April 9 & 10: "Down South" with old friends

We spent Wednesday training it back from Liverpool. In my thrift, our return wasn’t on the sleek, super-train that fired us up to Liverpool in a little over 2 hours. We put-putted back on the regional line, changing at Crewe, perfectly serviceable, undelayed and a touch under 4 hours.

We’re settled into Bethnal Green for the next week (albeit shifting hotels on Saturday). Gareth lives within walking distance (in the much more boho London Fields). The East of London is very much cheaper, than the more polished, popular West.

Today, we were training again. Only an hour this time, to Leamington Spa in Wiltshire. My parents lived near there for 14 years. Mary-Sue was a neighbour, and a dear friend, and is still in Barford. She very generously invited us to visit. We shamelessly took her up on it.

We were treated to a splendid lunch. Mary Sue is half-Greek. Her spinach and feta pie was so tasty. She spoiled us with a “fix” of cream, ice cream and berries for dessert. When we ran out of time for afternoon tea, (due to having cheap tickets tied to particular train times), Mary Sue cut a home-made chocolate cake in half and wrapped it in foil for us to take home! I can confirm that it, too, was delicious.

Mary Sue still volunteers at Charlecote Park for the National Trust, which she did with my mum for many years. She flashed her volunteer card and got Carey free entry. She then gave us a fantastic tour. We saw so much more than we might have noticed by ourselves, thanks to Mary Sue’s impressive guiding chops. We even had a peek at repair work underway in the dining room, where a leak revealed a rotten window frame. We watched for a while, while they tapped and prodded joists from scaffolding that both provided ceiling-level access and kept that bit of the wall standing!

Charlecote Park is still home to the Lucy family, scions of one of the Norman grandees who invaded with William the Conqueror in 1066 and built their seat at the site. It is still a baronetcy. The house is studded with three heraldic motifs reused in bronze, plaster, carpet across the centuries: a cross, indicating a Crusader history; a pike, a “luce” in Latin, and so a pun on the family name; a winged boar, which is the core of the family coat of arms, presumably standing for fearsome might (the boar) and soaring ambition, success (the wings).

Charlecote Park is home to a herd of fallow deer (since the red deer were culled due to a TB outbreak in the 1930s) and a flock of Jacob’s Sheep, so called for their piebald fleece, like Jacob’s portion of Laban’s herds in Genesis 31. The herd at Charlecote is the oldest in England, imported from Portugal by Sir George Lucy in the 1750s. They are a low-maintenance breed, hardy, good-tempered, with quality wool, meat: perfect for a country gentleman’s estate.