I have just enjoyed the last of the spring bank holidays. I went down to see my Mum and do a few chores that she can't do for herself (cutting grass). I managed a few trips to country houses and the inevitable cream tea.
I drove down on Friday night as I usually do. Arrived in the wee small hours of Saturday morning.
We had a relaxed Saturday morning as it was miserable outside weather wise. Gardening was out of the question. After several coffees and much natter we hatched a plan. We would take Mum's ageing Mitsubishi for a spin up to Winchester. Take in a National Trust and maybe shop or hopefully sight see. I don't like shopping let alone shopping with my Mum. Mum's car has developed a squeal which is proving difficult to diagnose. It must be something to do with the rear disc brakes as the squeak disappears when you dab the breaks and the offside rear wheel gets frightfully hot.
We arrived in Winchester with little drama, accepted a free ticket to the "park and ride" bus. There ensued some confusion as 2 buses turned up at once and it was not clear to first timers like my Mum and me which one we needed. We first had to actually get to the bus stop. I was required to first check that I had in fact locked the car and then returned a third time to check the sticky rear door. I make a point of never running for buses on health grounds and my mum makes a point of never running in account of her two false hips. as a result we stood at the bus stop for a further ten minutes whilst we waited for the us to come again. They both came together. It turned out that the other bus was on the way out of the city and ours was on it's way in. It was just coincidental that they arrived together. Had the out of town bus arrived first no doubt we would have been treated to a tour of the suburbs before we realised our mistake!
The bus dropped us right outside a water mill owned by the National Trust. They have just recently started milling flour again after a gap of some one hundred years. There had been a mill there from about 1320 according to the blurb inside.
It had been a Youth hostel in it's recent past and one which my Father stopped at when he was a young man. I never got into Youth Hostels when I was his age, much too communal for me. I went Youth Hosteling across France once and ... well that is another story!
If you find yourself at a loose end for an hour or two in Winchester you could do worse than to spend some time in the mill and the surrounding river paths.
The final chapter of the trip was to make up our mind just which ticket the bus driver required to see before transporting us to our final destination. The car park ticket came in two parts. The first part was for the windscreen of the car and the other was to show to the bus driver. The driver issued a ticket, so my question was this - which one did we show to get back? would there be consequences to not showing the right ticket (seeing as how my mother had scrumpled up the issued ticket and nearly thrown it away.). I need not have worried of course as both seemed acceptable.

Sunday was a much bigger expedition. And as such required a more reliable car. Which in our case is only a relative statement as my car has not been the model of reliability. Still we arose at 9 am on the morn and got motoring. It took a little under 2 hours to get to a place called Ightham Mote (that's pronounced ITEM - it's them darned Saxons!). Glorious weather, but it was now lunchtime and part of the deal for me is that we visit the NT restaurant. They usually do a nice soup and today was no exception. So we sat outside in the sunshine and gorged.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-ighthammote/



The house itself is in a little valley. It appears a little like a fairy tale castle with a token moat but it transpires it has taken a little over 700 years to reach this stage. If you like this sort of thing it was quite fun. The house has been added to bit by bit over the years and it shows on the inside with staircases here and there rooms only reached by bathroom or ancient chapels. There is only one problem with circulating through these houses in the company of my indomitable mother. You see these properties have a "guide" in every room who is there actually to make sure you don't steal the fixtures and fittings but also is supposed to have memorised the brochure (and probably destroyed it lest it should get into enemy hands - English Heritage!) and answer questions. My mothers "problem" is that she likes to engage EVERY single guide she encounters. It may be a serious question of decor,she once spent and hour discussing an "arts and crafts" lamp shade, but I digress. Today was no exception, I don't know how she does it. She will find some point of interest in the room and go for it. The worst case scenario is when the question's answer is unknown to the guide and he or she will trot off to find who it is known by. and you are duty bound to wait and find out.

Today was no exception. The old crypt has nothing in it - at all. it is an empty crypt with no distinguishing features to the naked eye. That is until my mother entered the room. and then the questions started i left after the first humorous story by the guide as to what her husband told children about the crypt.

