We travelled by rail from London Euston to the North of England.
Views through the window of a speeding train were of rolling fields mainly...
England's green and pleasant land |
... except for industrial chimneys and electricity pylons, which I couldn't help admiring as structures despite what they were spewing out.
Coal-fired Rugeley Power Station is located in Staffordshire, England |
We alighted at the historical city of Chester which holds relics from the Roman, Medieval, Tudor, Georgian and Victorian eras, passing a few sites on our way into town for lunch ...
The wall encircling the city which started being constructed by the Romans between 70 and 80AD for defence still stands today, as does the cathedral built on Anglo-Saxon foundations which was completed in the 13th Century.
Chester City Wall and Cathedral |
Black and white buildings typical of the Tudor period 1485-1603 can be seen about town, some of them authentic, others Mock Tudor constructed during Victorian times.
Then a short bus ride into Wales.
I didn't plan on writing a post about this trip, as I don't want to turn this blog into a personal diary, but it seems that gardening is gradually making its way into all aspects of my life.
My Aunt lives in a residential estate with no take-away shops or traffic in the vicinity, quite different to the environment where I live near London.
She and her neighbours are house proud; windows are sparkling and gardens neat and tidy. They care about each other and keeping their street clean, even planting the areas outside the boundaries of their properties. I thought that it must be nice to live amongst gardeners who you can actually talk to rather than write comments to, but also realised that a messy, experimental gardener like myself would not fit very well into such a community.
Electric hedge-cutters are mandatory by the looks of it.
Some more gardening ideas which I brought back home were an ivy shed-covering, blonde grasses, tall vertical hedges, short hedges with visible trunks at the base, a living xmas tree and a creeping rug for the lawn.
My plantings are always in two lines; short plants for the front of the border and tall plants for the back of the border. I admired the way they arranged shrubs of different heights to create tableaus.
After a weekend of gardening with my Aunt, shopping in the local outlet stores and watching the Olympics on the TV, we got back on the train and returned to London.
Back past the fields to London |
I really enjoyed the trip but it was good to get back home to a garden where there are no rules, where I can do as I please. Having said that, electric hedge-cutters are going on my list of must-haves, even though I don't have a hedge yet.
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