Not quite a country walk!

One nice thing about England are the many ‘public footpath’ signs, leading through farmlands, moors, alongside rivers and through woodlands. Not only that, one can download a map of a specific walk – which is what we did yesterday.  Box Moor is an area around Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, and run by the Box Moor Trust. They offer maps of four walks of varying difficulty and averaging between one and six kilometres. Not being avid walkers and having never followed a walking map before, we went for the fairly easy “Blue Walk – The Valley Floor" – This is an easy walk through traditionally grazed meadows says the description, 4km (2.5miles) approximately 2 hours.

We’d never been to Hemel Hempstead so set the Tom-Tom to St John’s Church and were out of London in 45 minutes.  The temperature was about 8C, it was dry and we looked forward to our walk with the map safely ensconced in a plastic sleeve (in case it did rain!).

Through the first few ‘kissing gates’ and ‘meadows’ and the A41 busy motorway competed noisily with the London Midland and the Southern railway.  It didn’t take long for us to realise that this was a circular walk around the A41 and it wasn’t what we would call quiet ‘countryside’! But it was a walk in an area we’d never been to before, and there was the promise of walking along the towpath of a canal!

There were about nine ‘kissing gates’ through the ‘meadows’, which according to Wikipedia, are gates which “…merely kiss (touch) the enclosure either side, rather than needing to be securely latched.” Not what you thought eh?!  Basically for the non-UK readers, it’s a gate designed to allow pedestrians through, not sheep or livestock, and usually only one person at a time, allowing the gate to close before the next one can enter. However, there is an urban legend that when the gate has closed on the first person and the second is waiting to go through, a ‘toll’ kiss is to be paid over the gate! “Indeed in some circles it is considered good form for everyone passing through a kissing gate to exchange kisses in this way (provided all parties are sufficiently friendly with each other.)” (Wikipedia again).  Oops! We missed that rule!

The ‘meadows’ – as they are described on the map – are simply fields of grass just off the road, Ok, so there were some sheep in one of the meadows we didn’t get to, but bounded by the A41 and railway line, and the main road through the town, I just couldn’t call them ‘meadows’!!

Robert Snooks Grave

The map was very helpful, very accurate and described everything as it really was, including “Snooks Grave” in the middle of one of the meadows! Robert Snooks – his real name was James Blackman Snooks, and the Robert probably came from ‘Robber Snooks’ – was the last man to be executed in England for highway robbery on 11^th March 1802. One of the versions of the story say that he stole £80 from the post boy, but left a broken saddle at the scene of the crime helping to identify him! The white triangular stone and a small block of stone mark the spot where he was hanged and buried. He was 42 years old.

About halfway on the walk there’s a pub – there’s always a pub nearby! The Three Horseshoes pub is in the village of Winkwell and alongside the Grand Union Canal. It dates back in parts to 1535 when the land was part of a ‘monastic establishment’. After the dissolution of the monastery by Henry VIII in 1539, the land and buildings ended up on “Crown Land”! Passing to Edward VI, Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, it’s had some regal owners, but Robert Dudley “rather ungratefully” (according to the pubs history on its website) sold the land to get him the cash to buy more lavish gifts for his queen, in the hopes of winning her heart – and hand! And eventually it all came down to the Boxmoor Trust.

Having spent a half hour or more at lunch – with a good 10 minutes of that spent brushing the mud off our boots on the custom made shoe-brusher outside (two yard-brush heads facing inwards and mounted on an adjustable iron frame) – we enjoyed the walk back alongside the canal, admiring the boats (one with a pirate flag, one called ‘My Overdraught’) and the locks.  No fish were sighted although there were supposed to be brown trout in either the canal or the stream alongside or the reservoir lake on the other side of the hedge! But there were the usual ducks of various colours and brands!

The houses on the banks of the canal reminded us of the Howick houses on the banks of the Umgeni – bungalows (single storeys, unusual for England!) with sloping gardens down to the river’s edge, and steps on which to sit with toes in the water or a crude stick, line and worm – on a summer’s day of course!

A very pleasant - if somewhat noisy with traffic and trains although no planes! - walk on a good English winter's day! Especially considering the next day was rainy and cold!

(Pics downloaded from internet - I didn't take any on this trip!)

"Sugar Baby Love" (The Rubettes 1974)

So we were driving the 100miles back from a day out, windscreen wipers on, radio on, and I began to think ….. who was the first guy who called his girlfriend “Baby”?  And what was her reaction?!!

Baby? Honey? Sugar? Doll?  Girlfriend pet-names, used in pop songs over many decades. I haven’t done huge research but Ted Lewis had a hit (7 weeks at number 1) with When my Baby Smiles at Me in … 1920!! (not the Peter Allen 1979 Dante's Inferno version!)

What exactly does he mean when he calls her his Baby?! I don’t think I want to even explore the possibilities!  Honey? – I suppose she’s sweet, much like Sugar. Doll? – a plaything? Little boys have never been associated kindly with dolls! They’ve been known to swing them around by their hair, or break off their heads, or – as in a current UK TV ad (for gravy nogal!) – they throw them up on the roof to be mean to their little sister!  Mmmm! Sorry Cliff Richard! Maybe that Cryin’, Talkin’, Sleepin’, Walkin’ Livin’ Doll was a little scared, hence the cryin’, and trying to run not just walkin’!! Take a look at her hair, it’s real – now how was that determined?!!

