Stourhead - Tuesday, November 11th

The past couple of days have been really hard. How do I combat missing Matt? By reminiscing.

A month or so before I left, I started a thread in a West Country group on Ravelry looking for not only yarn shop suggestions but just interesting things to do in general. I felt a little guilty that I was showing up on Matt's doorstep for two weeks, "Entertain me!" Lots of people suggested a visit to Stourhead. The house was closed but a fellow Raveler who works in the gardens assured me that they would still be beautitul in early November. And they were.

This is one of the first views as you walk down into the gardens. Here you can see the Palladin Bridge and the Pantheon.

From The National Trust booklet that Matt purchased on the way in:

Not far from Stourhead House, the flat meadow suddenly falls away into a steep valley at a spot known as 'Paradise'. When the sun sets over the far slope, glinting off the lake and gilding the hanging woods, it feels just like that.

Here, from the 1740s Henry Hoare II created the perfect landscape garden. He dammed the stream to make a huge lake, around which he laid out a circuit walk. As you progress round the lake, you take in a series of carefully composed views of classical and Gothic buildings set against wooded slopes.

We had come to The Temple of Flora before we read about Henry's pre-Hollywood Hollywood sets and were completely at a loss. The outside was incredibly ornate but the building itself was just one room that was maybe about six feet deep. After reading those paragraphs, the gardens took on an almost magical quality.

Especially when you walk around a corner and spot things like this -

A tiny robin posed on a wooden bench. Robins in Ohio look like tough, escaped convicts compared to their sweet, little, brown, English cousins.

There were grottos reminiscent of Labyrinth that lead to amazing views or up secret paths. Unfortunately, this grotto lead to the death of my camera -

I was getting ready to snap a photo not unlike this when my camera slipped from my hands and landed in a puddle, right on the edge of the lens. Unfortunately that meant I didn't get as many photos of Stourhead as I'd have liked to. Thank goodness I got this one of the Temple of Apollo -

I think, of the entire vacation, this is my favorite photo. Later we walked into a grotto that led to a secret path that took you up to the Temple with an amazing view of the gardens. It's the perfect picnic spot on is our list of things to do when we go back.

I was lucky enough to cross off a few things on my 101 in 1001 list (the list is a mess - I was cleaning it up at one point and haven't gotten back to finish). Here I got to cross off number seventy-four, "Kiss in the rain." We'd already talked about the list and he had mentioned that he wanted to help me cross off a few (I was hoping number 98 was one of them and it was - just a day later) so when it started to rain just a bit and he stopped walking, I knew just why. I actually crossed that one off my list several times, all over England and a few times in Paris as well...not that we really needed an excuse to smooch (red lights were also an opportunity we took advantage of as often as possible).

And to continue with the magic of Stourhead, it was raining just enough to give us a beautiful, full rainbow as we drove away. Absolutely amazing. This was one of my very favorite days and I can't wait to go back and see it in other seasons - it'll always hold a very special place in my heart.