Canons Ashby at Christmas

Blasdale Home Posted on by

16th December 2022

Many National Trust houses reopen for Christmas and are decorated with a theme. We try and visit at least each year. There are some houses which are decorated in an extravagant fashion, such as our local house, Waddesdon Manor. This is a big money-making scheme and visitors are charged entry whether they are or are not members of the National Trust. These houses tend to become very busy. We typically visit the smaller houses which have been decorated by the volunteers and are still free to National Trust members. This year we have already visited Chastleton House in late November and squeezed in this visit to Canons Ashby to meet up with some friends of ours.

The weather had been cold and frosty for several days, and wonderful frost patterns had formed on the lawns and outdoor furniture. The house looked spectacular with the bright blue sky and the white from the snow/frost patterns. The house had been decorated with small paper Christmas trees, castles and Welsh dragons, the theme being Arthurian legends. Seems the volunteers had made many of the decorations. Brilliant and, of course, R cannot resist a dragon. There were even dragons eggs and a puffing, growling dragon.

Of course, no visit is complete without a visit to the cafe (not to mention the secondhand bookshop), where, on our second visit, we stayed and chatted until past closing time. Back at the car park, the NT staff were trying to figure out who was still in the gardens, and which cars belonged to visitors.

Cold winter in Kingswood

Blasdale Home Posted on by

11th December 2022

We have had a dry and very cold few days in the United Kingdom. The temperature in Kingswood dropped to -11C and has been below freezing all night and day. I haven’t felt anything as cold as this since we first moved here in the late 1980s. Despite this cold patch, the UK average temperature for 2022 averaged more than 10C, the first time ever it has topped 10C. The cold weather went on until the 18th, but of course warmed up for Christmas.

I grabbed a few pictures of the frost patterns on cobwebs and vegetation using my mobile phone.

Occulation of Mars

Blasdale Home Posted on by

8th December 2022

I was up at 4.00 UTC to see a rare event. The planet Mars was occulated by the moon. The next time this happens will be January 2025. I took around 80 photographs, discarded many, and superimposed each image on top of each other. You can see the moon in the center of the image, and images of Mars on the top left getting closer and closer to the moon. Eventually Mars was behind the moon. This occurred at around 4.59. I went back to bed, intending to photograph the moon when Mars reappeared on the bottom right. I was a little late for this and missed the initial image of Mars reappearing an hour later at 5.58.

I was lucky, a noticeably clear night in Buckinghamshire, though cool at -5C. The down jacket did little to keep my hands warm.

The occulation of Mars

Trip to Chastleton House

Blasdale Home Posted on by

30th November 2022

We visited the National Trust’s Chastleton House to see it decorated for Christmas. We try and visit a National Trust house at this time of year to see the Christmas decorations. We bypass houses such as Waddesdon Manor, as a protest, because they charge NT members who visit at Christmas time.

Chastleton House is a large house clothed in dilapidated splendour. The previous owners fell on hard times, with the resultant leaking roofs, no heating and poor decoration. The NT has preserved this look throughout the house. The house was decorated for a 1960s Christmas. You can see vinyl records, the old tube monochrome TV, the old 60s GPO phones and valve radios. The homemade crackers were brilliantly made by the volunteers from crêpe paper and toilet rolls. Do you remember making paper chains by sticking together coloured pieces of paper? The volunteers must have spent a while making all those on display! Great use was made of games and various glasses and cocktail paraphernalia. Champagne coups were a feature and some wonderful 60s food. There were also exhibits from before the 1960s. At Christmas in 1938, the children’s parcels were parachuted in by an uncle who was an RAF pilot. The parcels were scattered across the front lawn, stuck in trees and attached to the house. R spied a thriller written by one of the last private owners. Yes, she ordered a copy, but sadly could not find one with the same attractive jacket.

There was limited access to the gardens, but nice for a quick wander.

After our visit we looked for somewhere to eat (yes, shockingly there is no NT tea-room!), and ended up in the roadside Cotswold Cafe next to a garage. Excellent; it was very clean and served very good basic grub. I had a baked potato with baked beans, cheese and salad while R had a tuna mayonnaise filled roll with salad. The cafe was decorated with old motoring memorabilia, see the model campervan photo.

After our lunch we headed to the nearby limestone Rollright Stones, where you park in a layby in Oxfordshire. There is a nominal fee of a quid each to visit, which we put in the honesty box. There are three monuments – The Kings Men, a late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age stone circle, with nearby an Early or Middle Neolithic dolmen, named the Whispering Knights, while across the road (and in another county, Warwickshire) lies the King Stone, thought to be a single monolith Bronze Age grave marker.

Well worth a visit, though everything would have looked better on a bright sunny spring or frosty winter day, rather than the heavy overcast sky we were greeted with.

We have visited Chastleton House on other occasions. The previous visits were in 2007 and 2005. Did we remember doing so? Mmmm.

Portmeirion Number 5

Blasdale Home Posted on by

18th November 2022

Our final breakfast at 9.00, and then packed up and the porter ordered, to take our bags back to the car. We had timed this to the T. The weather is now typical wet Welsh weather, pouring with rain. It rained until we were out of Wales. We had planned to stop on the route but decided not to. The inclement weather making it unattractive. The car behaved, and we made it home with plenty of electrons in the battery. A lovely break.

Tomorrow we are off to Cambridge for a Gonville and Caius Feast.