OK, enough of the doll!  I know a young lady who was not too impressed when her boy-cousin – who she hadn’t seen for a good many years – called her Cookie!  Now would that be a Chocolate Chip Cookie? Or a Fortune Cookie?! Or just the Basic Cookie? The same young lady used to be called Pumpkin by a close relative!  A big orange round thing?! With holes poked in at Halloween?! 

Angel? She has to be the perfect one – that’s OK! Chick? That’s so 80’s? A fluffy yellow, high squeaking, demanding ….?!!

I suppose as long as he loves you, it doesn't matter ---- does it?!! 

Hobnobbing in Chelsea!

So Tuesday we did the family history tour! A little while ago I discovered that Dave’s maternal ancestors had lived and worked in Chelsea, and since we’re in London, thought it would be fun to find their house, visit the church they were christened, married and buried in, and find their work place!

Just a quick intro as to who we were tracing:  Dave’s Mum, Stella G. Crossley, was the daughter of Richard E Crossley and Violet Maud Holesgrove, (his grandparents). Violet Maud Holesgrove was the daughter of William Charles Cobbett Holesgrove and Annie Jane Ferguson (she’s the Irish link!) Wiliam CC was born in 1862 in Grahamstown, and was the son of William Cobbett Holesgrove who was born in 1828 in Chelsea. William C emigrated to South Africa sometime before 1851 (his Grandfather’s Will mentions him in South Africa). His father died in 1853 in Chelsea, and his mother Sarah also emigrated to South Africa with her other children (all over 21 years old and two of them deaf and dumb), to join her son William Cobbett who was a clerk in Grahamstown.  That’s the SA link, but I wanted to see where the Holesgrove family were in Chelsea.

We started with a bus ride to South Kensington to find St Luke’s Church in Chelsea where Great Great grandfather William Cobbett Holesgrove was christened, as were others of the Holesgrove family. Some were married there and GGG & GGGG grandfather William Holesgrove were buried there. (Don’t get hung up on all the Williams!) Unfortunately all the headstones have been moved to the side of the property and the burial ground is now a playground!! The headstones we could see were very badly eroded and there were no Holesgrove names on the ones we could read.

Before we tackled the higgledy-piggeldy Kensington streets to find the ancestral home, we tried to find somewhere for a light lunch. Walking through one narrow street we were ‘accosted’ by waitrons from two different eating places, offering us their menu and trying to get us to come inside! I suppose they have to compete for the London lunch-time business crowd! We did go inside and were served by happy and efficient people (foreigners!) I love people-watching, so it was  interesting to see the young men in their pin-stripe suits sitting in the crowded eating space for just half an hour’s lunch break, next to the painter in his white overalls eating a huge dish of some kind of stew!  A Julia Roberts look-alike made herself comfortable next to us and she also managed to finish a huge plate of food while reading a classic.

            As we took our time over our omelette, chips and cappuccino, London rushed in and out of that little eating place. None were there for longer than 10 minutes, most wolfing down a huge plate of food, before rushing off for the afternoon shift at the office. Some of them, like the Julia Roberts look-alike, probably only get home well after 9pm and that hoovered down lunch was their main meal for the day.

            No. 8 and No. 16 Charles Street - all the houses in this area are the three or four storey terraced houses – not quite as grand as the ones you see in Oliver! but still quite pricey I’m sure! Today they are probably three or four flats (or more?!), but I wonder what it was like in the 1850’s. Did our family use this entire building as their home?

  

         Just another 10 minutes walk away is the prestigious Burlington Arcade, where GGGG Grandfather William had a Boot & Shoe Shop (http://www.burlington-arcade.co.uk/). No. 66, which used to be his Shoe Shop is Cameo Corner today, selling a beautiful and rare collection of antique Victorian and Edwardian cameos. Burlington Arcade is most definitely an upmarket shopping arcade – most of the shops are jewellery outlets with the most exquisite pieces in the windows, and a very small interior space. (Probably more internet sales than passing trade). There were still two or three Shoe shops and one with a shoe-shiner in training! 

        Having gawked at sparkling diamonds, brilliant emeralds, sapphires and rubies, it was time to head home before the working Londoners i.e. avoid the crowded tube! We walked down Old Bond Street, past Prada, Gucci and Yves St Laurent, but decided we didn’t have the time to pop in this time! Even The Ritz just didn’t look inviting!!

        I’m just a simple country gal and was glad to leave the city-rush junkies in the city, and climb on the bus to home in the London ‘suburbs’! The London streets from the very front seat upstairs on a double-decker bus look very different. You see the architecture, the intricate carvings around the gabled roofs, the carved stone blocks stating that the building was built in 1831, or a business was established in 1897. Old painted advertising signs still shout out their long-gone wares, and pubs advertise anti-Valentine parties and live music!

The less I go into London city, the better! But this was an interesting visit to where our ancestors lived and worked!

(Apologies for the picture quality of some of the pics!)