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Unexpected gardens
Jun. 11th, 2006 09:59 amWe have a small portfolio of walks which it is a pleasure to repeat, and we try not to rely too heavily upon them. But we set off yesterday with one of them in mind, for the first time in over a year: park on the Northumberland coast at Low Steads, walk to Craster up the Long Walk and through farmland, picnic by the tourist office in Craster then north again inland and back to the coast at Low Newton, and back down the coast, past Dunstanburgh Castle. We stitched it together ourselves, from two walks each starting at Craster, which we found in a book. We would probably not otherwise have found the Long Walk, as it leads through the grounds of Howick Hall, but having discovered it we used to quote it as a perfect example of a permissive path, whose owner preserved their rights, and prevented it ever becoming a Right of Way, by imposing an annual closure: the walk was closed, according to a notice, one Wednesday afternoon every February.
Yesterday we discovered the downside of this arrangement: the Howick Estate had exercised their right to close the Long Walk, and as we turned to head inland, a notice informed us that it was now open (in summer, at least) only between midday and six, to paying visitors to the gardens, who could then use this gate as a point of exit only.
This gave us something to think about, as we turned to head up the coast, following our accustomed route widdershins, with Dunstanburgh Castle looming ahead of us through a mist that the sun was somehow failing to burn off. Whatever the entrance fee was, we wouldn't want to pay it just to walk through this outlying part of the grounds: but we'd said often enough, as we passed the entrance to the Hall, that one day we must take time to see what was on offer; and this was certainly the season to visit gardens, with all the flowers coming into bloom, the sea pinks appearing on the cliff tops and the hawthorn so heavy with blossom that it looked as if someone had taken a bowl of whipped cream and dolloped spoonfuls onto the hedgerows; and we were perhaps a little weary; and the weather was not as bright as we'd anticipated...
So after lunch we looped back and spent the afternoon walking through the gardens of Howick Hall. It's one of those places where, despite social change, the English landed gentry carry on owning their property and surviving change by adapting to it: a large classical mansion built for the Grey family in 1782 on land they had owned since the fourteenth century - the family home is still the West Wing, although they no longer use the name Grey, since the property was inherited by a daughter. The house, from the outside, is impressive, but the gardens are stunning. I took a ridiculous number of pictures, and am gradually posting them to Flickr.
The gardens are immense, and the greater part of the area is described as an arboretum: a garden of woody plants. I had expected this to be like a particularly tidy forest, with labelled trees presented for inspection, as on many nature trails. It wasn't like that at all: for one thing, the garden shaded much more gradually into the arboretum, so that a patch of intensely maintained garden - the Bog Garden, say, which I headed for first, because I had so liked the wetland gardens of the Gateshead Garden Festival, long ago - shaded into a patch of woodland where the usual local species mingled with the less usual sweet chestnuts, and frankly exotic species. Cultivated rhododendrons bent under the weight of white blossoms to meet the wild garlic foaming up to meet them. A patch of meadow runs down to the river, where a large patch of some giant exotic form of butterbur springs up; the rockery displays the usual alpines, and a single purple orchid that has escaped from the meadow. With a garden of this size, it's probably impossible to exercise strict control, but the relaxed mingling of wild and garden flowers made it a very pleasant place to wander.
The church of St Michael and All Angels is within the Hall grounds, and we paid our respects to Charles, the second Earl Grey and architect of the Great Reform Bill, who is buried there. We were tempted to visit his tea rooms, and drink the blend of tea to which he also gave his name, but instead sat on the terrace, drank coffee from our thermos flask and listened to the ladies complaining that there was a forty minute wait and the coach parties were being served first. Then we made our way back onto our familiar route, past the pond which was dotted with yellow buttons of water lilies, and criss-crossed with swooping swallows, where a pair of swans were trailing a family of cygnets - not ugly ducklings at all, but downy grey and very sweet. And on the far side of the pond, three herons melted into the shadows.
