Wednesday 28^th May                   LEIGHTON  BUZZARD  -  AUDLEY END HOUSE  -  HALSTEAD

 Robyn writes: Today we go to Halstead, ancestral home of the Bowles family! (My grandfather, Pa, was Frank Charles Bowles. His grandfather Richard Bowles and back to my 5 times great grandfathers all lived in Halstead.)

However, the day started in Glen’s flat in Leighton Buzzard, as we got ourselves organised to pack our overnight bags, bid Glen farewell as he set out for work, and finally get underway ourselves. We’ve been frustrated by trying to navigate and plan routes only on the phone, or small pages in the National Trust / English Heritage books, so popped into Tesco’s on our way out of town. No maps there, but the nice lady in the service station told us that she had seen the map books in the garden centre near Dunstable. We checked, and it was only about 20 minutes away and in the right direction, so off we set!

Poplar’s Garden Centre is HUGE – most of it is undercover (thank you, British weather) and we quickly found the map books, the most recent version of the one we had in 2014, for only 6 pounds. That is amazingly cheap, compared to what we paid for the old one! They also had a lovely café, so we had morning tea there, and set off again.

                                                   Poplar's Garden Centre

We decided to use our English Heritage membership and call in to Audley End House, which is in Essex and on our way. It was getting quite overcast by the time we got there, but much warmer today at around 18 degrees. We walked down the hill to the entrance, and of course didn’t have to pay. Tickets are 24 pounds each so that’s about $100AUD saved straight up!

Audley House was built by the Earls of Essex and dates back to 1603, on the site of an old priory destroyed in the reformation (of course). It was added onto over the centuries and was huge at its most prominent – more than twice the size of what remains now. The furnishings are glorious, and it is stuffed with paintings galore by famous artists, and of the great and good from the 1500s on. A truly remarkable house. We explored the various floors and the servants’ quarters, then went down into the garden. Of course, it began to rain. I was quite hungry by this time so we headed into the café, in the old servants’ dining rooms, and had carrot and coriander soup of the day. (Quite spicy.) Then we headed back up the hill in the rain to the car – my travel umbrella is certainly getting a workout!

                                                  Lex in the haha (ditch to keep out animals)

                                                        The Great Hall was amazing

                                                        Front of the house

                                              The walls were lined with works by famous artists

                                                           That's a Rembrandt over the door!

It was about an hour from there into Halstead – the usual navigating winding, wet, narrow roads with cars and trucks hurtling towards you where there’s no room to pass. Travel is certainly exciting in the UK! I have developed a rule of thumb for roads like this to calculate how long it will take: multiply the miles by 2, then add a bit. So, to travel 5 miles will generally take you about 12 or 13 minutes……. We went through some breathtakingly pretty little villages that no-one’s ever heard of, but finally got to Halstead about 2.40. It then took us at least 20 minutes to find the museum, scratching our heads over the GPS insisting that we were there (we clearly weren’t), and navigating tiny lanes clogged with cars. Anyway we finally found it, parked, and went in.

Two retired blokes, John and Jim, were on duty, and were very pleased to see me arrive (I livened up an otherwise boring Wednesday afternoon, apparently!) They were thrilled to hear I was a descendant of locals, and that I’d come all the way from Australia, so they plunged into researching the Bowles family back over the years in town. I now have photos and maps, and lots of information to sift through before I can share it with all my Bowles rellies. Lex had gone for a walk while I hit the family history, and he returned when the museum shut at 4. Then Jim was good enough to take us both over to St Andrew’s church, across the road, and he gave us a tour. The man is an absolute font of knowledge. Speaking of fonts, I was thrilled to see the font where all of the Bowles family were christened over centuries. There are no Bowles headstones in the cemetery, unfortunately.

                                                      St Andrew's Church, Halstead

                                                   The font dates back to the 1400s, it's believed

                                                    Some of Halstead's medieval great and good

After we bade Jim farewell, we went and booked into our hotel further up the hill, the Dog Inn. Richard, our host, was very welcoming. Then we went for a walk down the hill and into the town and High Street. I found the site of the house my GGG Grandfather and his family lived in, and then the actual house where they lived after he retired. It’s a lovely little town; we really liked it.

                                                      Queen Victoria Golden Jubilee memorial

                               My GGG Grandfather Richard Bowles lived in the white house.

                                                            (Lavender Cottage)

                                                       We stayed at the Dog Inn

                                                         A glorious meal at Shiish!

                                                        Doors were shorter in the olden days!

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and had a drink in the bar before getting changed and heading out to eat – Richard and the locals in the bar had recommended the local Turkish restaurant, Shiish. It was so good! We’d been warned not to order too much, so just ordered a meal each. The nice young bloke who was waiting on us seemed worried that we wouldn’t be adequately nourished, so he brought us complementary bread. Then after we’d finished as much of our (huge) meals as we could manage, he brought us a free dessert of semolina cake as well! We finally rolled out of the restaurant absolutely stuffed to the brim, and somehow made it back to the hotel.

It was yet another early night, as we were so tired. It’s very light quite late though – as I type this, it’s ten past 9, and still quite light outside.