London and Lymington

Our time in the Schengen zone was up, so goodbye France and hello UK.

London

First up was London for 4 days.  We stayed near Victoria Station and enjoyed wandering around the very upmarket suburbs of Belgravia and Mayfair.  We saw rather a lot of Rolls Royce Cullinans.  Seems to be a theme, this trip.  We also liked wandering around Harrods – which we hadn’t done for many years – admiring the Egyptian inspired interior decoration and stopping for a little champagne at the Champagne Bar.

We went to a fabulous exhibition at the V&A: Fashioning Masculinities: The art of menswear.  We loved the focus on challenging traditional forms of dress for men during the last 100 years or so.  Throughout history, male clothing has been much more diverse than has been the case more recently.  And the current generation of non-binary and cross gender people are really challenging and influencing how we dress.  Fantastic!

Pink tones were popular for men through centuries

Love the tailoring

Edward VIII was quite the dapper dresser

 

Raffa

Just squint a bit

Timothee Chalamet's Oscars suit shimmers

Harry Styles among others

We also took the time to take a closer look at the V&A’s permanent collection.

Loved these intricate stone mosaics, which looked like oil paintings from a distance

A real highlight of our time in London was to catch up with our friend John, who has now lived in London for a very long time.  We had a fantastic dinner at Apricity in Mayfair.  Their mission is to provide low waste, sustainable DELICIOUS food.  You can always rely on John to find somewhere for a fantastic dinner.  It would be great to see him again at Eurovision in Liverpool next year – although goodness knows how we obtain tickets and accommodation.  Of course, when we saw John we were all convinced that Eurovision would be held in Glasgow.

Only a small number of floral tributes to Her Maj remained each time we passed

The other highlight – of London and the whole trip was – finally going to see the ABBA Voyage concert.  ABBA Arena has been purpose built and is in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to the east of the city.  Dale has been waiting 45 years for this day, since his parents refused to let him go to an ABBA concert in Melbourne in 1977, when he was 7 years old.  Parents are so unreasonable!  As a result, he’s had to make do with ABBA tribute bands for 45 years.

ABBA Voyage may be virtual but the ABBAtars were real for me (if 45 years younger than the real Anna-Frid, Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha).  It felt very close to seeing ABBA live.  The venue is intimate, and each member of the group spoke directly to the audience at least once.  The visual effects were stunning, and the songs were fabulous.  As the Director of ABBA Voyage says, these songs have been the soundtrack to our lives.  That said I could not stop humming one of their new songs for a couple of days.  It is called I still have faith in you and the lead vocals by Anna-Frid are stunning, as are the harmonies between her and Agnetha – still going strong after all these years.

It was a joyous and emotional evening.  Everyone seemed to have a smile on their face and to be walking on air as they left the stadium.  Finally, I think the middle ageish audience appreciated a concert that started on time and didn’t finish too late.  You can really rely on ABBAtars.

On Friday we skipped off to Windsor, still very happy little dancing queens.  We do love visiting castles – any castle really – but this really took the cake.  So large and so beautifully maintained, decorated and furnished with magnificent objects stolen from so many places down through the ages – I think they say they were gifts.

It was engrossing to visit a castle that is still very much in use for state occasions.  You could envisage her Maj dining alongside that odious Trump man.

In the evening we went off to see out first piece of legit theatre in several months.  We chose to see Blues for an Alabama Sky, starring Samira Wiley, at the National Theatre.  We were devastated when we learned that Samira wouldn’t be performing but the play was nevertheless excellent.  Helena Pipe was very compelling in Samira Wiley’s role as Angel Allen.  The play is presented as part of the New American Work Programme and is set in 1930s Harlem as the great depression was approaching.  It tackles abortion, racism and homophobia.  It’s a stunning and powerful play.

On Saturday we had to get down to Gatwick to pick up our hire car for the following week.  As there was a national rail strike, we had to take the bus rather than the Gatwick Express.  We were so fortunate to be staying near the Victoria Coach Station.  All went well and we were able to pick up the hire car at the appointed time.

Lymington

We spent the next week in a lovely little cottage in Lymington, which is on the south coast in Hampshire on the edge of the New Forest.  Dale’s great Uncle John and Aunty Vera lived in several different nearby towns over 40 years, most recently in Highcliffe.  We visited them numerous times between 1998 and 2019.  Aunty Vera died in 2016 in her early 90s and Uncle John died earlier this year at the age of 101.  We were very upset that due to COVID, we didn’t get to see him in either 2020 or 2021 before he died.  The purpose of this visit was to say goodbye to Uncle John and Aunty Vera one last time and to be tourists in the area for a change.

