The Kiwi Kid: Adventures on the A49

The best day weather wise in the Long Mynd was the day I was leaving, it made for a pleasant drive south to Bath on nice roads. At around lunch time I was getting hungry and needed to stop somewhere to use the facilities, so as ever I used my preferred method of finding refreshments and nice toilets by consulting my trusty National Trust hand book to see what places were en-route and by which means I found Berrington Hall just off the A49 near Leominster. I have found this method my preference over going into a town and finding a park and then public toilets and or a cafe as it involves traffic, time and getting lost and sometimes having to shuffle along at the pace of shoppers, waiting for lights and it turns into a boring chore. It is far nicer to park easily at a nice country manor, the cafes are always a good standard and the coffee reliable, there is usually a cream tea available and of course it's all set in some beautifully landscaped garden.
    This garden was Capability Brown's final landscape, with long vistas down to a 14 acre lake and rows of round trees that lined the paths. The interior was surprisingly homely and there was an exhibition of some excellent embroidery work, with little 3D embroidered garden worlds in tea cups and other creative works, I never knew the craft could be so exciting. I would recommend it for anyone who thinks embroidery is boring and just a way of putting labels on things or making things lacy. My favourite space which was just a strange off cut of space with nice wallpaper in an otherwise unusable space had been lined with shelves and made into a sort of curved narrow library alcove. I had gone round the house in the wrong direction because I couldn't find the entrance and had gone in through the servants' quarters, the entrance was on the other side of the courtyard, in the main hall a lady was talking to one of the visitor volunteers in that area about her hyperhidrosis and therefore she wouldn't be going upstairs because she would get too hot because of her hyperhidrosis, I moved through the hall into the ground floor rooms and when I came back out into the hall again she was still there talking in earnest about her hyperhidrosis, eventually her husband managed to persuade her out of the door and back outside where she continued to talk to him about her hyperhidrosis as they shuffled along. I suspect this is a regular event on their outings, still, it gives them something to talk about.
   The house itself was built for a London banker for his retirement estate in the late 1700's, he obviously did pretty well for himself as a banker as by his mid 40's he had commissioned Lancelot 'Capability' Brown - the most fashionable landscape designer of the era and Browns son-in-law Henry Holland to create this French influenced Neo-classical mansion and gardens, there is certainly an air of Versailles about it. Neo-classical is one of those expressions I don't really know much about, so I looked it up, it is a revival of classical architecture but simpler and less fussy, taking the essence of the style but without the busyness and fuss. Thinking about it, architecture was simple in the beginning, then it got bigger and grander with more materials and more and more fussy with lots of shiny bits until you got to the Rococo style that originated in Paris - that was all about how decorative and fancy could you make any and every space, until like a snowflake, it can't divide anymore and had reached peak decoration, which was also reflected in the attire of the same time. Just type in Rococo into Google and you'll see what I mean, after that there seems to have been a simplifying down of the style which then passed through some nice periods of still classical but less over the top styles before sliding into ages of austerity, necessity and then into the abyss of modern magazine minimalism where by a concrete box with massive window with some square furniture with perhaps a brightly coloured cushion with matching colour crockery and picture on the wall has become the height of modern hip architecture.
   I headed out of the car park and herded a large group of sheep away that were covered the drive and back on the the A49. My direct route went via a lovely river side road through the Wye Valley which passes Titern Abbey, a huge shell of an abbey with the walls intact but no roof or glass and neat short grass on the ground instead of tiles. Without anything inside it appeared magical, and I thought made for a far more interesting space than somewhere cluttered with pews and alters. It was just one material - stone.
   Moving on over the Severn bridge after a bit of going in circles in Bath I arrived at my next Airbnb, my last stop for this trip.