On Saturday we walked into Brewood so Karen could catch the
bus to Wolverhampton and from there catch trains to Nottingham to pick up our
car from Catherine.
Buddy and I made a visit to the local recycling centre and
then set off on a circular walk. We
started off up the old track that was the original driveway to Chillington
House, home of the Giffard family since the 12th century. The current house replaced the previous and
was built in the mid 1700s. The track,
known as ‘The Avenue’, cuts across the canal.
I have always liked beech trees even though they are of no
use to any British butterflies. When I
was a teenager I was sitting up the top of a beech tree in ancient parkland and
realised that another boy was sitting in a nearby beech tree. Greg and I became best friends for many years
and occasionally meet up when someone can be bothered to organise a reunion.
This is all that remains of the original driveway.
Apparently the house had a small hamlet around it but only
the house remains now. On the driveway is
this lodge with a wooden cross. The
cross is known as Giffard’s cross and marks the spot where John Giffard killed
a panther with a crossbow in the mid 1500s.
He used to have a menagerie on the Chillington estate and the panther
had escaped.
Walking across a field of sheep we could look down on
Brewood.
Karen got back in the middle of the afternoon and we wandered down to a pub as it was our last evening afloat for a while. When we got back Karen made a delicious kashmiri yellow curry - extra hot as we had a few fresh chillies to use up.
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