Still too much to keep track of

I closed the last post saying I was tired and might post more in the morning, but apparently I was too tired to hit the "Publish" button. Oh well.

Chipping Campden was just as chipping as you might imagine. Very cute, nice shops, almost all on one main street. I went for a walk in the morning and got myself as lost as one can in a tiny town. Almost every house in the place really old. The roof lines are all uneven and varying. It's very cool to look at.

We had a nice breakfast in a strangely bare dining room. The hotel is very nice but a little disjointed. It is in the midst of a renovation, I guess. The hallway to our room smelled strongly of paint though the room itself didn't. The reception area is completely closed; you check in next to the bar. It really wasn't any sort of inconvenience, it was just odd.

I should note that the room was big and beautiful, but the bathroom was off a kind of ante room, and the door from the ante room to the bedroom was about 5 feet high. It's exacerbated by having to step up to the doorway. I don't care how many "Mind your head" signs you have, that's simply too low. Maybe it's not the same for tall people who are used to ducking, but I'm not tall and never have to duck. Here I did, and I was not 100% successful in remembering. I never really hit my head hard, but I bumped it at least a half a dozen times. The bathroom also had a design quirk. Can you spot it?

View from eye level

After breakfast, we had a visit to some pretty cottages on the outskirts of town for Ronnie to photograph.

Then we went to Hidcote, one of England's great country gardens. It was truly beautiful. It was very hot out today, but there was enough shade to make it reasonable. The English really like to garden, I think. And I'm guessing that the ones who don't feel guilty about it.

This kind of country garden is strange to those of us who know little about gardening. They're designed to look like a mess, but they're in fact totally organized, except for the plants, of course, plants are famously muddled about things. That's the fun of it, I guess, trying to make these living things do what you tell them to do. Fortunately, plants are often quite flexible about the way you arrange them, and if they don't like what you've done, most of them will die in short order, requiring you to try something else.

Personally, I find these places very beautiful, and I'm not too worried about how many of the varieties I know. I like seeing things I've never seen before and I like interesting blends of color and texture. It all feels very rich and substantial and light and airy at once if it's done well. I also have to appreciate a place that's so well ordered that they mark everything.

I've been in wilderness before and they usually don't have signs. I didn't see The Revenant, but I'm guessing that wilderness didn't have a sign designating it.

My favorite overheard conversation that I've overheard happened in the tea room at the first place we visited. There was a young woman and a middle-aged woman working, and they were talking to each other constantly about how busy they were. Considering that there were maybe 50 people in the entire garden and a dozen or so in the tea room, I wonder if they know what that word means.

I guess they were talking about how many hours they were working and the young woman said that the owner had brought her in to do some ironing. She said she only ended up doing a little because it got busy in the tea room so they sent her down there. The older woman said, "It's too hot to iron anyway. I'm just glad my husband's a bricklayer so I never have to worry about that kind of thing." 

You don't hear appreciation for the smaller pleasures in life often enough. Like this:

Ours is an age that makes the perfect the enemy of the good. It's bad for you. If you appreciate what you can see you won't be upset at what you can't see. As long as I'm being philosophical, I should put in another plug for my standard advice to "Look up!" I've seen so many beautiful things on this trip just by going up above eye level.

We had another unintentionally eventful drive today. We were almost to Buxton, when the traffic just stopped. We saw people going by in the other direction and many of them were making a "turn around" motion as they went by. So we did, and after a little kerfuffle with the navigation system, we took an alternate route, which was very heavily trafficked, since the main road was apparently impassible, but we made it nonetheless. 

People are very friendly up this way, and they are not overly find of London as a whole. It's just a whole nother world, I guess. Buxton is one of those old industrial towns that have seen better days and have also seen worse. It's a mix of busy and deserted, upscale and abandoned. There's a park across the street from my hotel that has lawn bowling and cricket fields. I believe I saw some Little League Cricket. 

I'm looking forward to my morning walk to get a better handle on the place, though we're leaving in the morning anyway. I got lost on my walk this afternoon, so I'll try to be more careful tomorrow. By all accounts, they have a big and lovely town park. I'll let you know once I've been in it.