The house was quite interesting though. It was a nightmare of form over function as it had been added and adapted ad nauseum by all it's owners and there were doors and corridor leading off all over the place. It was a very pretty house though. I would recommend a visit if you are a trust member but for and entrance fee of 11 GBP it is not a cheap excursion.

Before we got to the house we came across a sign advertising a garden tour. We had ten minutes to kill so I packed mum off into the museum shop for a recce. To my great surprise she came out after five announcing that when you had seen one NT shop you have seen them all!

Then the guide showed up. I am a little unsure about guided tours. They fall into two categories in my experience. First there is the "what the heck am i doing here?" variety. Any tour with the best will in the world can fall into this category. Sometimes (well mostly) it is the guide that determines the tour but also occasionally it is the qualities of your fellow guides that can wreck even the most illuminating talk. Sometimes they think they know more than the guide and tell every one but most annoying are the ones that mutter all the bits they feel the guide has left out under their breath so that if you are stood next to them you miss the next thing the guide says. Dull tour guides are the ones that know all the FACTS. What makes a great tour is some gossip or information not wholly based on truth.

At one NT residence it was widely reported that one of the owners fled abroad for the rest of his life. No one would confirm why - intrigue? turned out when I consulted the world of www that he was caught soliciting soldiers on Hampstead Heath!

Today's tour had a nervy start. The guide seemed ok and I was encouraged that she wasn't a botanist. Not being a great fan of latin I didn't want the tour to be a stream of unrecognisable names and flower life cycles. Some of my fellow travellers had my suspicions heigthened as they had been on the tour before. A bad sign.

Worse was to come. the reason I allowed myself to be exposed to the rigours of NT tours was that some of the garden was only accessible to the public on a tour. And I wanted the whole experience. However I wondered just what kind of danger must lay in this garden as the tour guide did a precise headcount and radioed it in by walkie talkie to some unseen mission control. Did they expect some of us not to make it?

Of course my fears were unfounded as to the danger of the garden but I did mark a few companions for "an early bath" when the muttering started. We were ushered through the South garden as it is known at quite a pace fortunately. The guide not wishing to be bogged down with questions about plants stopped long enough to tell us the known history of the garden and then whisk us off before the difficult questions arose.

I think on this occasion we had a good tour. The guide was no expert in anything particularly but had studied the text and was generally interested in the site as a whole. She had masterfully sidestepped the technical questions and not spoken long enough to give the mutterers any ammunition. At the same time she pointed out several areas that i might have missed and wanted to come back and see.

we were pretty pooped after the tour and garden so we headed for the tea room for my first cream tea of the summer. And it was good.Suitably refreshed we headed for the car, Mum surprisingly asked for the air con to be switched on. Normally we have a tussle as myself and any passengers stifle in the heat as my mum closes all the windows and warms up the car. I blame her medication. But not today and we sped back down the M25 in chilled comfort.

Only as far as junction 8. I do not trust the gantries on motorways that warn of impending doom. My travelling experience is that they convey the truth only about half the time. Today there was supposed to be a closure at junction 9 and I wanted off at junction 10. I did settle at leaving at junction 8 as I was not in the mood to risk being sat in a non mobile M25, that is just too depressing.

My Mum's eyes lit up as she said she would guide me cross country from Reigate to Guildford via West Horsley. I was in no position to fight. The journey went well so long as we were on the A25. I became agitated once mum started telling me to take any right turn. once I had made the recommended turn and found myself on a tight twisty road climbing the North Downs. At the point that the main road we were hunting intercepted us on our right when mum was peering to her left for it, I was resigned to my fate of wandering the lanes of Surrey for the rest of my natural.

By hook and mostly crook we pitched up at the right place but not when or where we thought we would. Still from here I knew the way home so after a quick pit stop at my Aunt and Uncle's house we made off down the A3.

And another successful foray int the world of National Trust was completed