Oxfordshire: A Weekend in the English Countryside, Fall 1998

Oxfordshire, Sheep Grazing

(Excerpt from the London Diaries, September 1998)

 A Taste of Fall
    The weather has changed to more fall-like temperatures and there is a nip in the air.  Every day is a mixture of overcast, sun, clouds, rain, and wind as weather systems sweep down from the north.  One difference between England and California is the skies—here they constantly change.  It is no wonder that artists like Turner and Constable were so fascinated by them.  In our outings we were lucky to be outside during the nice times and inside when it turned nasty.  One thing about changeable weather, it never lasts long.

A Weekend in Oxfordshire

Thames River, near Reading

On Friday evening we took the train to Reading, which is about a half hour west of London, to spend the weekend with friends. Their home, an 18th century stone warehouse converted into a large house, has a beautiful garden with a fountain in back and overlooks the Thames in the front.  At that point the river is perhaps thirty yards across and meanders under willows on one side and along a sheep pasture on the other.  We watched swans and ducks, fishermen, and passing canal boats, which you can rent by the week for a leisurely trip along the river.

Giant White Horses

Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire

Our morning excursion on Saturday was to see the Uffington White Horse.  This is a giant drawing of a horse (about 40 feet long) carved into the top of a hillside.  According to the sign, it is 3000 years old and was probably carved at the same time Neolithic people built a fort on the top of a nearby hill.  (All you can see of the fort now are the ditches around it, but the view of the countryside from there is terrific.) The chalk downlands are a geologic feature of southern England and are characterized by rolling hills covered with short grass and tiny, almost alpine-like, flowers.  The downlands are used mostly for grazing and apparently people raise racehorses in this region. Just under the soil, is the soft, chalk stone.  The grass and dirt were removed to make the drawing of the horse.  
    The outline of the horse is white, but it is surrounded by green grass, which makes it easy to see from a long way away.  The one thing that puzzled us, though, is that you can’t see the whole horse at once except from the air.  We decided that the neolithic creators of the horse must have known that airplanes would be invented sometime in the future.  I had never heard of these giant chalk figures before, but apparently there are quite a few of them in this part of England. I picked up a piece of the chalk rock and tried writing with it on another stone and it worked almost as well as the blackboard variety.

Churchill’s Home

Blenheim Palace, Birthplace of Winston Churchill

In the afternoon, we visited Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the home of the Duke of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill.  Blenheim is a grand country house and surrounded by 2000 acres of beautiful gardens and lakes, most of which were designed by a renowned 18th landscape architect named Capability Brown.  This was back in the days when, if there wasn’t a lake where you needed one, you simply dug out the landscape and filled it with water to create one.  Or, if you wanted your hedge to look like a bird, you simply sculpted it that way.

Topiary Bird, Blenheim Palace

While we were at Blenheim, the ever changeable weather changed, and it started to rain, so we headed home for a nice cup of tea.
Note: We returned to Oxfordshire a month later to visit the town and university of Oxford, which will be covered in another post.

Hay drying in a field, Oxfordshire