A valley which we hadn't previously explored, now planted with California lilac (which is a very pretty blue bush, but isn't anything I recognise as lilac) and roses all in bud, brought us back to the gate, and back along the sea path to the car. Not the afternoon we had planned, and that's a good walk we will have to re-invent, but worth doing once in a while.
And we were still reasonably mellow when we got caught in the traffic for Elton John's concert at the Cricket Ground in Chester-le-Street.
Yesterday we discovered the downside of this arrangement: the Howick Estate had exercised their right to close the Long Walk, and as we turned to head inland, a notice informed us that it was now open (in summer, at least) only between midday and six, to paying visitors to the gardens, who could then use this gate as a point of exit only.
This gave us something to think about, as we turned to head up the coast, following our accustomed route widdershins, with Dunstanburgh Castle looming ahead of us through a mist that the sun was somehow failing to burn off. Whatever the entrance fee was, we wouldn't want to pay it just to walk through this outlying part of the grounds: but we'd said often enough, as we passed the entrance to the Hall, that one day we must take time to see what was on offer; and this was certainly the season to visit gardens, with all the flowers coming into bloom, the sea pinks appearing on the cliff tops and the hawthorn so heavy with blossom that it looked as if someone had taken a bowl of whipped cream and dolloped spoonfuls onto the hedgerows; and we were perhaps a little weary; and the weather was not as bright as we'd anticipated...
So after lunch we looped back and spent the afternoon walking through the gardens of Howick Hall. It's one of those places where, despite social change, the English landed gentry carry on owning their property and surviving change by adapting to it: a large classical mansion built for the Grey family in 1782 on land they had owned since the fourteenth century - the family home is still the West Wing, although they no longer use the name Grey, since the property was inherited by a daughter. The house, from the outside, is impressive, but the gardens are stunning. I took a ridiculous number of pictures, and am gradually posting them to Flickr.
The gardens are immense, and the greater part of the area is described as an arboretum: a garden of woody plants. I had expected this to be like a particularly tidy forest, with labelled trees presented for inspection, as on many nature trails. It wasn't like that at all: for one thing, the garden shaded much more gradually into the arboretum, so that a patch of intensely maintained garden - the Bog Garden, say, which I headed for first, because I had so liked the wetland gardens of the Gateshead Garden Festival, long ago - shaded into a patch of woodland where the usual local species mingled with the less usual sweet chestnuts, and frankly exotic species. Cultivated rhododendrons bent under the weight of white blossoms to meet the wild garlic foaming up to meet them. A patch of meadow runs down to the river, where a large patch of some giant exotic form of butterbur springs up; the rockery displays the usual alpines, and a single purple orchid that has escaped from the meadow. With a garden of this size, it's probably impossible to exercise strict control, but the relaxed mingling of wild and garden flowers made it a very pleasant place to wander.
The church of St Michael and All Angels is within the Hall grounds, and we paid our respects to Charles, the second Earl Grey and architect of the Great Reform Bill, who is buried there. We were tempted to visit his tea rooms, and drink the blend of tea to which he also gave his name, but instead sat on the terrace, drank coffee from our thermos flask and listened to the ladies complaining that there was a forty minute wait and the coach parties were being served first. Then we made our way back onto our familiar route, past the pond which was dotted with yellow buttons of water lilies, and criss-crossed with swooping swallows, where a pair of swans were trailing a family of cygnets - not ugly ducklings at all, but downy grey and very sweet. And on the far side of the pond, three herons melted into the shadows.
A valley which we hadn't previously explored, now planted with California lilac (which is a very pretty blue bush, but isn't anything I recognise as lilac) and roses all in bud, brought us back to the gate, and back along the sea path to the car. Not the afternoon we had planned, and that's a good walk we will have to re-invent, but worth doing once in a while.
And we were still reasonably mellow when we got caught in the traffic for Elton John's concert at the Cricket Ground in Chester-le-Street.
