that I'd once taken my parents to Salisbury. They were staying with me in Bracknell (this was the early 1980s), and that same day we'd also visited Winchester and Stonehenge. All in Baby Fiat, with his tiny, hard, back seat... Poor parents.

Later, in February 1994, according to the diary, we called in at Salisbury on our way back to Dorchester from Oxford. "Salisbury?" Nigel queries, as I read this out. "After Oxford?" "Yes," says the oracle, "You had fish and chips, and went to see Mrs Doubtfire." "We were full of it, weren't we?" says Nigel, surprised at the antics of our 30-years-younger selves. I like to think we go for depth these days, rather than quantity...

Anyway, what we definitely wouldn't have seen back then is a sculpture called Seaview, by Hilary Jack, which stands on the cathedral green. You don't need the explanatory plaque to figure out it's about coastal erosion. Having spent a lot of the lockdown in Norfolk, we're pretty well up on that particular environmental threat.


New, too, is the cathedral's splendiferous home for bugs:


Nor, back in the 1990s, would we have seen Angel Harmony, by Helaine Blumenfeld:


Presumably we would have come across Elisabeth Frink's rather haunting Walking Madonna, as it has been there since 1981. Don't remember it, though...


Just down the road from Newtown Common, and also in Berkshire, is Newbury. Good for a breakfast (The Flower Pot Cafe does a nice traditional plate, with the less traditional addition of deliciously crispy sauteed potatoes), a canal-side walk, and a shopping expedition.





Strange weather that day. It's fairly rare to have thunder in England, but we had one bout during the day, and another overnight. With rain, of course, though actually not as much as they were warning us about.

Slightly north of Oxford is the village of Finstock. This is where author Barbara Pym lived from 1972 until her death in 1980, and it's also where she is buried. It's years since I read any Barbara Pym, but she came back onto my radar when one of the reviews of Kate Atkinson's Transcription compared their styles. Expect a bit of a Pym season on The Velvet Cushion in due course.

Finstock is a lovely little village:






We were heading on up to Hadzor in Worcestershire by now, our house in the woods behind us.

On that particular route, Cotswold Barn makes a great stop. We just had coffee, but the food looks great; it's easy to park; and if you're looking for prezzies, there are lots on offer.


England is not devoid of frustrations of various kinds. But of its beauty and the charm of its cultural heritage there is absolutely no doubt.