Petworth House and Our Anniversary

It’s been a busy cou­ple of weeks for us; Brighton to Bris­tol and back two weeks run­ning, once for a bio­chem­istry pals meet-up and another for Kayte’s baby shower. This week­end we took some time-out for our 7th anniver­sary, which landed on 10/10/10.

With an Indian sum­mer fore­cast, and likely the last t-shirt wear­ing week­end for at least six months, we made the most of our National Trust mem­ber­ship with a visit to Pet­worth house and park. Sat­ur­day was colder than expected.

With the Peu­geot squeezed into the only avail­able space, we car­ried our pic­nic up to the top of the hill, and on the hid­den bench, beneath falling chest­nuts, we ate our roast chicken and bread rolls. Out in the misty val­ley, deer ran away from scary dogs and the tree leaves were already turn­ing yellow.

I packed the SLR, and with all the mist and wildlife it was a per­fect oppor­tu­nity for a spot of pho­tog­ra­phy. Deer lay in the long grass, and as we neared they gal­loped away, leav­ing us to lament our lim­ited zoom, incor­rect cam­era set­tings and pic­tures of deer hind. Never mind, I still had the chance to explain aper­ture and shut­ter speeds to Sam as we knelt in the muddy grass to pho­to­graph great red mushrooms.

Back at Pet­worth House, and after a cup of tea, a cookie and some grapes, we mean­dered the great hall­ways. Walls were lined with fan­tas­tic works of art, includ­ing many orig­i­nal pieces by Turner and William Blake. A view of Brighton from the sea, by Turner, sat along­side a por­trait of Henry VIII in the ‘carved room’.

That night we watched The Pianist, a sober­ing Polan­ski movie about the tri­als of a tal­ented Jew­ish musi­cian dur­ing World War II, we sin­cerely rec­om­mend it.

In the wake of the much hot­ter, sun­nier and blue skied Sun­day, we relaxed on our bal­cony, feet up, book in hand, watch­ing the day go by and the boats on the sea.

To cel­e­brate our 7th anniver­sary we went to the Miche­lin rec­om­mended “Rid­dle and Finns” cham­pagne and oys­ter bar, in the lanes. On the high seated stone tables, with a bot­tle of sauvi­gnon blanc between us, we ordered…

Yum, yum, yum. We will surely attempt to recre­ate the tiger prawn dish our­selves, and this was the first fish com­plete with head and tailed I’ve had the plea­sure of eat­ing in England.

Lacock

Whilst Sam was away in Bath at Sally Nun’s for the baby shower, my sis­ter and I stopped off at the vil­lage of Lacock, on the way to Bris­tol, near Chip­pen­ham. It’s here they filmed “Lark Rise to Can­dle­ford” and a num­ber of scenes in the Harry Pot­ter films.

The abbey, another National Trust site, is where the first photo neg­a­tive was invented, by Fox Tal­bot. I recre­ated the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive on my phone (typ­i­cal I for­got the SLR), how­ever corny that may sound. The exhi­bi­tion of early pho­tos and cam­eras was fascinating.

Before leav­ing we had home-made pasties and cake from the local Lacock bak­ery. To round off our middle-aged day trip, we lis­tened to “From our own cor­re­spon­dent” on BBC Radio 4–I LOVE this show. I’m still only 25. Who know’s what excit­ing things I’ll be up to when I’m in my forties.