After the garden tours had finished, the next morning I drove through to Somerset, to spend the weekend with my brother and his family. It was a bit of a trek, but I elected to avoid the motorways and drove parallel to the south coast, along the A272, which cuts straight through Sussex and Hampshire, where I stopped to take a photograph of my home county, looking beautiful, as always.
The traffic came to a grinding halt on the approach to Stonehenge.
Four and a half hours later I arrived at my destination, in the depths of the Somerset countryside. It was a beautiful afternoon, so my brother and I took the two dogs for a walk, skirting around the edge of the village, and through the cider apple orchards, heavy with fruit.
We stopped and leant on a gate, looking north, to the famous Glastonbury Festival site. It is hard to imagine that most of the area you see in the photo below, plus a further stretch behind the trees on the left, becomes host to a small tented town, with 19 stages, which appears and then disappears, within the space of three weeks.
Another garden surprise was in store for me. A very short distance from my brother's new home, there is a highly sophisticated and exclusive art gallery. Actually it's a bit more than an art gallery, best explained by their website http://www.hauserwirthsomerset.com Hauser and Wirth have galleries in New York, Zurich and London. How on earth they landed in rural Somerset escapes me, but the bit that interested me most was this :
Another Piet Oudolph garden, quite newly planted and rather lovely.
So, here endeth the grand tour - and it was very grand indeed!
Got a bit misty eyed looking at the photo of Hampshire and was mentally trekking along the A272...you would have passed Hinton Ampner on the way through and then just off, further up, the lane that went up to the Shooting Lodge, where we had our wedding reception.
ReplyDeleteStonehenge, mystical and magical, despite the crowds...what an amazing structure.
Somerset is the most gorgeous county...lucky brother to live there. I hadn't realised he'd moved from the Cotswolds.
Great photos capturing a 'getaway' jolly of landscapefest....
xx
I don't miss the south of England - too much traffic, but Hampshire is home, and always will be!
DeleteWe found the traffic UK wide pretty tiresome!
ReplyDeleteThe amount round you is about equal to the Peninsula! Bliss!
Love these flowers, I've spotted the pink one growing wild on the cut verges but don't know its name. x
ReplyDelete