I’ve just returned from my last jaunt, details to
follow. And now a quiet period of two months without a trip awaits. This in
fact is quite welcome after the past couple of months which were ridiculously
frantic. They also contributed a lot to the general decay of house and garden
which I have been lamenting for some time now.
The scale of this was brought home to me by the state of the windows at
the back of the garage which I attended to in the fortnight before the Sweden
trip. Getting them out of the danger zone, however temporarily, was quite a
challenge in time, let alone skill, and the effort barely scratched the
enormous ‘to do’ list that I have been
building up. And, of course, the challenge is a consequence of my being away so
much over the past couple of years. Getting to grips with it could actually
turn out to be rather satisfying.
That fortnight, though also saw me getting the car serviced and a social engagement or two. This included the All Cannings Garden Club BBQ where I found I knew rather more people than I expected to. Here’s a picture of me apparently in full flow, perhaps saying how big my cucumbers are.
After all my grief in the garden – thanks to slugs, Muntjac deer, terrible weather etc, I have been rather encouraged by the extent to which the garden has recovered from a low which saw three sowings of Broad Beans producing exactly one bean (bean -not pod) which I ate with relish, the onions completely failing for the first time ever and the logan berries, gooseberries and black currants just being taken by the birds while I was away. Since then, though, it’s been reassuring to find excellent crops of French Beans, early Apples and blackberries, sufficient raspberries and wheel-barrow loads of plums of every size and description. The real surprise though was finding the pear tree producing a dozen eatable pears, the first since we moved in thirty years ago. The outside freezer is getting seriously re-stocked, and at the BBQ, I didn’t feel as ashamed of my performance as I really should have done. I still need to get the potatoes up, though. That could be tense.
The last trip for some time was to Sweden via Copenhagen
which was a gathering of ancient mariners – only about ten of us, largely Swedish
and British though my American friend John Hattendorf came too. (His wife was
Swedish and he speaks it too, along with several other European languages). The
subject was the country’s maritime strategy now they have joined NATO. This was
very interesting but the real delight was the food, the company, the setting
and the sights we saw. I was bowled over by the food – everything we had was
totally delicious. I said, on the basis of this, how surprised I was that there weren’t
more Swedish restaurants around. ‘Well,’ said one of our hosts a bit
defensively, ‘there are two in New York.’
The setting was a small seaside town, the Baltic being about a hundred yards away. Our host was a chief executive of a Japanese-Swedish shipping company (and one could easily see why, clearly brilliant but extremely personable) , evidently well loaded and with an obsessive interest in naval history. He had his own naval museum where we held our meetings and his charming wife (who actually collects Abba memorabilia) is a saint to put up with the fact that their house (read small elegant mansion- and one of several) was absolutely stuffed with the growing overflow. They put several of us in their place. I was in the Hen House, well that was the latest use it was put to in its 400 year existence before being converted into an annex bedroom, the walls covered historic maps. Here are two views of the residence, the top from the garden table I used to do some work, write diary etc. Hen house on the right, antique stuffed dining room on the left. Below, a view of Baltic the other way round from the back of the main house.
After the main weekend event, John and I were treated to a special tour of other naval sights and stayed in Tromto manor, the decayed Summer residence of one of our company, a member, as they say, of one of Sweden’s ‘oldest families.’ This is him in the amazing rope-walk of Karlskrona naval base.
His part-time residence was large, by the side of a lake and reachable only up a three mile woodland track, mainly 16th-18th Century and only partly modernised.
No modern heating or any of that nonsense. Again, stuffed with antiques, this time of the family. It was all hands to the plough for the five of us to make ourselves comfortable. It was brilliant and I developed a real liking for schnapps. It was the sort of place I used once to dream about getting and modernising in the holidays – of course in fact it would have been an absolute nightmare.
Here's my room after I had made up the bed and settled in. Also a representative salon showing the manor's still current use as a hunting lodge in the season. They have a lot of trouble with wild boar, hence no garden now. But at least we had some for dinner one night. Also the view from the rook area of the lake with my shadow - rather clever that I thought.
From this bit of borrowed paradise our tour included Kalmar castle, which was as fantastic inside as it looked from outside and which had a great restaurant in the room they used to sign the Kalmar Union of 1397. I really liked the chapel too.
Then on to Karlskrona and another naval museum, a tour of the nearby naval base, lunch at the Officer’s club and much else. Unfortunately the cathedral which I wanted to see was closed, but you can’t have everything. I'm aware that this boring series of superlatives sounds over the top but it really was a quite outstanding trip and absolutely shows that here in Europe for all the fancy ways of more distant areas we have a lot going for us.
Once home, a day to unpack and prepare for a lovely family weekend to renew acquaintance – another major disadvantage of the globe-trotting life style now drawing to a close. There was much feasting the picking of apples and all the delightful usual.
And then
a Church visit to the south of the County, where we were taken to visit five
churches. I had actually visited four of them already – one 40 years ago ! But this was an opportunity to do them in depth.
Especially for me as I was official group note-taker and photographer, and to
make this possible I spent the day before on a recce. Even in driving rain this
was useful as I could do some of the photography in peace and quiet and was
also able to divine the quickest routes from place to place and the best
parking spots. The only one I was late for on the day, was at Maiden Bradley but
that because I was able to inveigle myself into a splendid lunch with Pat and James.
If all goes on like this I suspect I will still have
things to do, when I finally hang up my mortarboard !