Aunty Vera’s niece, Jane had already planned for us to scatter Uncle John’s ashes together, but while cleaning out his house, also found Aunty Vera’s ashes, which we all thought had been scattered.  This was a lovely surprise because we were able to scatter their ashes together.  Jane chose Walkford Brook in the Chewton Bunny nature reserve as the place to scatter the ashes.  It was perfect – it is a beautiful place and very close to their final apartment.  We were also joined by Jane’s partner Stephen and her brother and sister-in-law, John and Michelle. 

L to R - John, Stephen, Dale, Jane and Michelle

On their way to the Solent

After scattering the ashes, we went back to Jane and John’s house – which they inherited from their dad (Vera’s brother) and mum.  Many of Vera’s siblings also lived nearby – sadly, they have all passed away.  For the record Dale’s grandmother Win was Uncle John’s sister and Uncle John’s relatives are largely in Melbourne.  His other sister Mima also lived in Melbourne.  Four of his five nieces and nephews still live in Melbourne – and only Dale’s dad John has passed away.

We had a little drink to toast Vera and John.  Vera was famous for asking whether it was time for drinky poos, any time from about 4pm.  A tradition that we are determined to continue.  Then we had a lovely dinner out at Barton-on Sea before going back to the house and continuing to sort through many family photos to bring aback to Australia. It was an emotionally exhausting, but really enjoyable day.

On the touristy front, we did a few walks in the New Forest.  It is unbelievable that we’d never previously found the time to do this.  We saw so many ponies and horses ranging about the forest.  We also saw pigs roaming about in one of the towns. Their job is to eat the acorns in the New Forest because they are poisonous to the ponies. We also saw a herd of deer, albeit from a distance.  The walks covered a variety of landscapes.  There were forests with beautiful streams and plenty of mushrooms – but no touching these mushrooms.  It’s too risky.  There were lots of beautiful grazing pastures – for the ponies, pigs and cattle.  There were hillsides full of bracken. There are an extraordinary number of walking trails in the New Forest.

Seconds later the lead horse charged us!

Driving through the town of Burley :-)

We spent an entire day over on the Isle of Wight.  We were able to take our car across The Solent Strait from Lymington. 

Much of the day was spent visiting Osborne House, Victoria and Albert’s palatial holiday home.  It is very well furnished and decorated.  You can see the room where Victoria died, which is till something of a shrine.  Even though it was a holiday home, work still had to go on and you can see the room and desks where Victoria and Albert worked side by side, the room that was used for Privy Council meetings, if needed, and where Victoria would meet foreign dignitaries.

The most spectacular room was the dining room designed as an homage to all things Indian.

We walked through the enormous grounds to see Victoria’s private bathing box that was wheeled into the sea so that she could bathe in privacy.  There’s a fabulous scene in the movie Mrs. Brown, in which Judi Dench plays Queen Victoria and descends into the sea from her bathing box.  A panel recounted that Victoria found bathing exhilarating except when she put her head under water, which she found unpleasantly stifling.  Apparently the bathing box was used as a chicken shed for many years.

We had a quick visit to Quarr Abbey – there was a great embroidery exhibition. 

Then we drove across to the west coast to see the Needles rock formations.  We took a vertiginous chair lift down to the beach and then walked back up, taking photos along the way.

Jane recounted that as children they could pay to collect the coloured sand

It was extremely windy as we sat hoping the ride would end soon

The following day we drove across to Chichester to walk around the Roman walls and to look around Chichester Cathedral.  The cathedral is vast and was consecrated in 1108.

On our last day we visited the imposing Hurst Castle on the spit at Milford-on-Sea.  It was built during Henry VIII’s reign as one of a chain of artillery forts and it guarded the western entrance to the Solent Strait.  It looks across at the Needle rocks that we’d seen on the Isle of Wight a couple of days earlier.  The Portsmouth naval base is located at the other end of the Solent.

Hurst Castle remained in use until the 1950s.  It was greatly expanded over time.  Interestingly the original fort was out of date almost as soon as it was completed.  Although it had thick walls and a low profile in response to rapidly developing guns and cannons, it's use of curved walls meant it lacked the ability to provide cross fire for another section under attack, leaving it vulnerable. The castle was never involved in battle despite being operational for 400 years.  Its presence alone was enough to deter would be attackers.  To get to the castle, we took a charming little ferry from Keyhaven and back.  The views from Hurst Castle of the mainland and the Isle of Wight were wonderful.

For our last afternoon we took a walk in another section of the New Forest.

We were greated by roving donkeys upon returning to our car.  This Vauxhall Crossland was a terrible car on many levels, and one of the last GM engineered cars remaining for Peugeot to replace

 

And that’s a wrap – almost.  One last post to come; long promised but undelivered…