To the palace

A bit more than a week ago now to Hampton Court Palace, with the record suggesting that the last visit had been as long ago as last September, noticed at reference 1.

On this occasion, thinking that we might want to take a proper lunch, rather than whatever might be on offer in the Palace, we parked in the station car park, more convenient for return from lunch in or around Bridge Road than return from the Palace car park. Where we learned that the ticket machines in the car park into which you inserted coins, mainly pound coins that is, were all out of order and that what you had to do was something clever with your telephone or go to the ticket office. My Microsoft telephone not being clever in that way, this meant the ticket office. Where the lady behind the window explained that this did not mean her, rather the large machine outside. Which I did manage after a while, managing on this occasion to get our registration number right.

And so onto the Palace and into rose garden which appears to be the subject of major refurbishment, the endpoint of which does not look as if it is going to be the garden of old, specimen roses that it was. Much more mixed up. Including the wicker art which the Palace people seem to be fond of. Perhaps they all grew up to the 1973 version of  'The Wicker Man'.

Onto the Tilt Yard café, where I took a cinnamon and sugar flavoured pastry which was fresh and pretty good, and which would have been even better had they eased up on the sugar. BH reminisced about cinnamon toast which she knew about as a child. And which I thought this morning to be buttered toast dusted with powdered cinnamon but which Cortana suggests is something far more complicated. Perhaps I shall experiment later today, the roast hand of pork to come permitting.

Back at the Palace, onto the Wilderness, where it was a bit early for spring bulbs but there were some daffodils, winter aconites, snowdrops and cyclamen. Our own attempts at aconites and snowdrops failed, my daffodils are not doing very well, her daffodils are doing much better and our cyclamen are doing fine. Pity about the aconites, snapped above, as I rather like them.

Onto the east gardens, where there were very few people and even fewer foreigners. Revenues must be well down.

Sadly, the southern leg of the the east front herbaceous border is mostly being grassed over, the sign explaining that this was necessary to kill off the perennial and invasive weeds. We suspected that this was being a bit economical with the truth, which last probably including shedding a lot of the many gardeners needed to keep the gardens up to scratch - a suspicion confirmed by a trusty we talked to. Will they take them back on when trade picks up? Are decent gardeners - as opposed to spade hands - easy to find?

The mistletoe was doing well. Which I might have mixed feelings about if I was a gardener, if the avenues being infested were my pride and joy. As I understand it, each ball of mistletoe has just one point of attachment, so given a platform, would be easy enough to snip off. Would they grow back and need snipping every other year or so?

One of the attractions was a number of replicas of carriages of old, all of which seemed very large and heavy in relation to the small number of people they carried. Perhaps this reflected the state of the roads and the need to make the carriages more or less entirely of timber. And one of them - made, I think, for the wife to be of Charles II, Catherine of Braganza, had curtains rather than windows, so presumably was both cold and smelly on long journeys.

From there to a bench on the south front, where, coated up, it was quite warm enough to sit and doze in the sun for a bit. Fountain at the river end of the Privy Garden sparkling very well, provoking a wonder about how much power it used. Would not have thought that it was gravity fed, in the way of the much bigger fountains of Versailles of old. All very pleasant.

And so to lunch - and having passed the Mitre Hotel opposite the entrance to the Palace many times, on this occasion we went in, to find ourselves in the 1665 Riverside Brasserie where they did very well for us. I dare say the Mitre has been there in one form or another for centuries, but the Brasserie looked as it it had been the recent subject of a serious overhaul. An overhaul which went to the lengths of having their own special teapots and their own special napkin rings, these last complete with a cod coat of arms. Let's hope that visiting tourists don't pinch more of them than the Brasserie can reasonably stand. There was also a pretty decent wine list, particular if you went for a bottle, which I did not on this occasion. Seemed a bit greedy with BH driving, although in the event I wound up taking two carafes of a Chenin Blanc which amounted to the same thing.

I started with whitebait, BH with a green salad. Whitebait probably microwaved from frozen and served in a mug. Not bad, but more like tinned sardines than they should have been. Maybe that is the price you pay for microwave. No bread, apart from toasted sourdough, probably also served from the freezer. I continue to puzzle about why it is that in this age which is awash with television chefs and cookery books - I read once how many billions of pounds a year they spend on such books in the US - so few restaurants can manage fresh white rolls. A trick which our local Costcutter can manage.

I followed with a shellfish confection involving some kind of pasta and an orange coloured sauce. Very good it was too. While BH was very pleased with her vegetable risotto.

Despite the elaborately presented desert menu, despite being tempted by Tart Tatin but too full, I wound up with some Calvados to BH's Earl Grey tea. They also sold a small selection of good cigars: if it had not been a bit cold by then to be sitting outside, I might had fallen off my ex-smoker's perch! Altogether a very good lunch, both in terms of the lunch itself and the service. I wonder how long it will be before we are back?

Not sure where the Brasserie was in the snap above. We went in the door under the Union Jack, then downstairs. Probably somewhere to the left, possibly in the lower deck of the fancy white extension.

And so back across the bridge to the station. The stage from which we occasionally row visible middle right.

While the once grand public house at the Hook Junction (on the A3), most recently a Wetherspoon's, continues to rot. And presumably will continue to rot until the council agrees with the developer how many flats might reasonably be put on the site.

The only fly in the ointment was my managing to lose the sun hat I picked up between the Brasserie and the car park - a perfectly decent sun hat, almost the same model as I use now. But which did not make it home. Another puzzle.

Home to find that 'Original Sin' - a P. D. James yarn - had turned up. A fat, decently made paperback from Faber. First noticed at reference 3 and on which more in due course. Car park tickets bottom right. My own sun hat top centre left.

The day closed with the police helicopter having one of its long sessions over Court Recreation Ground.

PS: the tributary entering the Thames bottom left in the first of the snaps above, is called the River Ember. Then there is a fork and the Mole enters from above. Then off snap, there is another fork and the Ember enters the Mole from below. Presumably some relic of the layout of these tributaries before the engineers got going on the nearby reservoirs. Any relation of our 'Ember Inn' family of public houses?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/hampton-court.html.

Reference 2: https://www.mitrehamptoncourt.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/saturday-trivia.html.