Visit to Dyrham Park and other places May 2007

We set off on Saturday 5^th May. It didn’t help though when the coach company kept ringing and asking where the driver had to pick us up from. I also had a funny feeling when the driver turned up without a map, without satnav and said that she had only being working in coach driving for three weeks and those were local ones to schools in Handsworth! Anyway, Gavin Brown did the navigating and he did a splendid job.

Our first destination was Tetbury – that lovely town with Prince Charles as its neighbour and plenty of antique shops and coffee shops where some of us had a beautiful English breakfast.

We arrived at Dyrham Park around 12 noon . The weather was really super by this time. The house is beautiful: it’s like a mini-palace and was transformed by William Blathwayte, a one time owner, from a Tudor house into a mansion in a Baroque style between 1691 and 1704. He was very biased towards the Dutch and had lots of Dutch paintings of people and flowers. The furniture, which had been kept, was beautiful; with coronets over the beds. There was a room dedicated to William’s wife, Mary Wynter, who died at an early age having borne four children. There was also a beautiful collection of Dutch Delphtware (blue and white china) and wonderful Flemish and English tapestries. The garden was beautiful with paths along magnificently planted borders and beautiful lakes with lots of ducks featuring a frying pan pond which was originally a drinking pool for livestock. There were beautiful lime walks and statues of Neptune and a lovely old family church.

We left here around 2.30 and then went on to the wine tasting. This was at Mumfords Vineries and this was on a beautiful south east facing slope near a place called Bath Eastern with a stunning backdrop of the large hill behind Bath on which stand the University and American Museum. Across the way you could hear and see cricketers playing a match. The Vineries are owned by Margaret and Tony Cox who looked after us very well. Margaret conducted a tour around the Vineyards, told us about all the hard work involved and told us that there was evidence of the Romans visiting the area where she found some Roman coins.

Tony gave us a good explanation of the building up of the vineyards and the processes involved in the making of the wine and, of course, gave us a wine tasting. These were a mixture of whites, rosé and reds and when he asked us what we thought of them, I told him towards the end of the tasting that we hadn’t had a bad one yet! One or two of us helped to finish off some of the bottles. After this, Margaret showed us her garden and some beautiful blue Irises which she dug up for us along with their rhizomes to take back to Birmingham, one or two of which may get a showing along the road.

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This was a lovely day out, helped by the weather and the lovely company of friends and neighbours from the Hazelwood area.

At the end the coach driver said on parting she must get to know her way around England !