Ten Days with Buddy 🐾

Hey everybody 👋

It is a hot summer everywhere and I hope you are getting through it. We were grateful for the 20 degree F drop in temperature as we wound down our stay in the UK. 🥵

We had one more pet sit close to Goring-on-Thames (about 20 miles from Oxford) with Buddy, a fox red Labrador. His home was on a hill which backed up to Lough Down and Lardon Chase where there were many walking paths. 🥾

We drove to nearby Wallingford to check out the Friday market. 🥗

St Peter's Church was a redundant (no longer used for worship) Anglican church built in the 1700s on the River Thames. ⛪️

Funny note posted on the family fridge. 😈

We got to enjoy their garden tomatoes. 🍅

We checked out The Holies trail with Buddy. 🥾

The lock in Goring-on-Thames was busy on Saturday. ⚓️

Buddy was such a loving dog who enjoyed 'auto retrieving' meaning he kept it for himself. 😆

We caught up with my third cousin, Jane, and her husband Nick again and I remembered to get a few photos. 📸

This was the Parish Church of St Mary in Goring-on-Thames where Lewis Caroll (of Alice in Wonderland) preached in 1864. ⛪️

We spent an afternoon at nearby Basildon Park which was a country house built in the late 1700s. It was never completed and was used by the army in the first and second world wars before being completely restored staring in 1952.

From the Beyonder:
“To say it was derelict is hardly good enough,” Lady Iliffe wrote later. “No window was left intact, and most were repaired with cardboard or plywood.” Walls were covered with signatures and grafitti from various wartime occupants and there was no sign of modernisation other than an army washroom catering for six people at a time. Nonetheless, despite the cold and damp, the empty rooms and broken windows, she had fallen in love with the place and would spend the next 25 years carefully restoring it to its former glory. 📸

The Staircase Hall was an impressive entertaining space. 🎹

The Shell Room had an exxxxxxxxtensive collection! 🐚

I appreciated Lady Iliff's many scarves and a primer on how to fashion them. 🧣

On another day trip, we checked out the remains of Donnington Castle 🏰

We also stopped by a sculpture show on the grounds of the 400 year old Shaw House. 👀

We took a tour of Sandham Memorial Chapel in Newbury. Photography was not permitted but most of the murals can be seen here.

Built to honour the 'forgotten dead' of the First World War, who were not remembered on any official memorials, the series was inspired by Stanley Spencer’s own experiences as a medical orderly at the Beaufort Hospital in Bristol and both orderly and soldier on the Salonika front. It is peppered with personal and unexpected details and uniquely shows the everyday activities rather than the horrors of war. Inspired by Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua and made possible through the generous patronage of Louis and Mary Behrend, Spencer referred to Sandham Memorial Chapel as his "Holy Box". The 19 oil paintings covering three walls of the chapel took six years to complete and are considered by many to be the artist’s finest achievement.