{"id":2373,"date":"2013-08-12T17:21:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T16:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2026-05-24T08:08:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T07:08:50","slug":"family-gatherings-and-friends-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/08\/12\/family-gatherings-and-friends-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Gatherings And Friends Galore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our route north\u00a0 to Hertford took us via Seaford, Polegate, Horsham, Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable; each stop off being a visit to family or friends.\u00a0 When we arrived in Hertford, late on Sunday 28 July, we did a quick calculation; in the four days since arriving in England we had managed to catch up with 45 family and friends.\u00a0 It was lovely to see everyone and also to be able to chatter away in English; no struggling to find the words for \u201cwhere do I buy a ticket\u201d, or\u00a0 \u201cis there a petrol station nearby\u201d in a foreign language.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you so much to Sylvia and Taffy for holding another garden gathering on the Sunday afternoon for 32 Blakes.\u00a0 Yet again, it was a lovely way to spend so much time with the family.<\/p>\n

Andy and Carole provided their spare room for our annual English residence yet again and Andy got us up and running after major computer problems prevented us from accessing any of our emails, photos, or documents.\u00a0 Socialising instead of food shopping became our major priority.\u00a0 Rodney is thoroughly enjoying the endless cricket on the TV and radio, but in between play we’ve managed to catch up on lots of paperwork and necessary ‘stuff’.\u00a0 The camera has had a bit of a rest, though I did wish we’d had it to hand in Hertford one Friday, when a perfectly coiffured, white haired, old lady, wearing cardigan, pearls and sensible shoes, handbag in the crook of her arm in Queen Elizabeth style, was filling up her BMW.\u00a0 She didn’t look big enough, or strong enough to hold the pump nozzle, but gosh, she did it in style.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Walking
Walking the fields of Hertfordshire under a big sky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Later that morning we went for a muddy walk; ten of us set out from the village of Standon to follow the old, extinct, Buntingford railway line.\u00a0 We walked past countless fields of almost ripe barley and wheat and by the time we reached The Old Bull Pub at Much Hadham our boots were caked in very sticky mud.\u00a0 So we all had a bit of childish fun engaging in a lot of puddle-paddling and shuffling about on grassy verges, to try and clean our boots a bit, before entering the pub for lunch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ripening
Ripening wheat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We walked back via a slightly different route and it turned out to be quite\u00a0a long walk, longer than expected, and we got back to Hertford with only just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to dinner at the Plume of Feathers in Tewin with Stuart, Jez and Whaley.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mr
Mr Whale and Laura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while eating a squeaky haloumi cheese salad, a filling fell out of my month and when we got back to Hertford, Carole managed to find me a dentist that was open on Saturday morning in Hitchin. So the alarm was set for ‘early’ and at 9am I was on the phone begging for an emergency appointment.\u00a0 They squeezed me in at lunchtime and then, while the dentist was drilling to refill the hole, more of the tooth fell away.\u00a0 The appointment turned into a forty-five minute session with two injections and a very aching jaw.\u00a0 Fortunately, by the time we met my niece and nephew for dinner, the numbness had worn off and we ate a lovely meal at a restaurant in Harpenden, ‘Graffiti’, owned and run by Rodney’s second cousin Charlotte and her husband Neil.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Daniel,
Daniel, Rebecca, Laura and Rodney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunday involved more socialising with my brother Neil and his wife, Debs at lunchtime\u00a0followed by\u00a0the cricket crowd at Watton-At-Stone in the evening.\u00a0 On Monday morning I really could have enjoyed a lie-in , but we had to pack our bags and catch a train up to London for four nights at Fred & Christine’s apartment in Westminster.\u00a0 Sadly Christine was away, but Fred came out with us in the evenings when we caught up with Kevin Wall, Robin Sellers and the Surridges.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Our
Our Westminster holiday home…..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our days were spent roaming more of London on Boris’s bikes and one day spent hopping on and off the underground (not as much fun).\u00a0 We spent a few hours in the London Transport Museum and I factored in three hours shopping in Oxford Street one morning, while Rodney visited the Churchill War Rooms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
A very old bus not going down a straight road<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We both visited the John Soane’s house, library and museum at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.\u00a0\u00a0 John Soane was a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy who demolished and then rebuilt numbers 12, 13 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.\u00a0 He lived at no.13 and\u00a0filled the other two buildings with art and architecture.\u00a0 There is a basement full of 6,000 books and some Canaletto paintings of Venice which brought back lovely memories of our time there in June.\u00a0 There’s a crypt stuffed full of bits of buildings from Italy and Greece and in one room, hanging on some folding walls is\u00a0 ‘A Rake’s Progress’ by Hogarth, upon which a ballet was created in 1935 and Stravinsky wrote an opera in 1953.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The large and the small in Lincoln’s Inn Fields<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We then crossed to the opposite side of the park to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.\u00a0 This is a bizarre museum containing 15,000 items collected by the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter.\u00a0 The beautiful\u00a0three-storey room is filled with glass cabinets bursting with curiosities such as Winston Churchill’s dentures, a stuffed kangaroo, deformed skulls, a rooster with a human tooth growing out of its head, bits of human skin, the 231cm skeleton of an Irish man and trays and trays of surgical instruments. It’s a\u00a0freaky place and definitely not for the squeamish, but it has us still talking about it.<\/p>\n

We also spent a lovely morning strolling across Chelsea Bridge and then all around Battersea Park, an area that neither of us had been to before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Battersea
Battersea Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Back in Hertford for the weekend we continued catching up with friends and spending more time watching cricket with the Johnsons, in between getting Eileen ready for her trip to Norfolk and Suffolk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Am
Am I really still in Battersea……?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our route north\u00a0 to Hertford took us via Seaford, Polegate, Horsham, Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable; each stop off being a visit to family or friends.\u00a0 When we arrived in Hertford, late on Sunday 28 July, we did a quick calculation; in the four days since arriving in England we had managed to catch up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-the-road-in-great-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8370,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/8370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}