A short drive from Newton Grove is the Rousham Park House and Garden.

Tucked alonside the river Cherwell, Rousham represents the first phase of English Landscape design and remains almost as William Kent left it, one of the few gardens of this date to have escaped alteration. Many features which delighted 18th century visitors to Rousham are still in situ, such as the ponds and cascades in Venus’ vale, the Cold Bath and seven arched Praeneste, Townsend’s building, the Temple of the Mill and in the skyline, a sham ruin known as the Eyecatcher.

Whilst we only visited the gardens, the house, built in 1635 by Sir Robert Dormer is still in the ownership of the same family.

Rousham is uncommercial and unspoilt with no tea room and no shop. We brought a picnic and comfortable shoes for a long afternoon in the gardens.

If our off-grid experiment was to work, we needed to sort out the battery and solar controller. This took most of the morning to sort out.

Here’s a link to the work we carried out.

Leisure Battery / Solar upgrade – Caravan Ramblings

In the afternoon we headed out for an LPG top-up and found A E Prentice (between Banbury and Bicester). A very helpful chap topped up the bottle for 0.95 per litre.

In the evening we had food and a few drinks at the local pub in South Newington – Duck on the Pond. Another lovely North Cotswolds pub and a great idea for comfort – the outside tables and benches came with a sheepskin rug to sit on!

Tuesday evening and we headed for tea and coffee near Banbury at my cousins, Martyn and Anne. They had booked a table a little later at the Red Lion in Bloxham. A fine choice of pub / restaurant but we realised afterwards, we had been so engrossed in conversation, we hadn’t taken a single pictures. Groan.

On Wednesday we headed into Oxford. A two mile walk to the village of Milcombe where we caught the bus to Banbury and then the train to Oxford.

We would arrive at the Old Bookbinders Ale house shortly after noon for a very long lunch with Paul and Andrea and also their friends John and Moyreen. It was great to catch up with old friends after so many abandoned Spanish winters and fantastic to make new ones.

This pub is well away from the tourist honey traps and we spent much of the afternoon there, almost until the evening reservations commenced!

A mighty fine selection of real ales.

We managed to catch the train back to Banbury and then the last bus from Banbury to Milcombe, leaving just a 2 mile walk back to our campsite.

A visit to Frome (very nice market town nearby) and then a “guilty” wander around Longleat listening to the last of the concerts – Tears For Fears. There seemed to be tickets available but a bit expensive at £75 each so we gave entry into the arena a miss.

Sunday we drove over to Shearwater lake and walked the circular route around the lake. The footpaths of the last stretch back to the Car park (next to the tea rooms) were overgrown so we definitely walked the best way around the lake – anticlockwise.

The walk is shown below – just ignore the “tail” where I’d forgotten to turn off the tracker!

Lunch was at the Royal Oak at Corsley. Food was excellent and would highly recommend the Sunday roast.

The cheeseboard was immense – it should keep us in cheese for the remainder of the trip!!!

Tomorrow we head into the Cotswolds for the great “off-grid” experiment. We have a week at Newton Grove CL site, near South Newington, near Chipping Norton. A reasonable walk to the Falkland Arms at Great Tew, where we understand we may bump into David Beckham. We might need to spend some time in the pub to recharge the laptop battery.

It’s been a busy day today. Fresh off the back of our trip to Stourhead House was an evening of entertainment at Longleat, part of their summer programme of concerts. When we left the campsite to visit Stourhead the club site was barely a quarter full. When we returned late afternoon, nearly every pitch was taken.

Tonight’s act was Diana Ross and the walk to the concert from our site was around 20 minutes through the Longleat estate. Diana Ross was on-stage from around 9pm for a 90 minute show. Well attended with 5,000 concert goers present for the show.

Diana Ross Setlist, 01 July 2022, Longleat

Set 1
I’m Coming Out
More Today Than Yesterday
My World Is Empty Without You
Baby Love
Stop! In the Name of Love
You Can’t Hurry Love
Love Child

Set 2
Chain Reaction
I’m Still Waiting
Upside Down
Love Hangover / Take Me Higher / Ease on Down the Road

Set 3
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
If We Hold on Together
If the World Just Danced
Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
I Will Survive

Tomorrow sees Alison Moyet as the support act to Tears for Fears. We don’t have tickets for this concert but maybe we’ll take a wander around Longleat during the evening.

It was a day to accumulate small, useless artefacts of knowledge. It started with the River Stour – in fact the head of the River Stour. Whilst looking for the route of the River Stour I discovered this wasn’t quite so easy as there are a total of FIVE River Stours in the United Kingdom.

One each in the counties of Dorset, Kent, Suffolk, Warwickshire and Worcester. The name is of ambiguous and disputed origin, with one theory being that the name derives from the Celtic “sturr” meaning “strong”. However, the river-name Stour, whilst common in England does not occur in Wales…

Secondly, the Grand Tour is not just a TV series hosted by Jeremy Clarkson. The Grand Tour was the principally 17th to early 19th century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tutor or family member) when they had come of age – around 21 years old. The tradition finally declined in Europe as enthusiasm for classical culture waned, and with the advent of accessible rail and steamship travel.

The head of the River Stour on the Somerset / Wiltshire border is located at Stourhead. The river flows across southern England before finally entering the English Channel at Christchurch in Dorset. At the head of the River Stour is Stourhead House, a National Trust property. Stourhead House was one of the first country villas to be built in the new Palladium Style, the design much influenced by its owners trips on the Grand Tour.

The house was designed for Henry Hoare I by the architect Colen Campbell although Henry died before the house was completed and so never got to enjoy life at Stourhead.

Henry Hoare I, (“Good Henry”) and his successor, Henry Hoare II (“Magnificent Henry”) both made their money as bankers. The private bank, C Hoare & co remains the oldest private bank in England.

The house tour is a selection of rooms on the ground floor. All pristinely preserved and beautifully furnished with original furniture, fixtures and fittings. In 1946 the house was given to the National Trust to care for and look after for future generations. In the entrance hall are portraits of all the key Hoare family members and knowledgeable National Trust guides to pass on the family story.

The garden was described as “a living work of art” when it first opened its doors in the 1750s. The world-famous garden was designed by Henry Hoare II as a series of carefully constructed views, like scenes from a Landscape painting. Henry Hoare II built a dam to form the lake and around it he positioned classical temples and Gothic buildings as well as rare and exotic trees.

The garden was at the forefront of the English Landscape movement and for this achievement, Henry was nicknamed “the Magnificent”.

Frequently our trips start out with a purpose and then over time we add new places. This tour was booked with the intention of attending the Cotswold music festival at Cornbury. Also known as “posh fest”.

We’ve since added a visit to Longleat before our stay in the Cotswolds and also added some new sites to the end of the tour. Oh, and due to the ticket prices at Cornbury, we may now no longer attend the festival!

It has been some feat booking 4 nights at the CAMC (Caravan and Motorhome Club) site within the grounds of Longleat but finally, after frequent daily searches we managed to complete the four day reservation. We arrived on site, Thursday, complete with our 4 individual reservations – one for each night!

It was a short – around 2 hours – journey from East Devon to Longleat with some horrendous thunder, hail and rain storms on the route from Honiton to Warminster. By late afternoon, the weather had calmed down somewhat and it stayed dry enough for us to erect the small porch air awning and finish setting up.

This is our pitch at Longleat.

The nearest pub to the site is the White Hart Inn at Corsley and we headed there in the evening for some welcome grub and a few pints.