His and hers

A little more than two weeks ago now, a Sunday outing to Polesden Lacey, according to the archive, out first since the end of April - whereas I had thought we had been much more recently. Arriving at around 10:45, when the car park was busy and there were lots of young families about. Plus a respectable number of family parties - and at least one of them was pulling a four-wheeled picnic trolley, a trolley which brought to mind the rather different trolleys, from Germany, noticed at reference 2. 

The snap above being one of the handsome chestnut trees lining the path from the entrance complex to the house. I thought not so old, on the basis that these are fast growing trees, but the ticket claims that some of them are 400 years old.

On a bank approaching the house a few clumps of what I took to be harebells, which memory tells me were once rare on Devil's Dyke near Newmarket racecourse. Plenty of chalk there too.

Google Images offers a number of suggestions, mostly campanulas (aka bellflowers) of one sort or another, not excluding the harebell of reference 3. Not enough information to go on, so not a botanical tweet after all.

At which point, the ladies went off to do the inside of the house, electing to take their chances with talkative trusties, while I settled for the Long Walk. In the snap above, the upper spot marks the chestnuts, the lower the walk,running pretty much due east-west. While Google has been a bit free with the label 'Dorking Road'. Possibly once the drive used by the lady of the house's carriage on its way back from Dorking Station.

I had thought that the Long Walk was called Admiral's Walk, which would have fitted with its cardinal point orientation  - but reference 4 reveals that I am quite wrong about that.

The views from the walk were very good and the hedges were in reasonable condition, although not to the extent of cutting out quite a lot of blackberries which were starting to take hold in the high northern hedge. I did partake. Note also the fine, strong growths in the snap above: I had thought suckers was the term, but checking I am not so sure.

A view over the southern hedge.

And another. What were the tall trees on the skyline? Not Wellingtonia, in any event.

But there was grove of coastal redwoods, beyond the classical pavilion which marked the end of the walk.

And beyond that, some striking berries. Google Images is fairly strong on the guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), a name I knew well enough, without having any idea to what plant the name belonged. Reference 5 makes this identification look plausible enough.

And another curiosity. The first suggestion from Google Images is the Ngai camphor (Blumea balsamifera) which looked quite promising - except that it only appears to grow in south east Asia, in the Philippines in particular. There are a quite a lot of these Blumea - but they all appear to be Asian rather than European. And quite a lot of the other suggestions appear to be too foreign to work. And BH did no better than Google, beyond observing that it would have been better had I managed a snap with some open flowers. Further investigation needed.

I was reminded that it is not just the Chain Saw Volunteers of Epsom Common who go in for charcoal. Also that the charcoal business was complicated, more than just pumping bad smells and bad stuff into the air from suburban barbecues, and that before I sound off too much, I had better look into reference 6 again.

And then, after the smoke bushes of reference 7, another furry plant. Google Images suggests the smoke tree, Cotinus coggygria. Which comes from southern Europe and us certainly plausible.

Back towards the house through the yew walk, another walk I have not taken for a while, possibly not since the yew festival of a few years back. Would not like to say now whether the snap is facing east or west, but on a forced choice, I would say the shadows say east. The rollator managed just fine on the needle carpet.

Telephonic reception, rather to my surprise, not very good when I emerged from the tunnel, but I managed to make contact with the ladies notwithstanding, after which we partook of a light picnic. Not up to the standards of the party with the trolley aforementioned at all.

A picnic involving an insulated picnic bag, about the size of a shoe box and rather floridly patterned. We used to have one which was even more floridly patterned, even more girlie, to the point where a visitor refused to be seen out with it. We were reminded of him by someone carrying the same sort of picnic bag, but dressed up in the form of a VW camper van. We wondered whether he would have been alright with this one.

Out to find that street food has reached Polesden Lacey. One might think that this would drain revenue out of their own catering operation - which I believe to be in-house, rather than outsourced as it is in most places - but I suppose they feel the need to keep up with the fads and fashions of the outside world.

A visit which had not involved much bird life. Not much more than the odd magpie.

Managed a first on the way home, in the form of some drive-by blackberries on Meadway, from the patch noticed the previous day at reference 10. Picked through the driver's window without dismounting. A slightly dangerous manoeuvre from the point of view of the Highway Code, but we escaped unscathed.

And so home, inter alia, to damson fool. After the stewed damson & apple and the damson pie, already noticed, the product of the damsons noticed at reference 9. A dish we have not had for a very long time, which was a pity as it was rather good. I associated to the instant whip which was a popular dessert when I was small.

PS 1: once upon a time, the gold standard test for search engines was to drop in a document containing an obscure search key and check that the engine could get it back. At this time, Google passed this test with the present blog, but more recently it has not. I suppose the Internet is just too big to expect this one to work any more - but I shall give it another go with the obscure search key included below. Blog search will almost certainly find it, being fairly (but not 100%) reliable on searches of that sort. My guess is that Google search will not.

PS 2: interested to read at reference 11 that the Tory lords are still hanging in there, at least a century past their sell-by date. But I suppose they do have a point in that abolishing the now modest hereditary element will not, of itself, put our unelected upper chamber into working order, into line with the rest of the world. Maybe the truth is that the Prime Minister of the day is always loathe to lose that convenient bit of patronage. Convenient in the sense that as well as rewarding his friends, it provides a back door route for getting (unelected) friends into government. Another problem for which there is no handy solution, given our largely Parliamentary arrangements.

PS 3: as expected, a couple of hours after first post, the search key below does work in Blogger search, but does not work in Bing or Google, and adding the terms 'blogger' or 'blogspot' makes no difference. Not does the cheating 'psmv5'. We shall see if things improve in the days to come - but I rather doubt it - and I shall have to make do with the homely advice at reference 12 if I want to make it to the search indexes.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/cod-lacey.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/stockholm-2.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campanula_rotundifolia.

Reference 4a: https://www.parksandgardens.org/places/polesden-lacey.

Reference 4b: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. With the help of a few clicks, the original material is to be found here.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viburnum_opulus.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-black-error.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/back-to-library.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotinus_coggygria.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/export-grade.html. 

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/up-to-downs.html.

Reference 11: Senior Tory lord hits out at bill to abolish hereditary peers in UK: Lord Tom Strathclyde calls legislation a ‘blunt instrument’ as Labour figures brace for opposition from the upper chamber - Lucy Fisher, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 12: https://too-clever-by-half.blogspot.com/2014/02/grow-your-followers-its-social.html.

Test search key: jfvyjmhcwjw8jw73jsrwc46qxmjhlp.