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The weekend
Aug. 24th, 2010 09:21 pmSo, what we did over the weekend. Every year we take John Ellison church crawling as he has a passion for medieval architecture. We have done day trips from Oxfordshire but over the years we have taken him to everything close to here. Since 2007, we have had to go further afield and have had to stay one, possibly two, nights in B&Bs or hotels just to make the most of the longer journeys.
John starts by working out what area he would like to visit and then comes up with a list of churches that have important features that he wants to see. In the past we have had to point out to him that we aren't going for a week and that he had better come up with a list of very important churches and list of "quite good if we have the time". These days he's getting better at doing that himself an he chose Herefordshire this year. We had been there last year but he wanted to get to some of the ones that were a little further North.
John came here on Friday and we fed and watered [1] him and gave him a bed for the night. We had agreed to start knocking on his bedroom door around 07:15 so that we could make a reasonable start. John isn't a mornng person and he takes quite a bit of getting going. Having a full English provided helps no end. In the end we managed to leave around about 09:00.
The churches visited on Saturday were Bromyard, Leominster Priory, Kingsland, Shobdon, Pembridge, Dilwyn and Weobley. We were lucky as we got to Dilwyn about 10 minutes before it was locked up and the guardian allowed us extra time whilst John went around looking at things. As we were going to go through Weobley to get to our hotel I stopped at the church and luckily it was still open so we managed to get that one too.
We spent the night at the Baskerville Hall Hotel which we can recommend. Read here to find out about the Arthur Conan Doyle connection. This is a splendid hotel with lots of rambling corridors, so much so that John got lost trying to find the dining room and I had to stop him from going through an alarmed fire door in his vague attempts to get downstairs. The food was quite good. My chicken wrapped in bacon served in a creamy mushroom sauce was excellent. Annie's steak was woefully undercooked [2].
Next morning, after another full English, we set about the second lot of churches and a castle. These days John schedules in something that isn't a church for me. He likes castles as well so he was happy to give me the option of Raglan Castle or White Castle. I chose White.
So for the Sunday we went to Llanthony Priory, St. David's Church at Llanthony [3], Cwmyoy church, Partrishow church [4], White Castle and finally Tintern Abbey. John had put Abergavenny Priory on his list but changed that to Partrishow, straight after visiting Cwmyoy, as he would never be able to get there by himself.
( Cut for pictures )
[1] Wined is a better word.
[2] She would say cooked to perfection but I reckon it was only good enough for my brother-in-law's dogs.
[3] As this was right outside the entrance to Llanthony Priory it seemed silly not to visit it.
[4] The spelling of this name is interesting and varied - Patrishow and Patricio are variants.
John starts by working out what area he would like to visit and then comes up with a list of churches that have important features that he wants to see. In the past we have had to point out to him that we aren't going for a week and that he had better come up with a list of very important churches and list of "quite good if we have the time". These days he's getting better at doing that himself an he chose Herefordshire this year. We had been there last year but he wanted to get to some of the ones that were a little further North.
John came here on Friday and we fed and watered [1] him and gave him a bed for the night. We had agreed to start knocking on his bedroom door around 07:15 so that we could make a reasonable start. John isn't a mornng person and he takes quite a bit of getting going. Having a full English provided helps no end. In the end we managed to leave around about 09:00.
The churches visited on Saturday were Bromyard, Leominster Priory, Kingsland, Shobdon, Pembridge, Dilwyn and Weobley. We were lucky as we got to Dilwyn about 10 minutes before it was locked up and the guardian allowed us extra time whilst John went around looking at things. As we were going to go through Weobley to get to our hotel I stopped at the church and luckily it was still open so we managed to get that one too.
We spent the night at the Baskerville Hall Hotel which we can recommend. Read here to find out about the Arthur Conan Doyle connection. This is a splendid hotel with lots of rambling corridors, so much so that John got lost trying to find the dining room and I had to stop him from going through an alarmed fire door in his vague attempts to get downstairs. The food was quite good. My chicken wrapped in bacon served in a creamy mushroom sauce was excellent. Annie's steak was woefully undercooked [2].
Next morning, after another full English, we set about the second lot of churches and a castle. These days John schedules in something that isn't a church for me. He likes castles as well so he was happy to give me the option of Raglan Castle or White Castle. I chose White.
So for the Sunday we went to Llanthony Priory, St. David's Church at Llanthony [3], Cwmyoy church, Partrishow church [4], White Castle and finally Tintern Abbey. John had put Abergavenny Priory on his list but changed that to Partrishow, straight after visiting Cwmyoy, as he would never be able to get there by himself.
( Cut for pictures )
[1] Wined is a better word.
[2] She would say cooked to perfection but I reckon it was only good enough for my brother-in-law's dogs.
[3] As this was right outside the entrance to Llanthony Priory it seemed silly not to visit it.
[4] The spelling of this name is interesting and varied - Patrishow and Patricio are variants.
