Lee Valley White Water Centre, Essex

I really do want to get on with posting more holiday photographs but I have so many to sort out and life has been busy so just a short post before the weekend is out to stay in the loop.

When taking Oliver home a couple of weeks ago after his week with Grandma (more photos eventually) we dropped into the Olympic White Water Centre on the way. As well as being a training place it is open to the public. I have posted more extensively on this previously but went again as I thought Oliver would enjoy watching the rafts on the water.

He did and spent his time trying to race the rafts on the course

Of course the rapids are set much fiercer and faster for

the professionals

New participants have a good hours training first both in and out of the water

One of our English canoeists

Grandchildren back to stay next Monday so more fun in the pipeline but planning to visit some nice gardens this week first

Max Gate, the Home of Thomas Hardy. Dorset

We go from the cottage where Hardy was born (last post) to his own adult house

As an architect by profession he was able to design the house himself, with his Father and brother doing the building work.

Little did Hardy realise in 1885 that the house was actually situated in the middle of a neolithic stone circle and a Romano-British cemetery.

He remained in the house until his death

Interestingly to me this house reminds me of the house of 

George Bernard Shaw which is in my neck of the woods

The house is very much as it was when Hardy lived here

The armchair by the lamp was Hardy's own chair

His typewriter

Dining Room

Typical passageway to the back door 

and some of the garden

Thomas Hardy's Birthplace, Dorset

Having driven to the car park we follow the first sign that directs us to the birthplace of the writer Thomas Hardy

The track is long and steep in places

After about 20 minutes we began to feel that this was a very reclusive family

Until we arrived at the cottage and saw that there was a much shorter and flatter route (about 15 minutes walk)!

We had walked over the hill instead of round it on part of the Hardy trail

The National Trust need to make their signing clearer!

Well we are here now and enjoying the truly cottage garden

The cottage was built of cob and thatch by Hardy's Grandfather and Hardy was born here in 1840

Thomas Hardy was an English Novelist and Poet, a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in is novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by 

William Wordsworth

He has about 50 books to his name, the most popular being

Far From the Maddening Crown

Jude the Obscure

Tess of the d'urbervilles

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Under the Greenwood Tree

His books reflect this area of Dorset which we see in the films of his books 

An upstairs study in the cottage

a bedroom

As in many of these old cottages there are stairs at both ends

We ascended at the other end up steep stairs but at this end the stairs are more a steep ladder

The upstairs rooms are usually linked in these old cottages - they do not have a corridor 

Back downstairs to what would obviously have been the living room area

This area was left of the front door with the Parlour to the right

We did not go into the parlour as a group of visitors were sitting listening to a volunteer reading from one of Hardy's books of poetry

Too time consuming for us as we plan to visit his own home after this

The house on the left is nothing to do with the Hardy home

but this is the road that we could have arrived by, had we known, but at least we can now walk back to the car park this way

I asked how people who could not walk could visit the house but was told that they could telephone and arrangements would be made for them to park close by

I guess you would lose the authenticity of the cottage in the woods if there was an adjoining car park

There were actually some nice houses on the way back that definitely would not have been there in Hardy's time

Abbotsbury Sub-Tropical Gardens, Dorset

Just behind Chesil Beach we have the Sub-Tropical Gardens

Sheltered as it is on the side of a hill, it has it's own mini-climate

I like the way the ferns are naturalising and growing our of the 

felled tree trunk

Part f the Australian sub-tropical

The Bothy which is now a tool store but the place where the gardeners slept in days gone by in the winter to make sure the green houses were kept heated

Now it is time for tea and I like the Old Colonial style verandas

around the restaurant  

playing with reflections again

empty now as it is almost closing time

but there are still plenty of cakes to be had

and we did have an enjoyable fish lunch here midday