Places – Page 6 – BooksPlease

Flodden Field

Published on September 15, 2009 by Margaret4 Comments

Whilst searching for a house D and I were near Flodden Field, so of course we just had to go and have a look at it. Flodden Field is near the village of Branxton in Northumberland, a peaceful setting now, but nearly five hundred years ago this was the site of the most famous battles in the borders between the kings of England and Scotland – the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. It was disastrous for the Scots when their King, James IV was killed.

An information board in the little car park next to the field gives many details of the battle.

The field is on a hill overlooking Branxton and there is a steep climb up to the monument. In 1513 the battleground was an undrained boggy morass in which the Scottish troops were knee-deep in mud with more troops coming down the hill behind them, whereas the English troops were on the higher ground with room to manoeuvre.

At the top of the hill there is a monument and wonderful views of the surrounding countryside.

Below is the village of Branxton.

The wider scene

FF view from monument2

I haven’t read Flodden 1513: Scotland’s Greatest Defeat Campaign by John Sadler and Stephen Walsh but I think it looks interesting. If you look at it on Amazon you can read a few pages of the opening chapter: The Origins of the Campaign.

Just a Glimpse of the Orient

Published on April 10, 2008 by Margaret4 Comments

On Monday D and I went for a walk with a friend alongside the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we enjoyed these views. This is the start of our walk.

The Wendover Arm was first constructed in 1797, but as sections of it leaked it was “de-watered”. From 1989 onwards it has been restored and this is what it looks like today.

Kingfishers can be seen along the canal, but we didn’t see any on Monday. There were lots of other birds though, ducks, moorhens, coots and dabchicks (otherwise known as little grebes), busy diving and collecting nest material.

The ducks were in fine form, taking off a high speed and then landing with legs flailing before splash-down.

Further along the canal we saw a swan sitting on a large nest over on the other side.

The canal opens up into an area known as the Wides, with areas of grass and shrubs with a tiny island on the far side. Trees have invaded what was once open water and without management the canal would disappear in a few years.

Then came a surprise – a pair of mandarin ducks. I’d never seen these before; they looked very different from the other birds on the canal, but just so beautiful. The male has very distinctive chestnut brown and orange fan wings sticking up above his body, whilst the female is a duller brown with white spots. They were swimming together in and out of the trees. When I came home I looked them up in our bird books. Originally from China these ducks like streams and overgrown lakesides in broad leaved woodland and they nest in tree cavities. The canal is the perfect place for them.

Winchester, Jane Austen and Books

Published on April 25, 2007 by Margaret4 Comments

This is God Begot House in Winchester where D and I had coffee. The front is a modern restoration but the rest of the house, now a restaurant and coffee shop, is 16th century – a wonderful ceiling in the restaurant upstairs. There is so much to see in Winchester, spanning several centuries. Opposite God Begot House is the Old Guildhall(now a bank) largely rebuilt in 1713 and further down the High Street is the 15th century Buttercross.
We went in the City Museum on Minster Street, which is free entry and tells the history of Winchester from the Roman times onwards. As we wanted to spend much of our day in the Cathedral we didn’t do the Museum justice and would like to go back to look at it properly some time.
From the Musuem it’s just a short walk to the Cathedral and we were ages in there looking round. One of the guides was just starting a tour which we joined and I’m sure we got so much more information from him than if we had just gone round on our own using the Cathedral brochure. It’s so difficult trying to read and look at the same time.

For more information go to http://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/friends/

Jane Austen is buried in the Cathedral and we walked round to see the house where she lived for the last six weeks of her life and where she died on 18 July 1817. I have read most of her books and Pride and Prejudice has been my favourite since I was about 12 after seeing a BBC production then and reading my mother’s copy of the book.

There is an excellent bookshop just down the road from Jane Austen’s house and I just had to go in and browse.
I was really pleased to find copies of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, Margaret Forster’s Daphne Du Maurier, both of which I’ve been wanting to read for a while now. As I said I’ve read most of Jane Austen and this was one I didn’t know about until I read of it on A Work in Progress and both Margaret Forster and Du Maurier are also favourite authors. D found Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin which we’ll both read. I first read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings years ago when I was at Library School in Manchester when it was the book to read. The films just haven’t lived up to my expectations, apart from Gandalf that is, but I think films are always a let down if I’ve read the book first.