Day 15 - Chipping Campden: Hidcote Gardens

We started the day with one plan and ended up doing something completely different. That’s the way it goes in Odysseyland.

I started the day with a massage. Thank you Jane at Campden Beauty.

We had an excellent breakfast at Victors. Remember, Carole at the B&B is on bed rest due to the torn retina.

Next, and it was afternoon, we thought we’d go to the local vineyard and do a tasting. I had emailed and tweeted them, but didn’t hear back. That should’ve been a clue. We show up at the vineyard and the woman said she didn’t have another booking today and didn’t have time to accommodate us as she was a one woman show. Mybad as I thought we could just drop in, but that wasn’t happening.

So, plan B. Carol had mentioned something about some gardens being walking distance away. Les drove us to Hidcote Gardens which was “walking distance” if you had a few hours to kill on the way and a few hours on the way back. I guess everything is “in walking distance” if you have the time.

Here’s a link to Hidcote’s story. It belongs to the National Trust but it used to be a residence with substantial gardens.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hidcote/features/history-of-hidcote

Now if you know me, you know I’m not really the garden type. But these were amazing in their variety and extensiveness. From lush grass, to cool ivy with garden archways, to tree canopies, to really tall trees, to lily pads, to an inexhaustible number of plants and flowers.

There were no plaques to tell you what each plant was like a botanical garden because they wanted to keep the property like a person’s actual garden. However, if you really wanted to know what a plant was, you simply took a picture and emailed it, with your location, to the guide and you would get a response.

When we arrived at Hidcote we ran into a meeting of the Williams Morgan Midland Car Club. These cars are sooo cool. If you look close, you can see that I got to sit in one of the darker (red) cars.

When we were roaming the gardens, we found a man sitting with Croquet equipment. We were intrigued enough to ask him what was up and he invited us to play. The grass definitely needed mowing, but that didn’t stop Martha from thumping me. You can see the blue ball is way beyond where it is supposed to be, lol.

Lastly, an addition to yesterday’s trip to SUA. The 2nd thing on the map is Anne Hathaway’s house. We’d picked up the map a few days prior to our visit and we kept asking each other why anyone would care about Anne Hathaways house? I mean, she’s a good actress, but seriously!

Uh right, this Anne Hathaway married William Shakespeare. Yep, I guess her house means something in a historical context. 🤣😂😇