Country Gardens

Tuesday, April 29

A local attraction day. First I headed to Buckler's Hard, which is a small village, once an important ship building area. It is just a little south west of Southampton, near Beaulieu. The village itself is basically two rows of houses, facing each other down the "main street", which leads to the water's edge, where it is still possible to see the ship building areas. The town hasn't changed much in the last 200 years.

While here, the lady in the store suggested I go to Exbury Gardens, just across the river, though not quite so easy to reach. Exbury is the home of the Rothschilds. It is a very large garden, which was sadly just a little past its peak. The azaleas were fading out - one or two weeks earlier would have been spectacular. And the rain of the last week did not help. But the gardens are still spectacular, by any standard. I spent a couple of hours walking around and "ooh-ing and aah-ing" at the scenes.

Following this I headed home, and we went down to the local for dinner - just 2 blocks away! Andrew had to leave, but afterwards I went for a walk down the street to the local church, with its own graveyard. Nothing too exciting - the graves were no more than 200 years old.


Churches
South Cerney


Updated at 17:19 EST on Mon Apr 24, 2006
Copyright (C) 2001 - 2006, Lindsay Harris