Two birds with one stone

That is to say, on Friday, we both clocked up another munro and another working water mill, another munro being on this occasion another of the National Trust properties clocking more than 250,000 visitors a year rather than a mountain in Scotland clocking more than 3,000 feet, with the property in question being Anglesey Abbey.

The water mill had just finished its daily grind when we got there, but we were able to look around - just a water mill without the museum trappings of that at Calbourne (see 1st August) - and we were able to buy 3kg of recently stone ground wholemeal flour, flour on which I should be able to make a start in a week or so, first in first out having priority over the desire to find out what difference it makes when one uses fresh flour. Furthermore, as well as learning the root of the expression 'the daily grind', we also learned that of  'show us your metal', alleged to be something that a miller asked of a mill stone dresser who, if sufficiently experienced, would have lots of bits of metal embedded permanently & visibly in his fore arms, bits of metal which had been sparked out of his stone dressing chisels into his arms in the course of said dressings. A fine story but is it true?

There were a variety of other attractions, beside the water mill, attractions which we were only able to make a start on in the time available.

First, on entry, we sampled the state of the art canteen illustrated, a new build, high tech shed, the sort of thing that they seem to do rather well in and around Cambridge, only employing the better class of architect and having available a better class of builder.

Then there were the gardens, which we had visited before and of which I only remembered the handsome trees. But there were shrubberies and flowers too, with the autumn cyclamen and the dahlias being notable amongst these last. Roses a little past their best, but must have been good in high season. The man who laid these gardens out, and the men & women who now maintain them knew & know their business. There was also a large nest of fungi, growing around the roots of a presumably dead or dying tree. The largest such nest that I have ever seen.

Then there was a second hand book shop, where we picked up a few things of interest, doing far better here than at the second hand book shop at our own Polesden Lacey, very thinly stocked by comparison. So some Ibsen plays for 50p against an upcoming visit to 'Ghosts', BH not being very handy with the Kindle on which my copy had been loaded. A book about Stradivarius, a Dover reprint, also for 50p. Rather dearer, a top of the range Everyman edition (one of the ones with a black and white dust cover) of 'Heart of Darkness' which I shall reread with renewed interest having learned of its connection with Roger Casement (see 25th September). And there was more, but with which I shall not trouble further here.

Very smartly got up car park.

We did not attempt the Abbey itself, a between the wars rebuild of a ruined abbey, a rebuild in a very Lutyens style.

The only downer was that I was not very keen on the various heavy duty steel art gates now dotted around the place, much preferring the old-stye statuary of the rebuilder (an anglicised heir to a gross US steel fortune, made in part by gross exploitation of an immigrant work force).

After the Abbey, off to the Crown House (http://www.crownhousehotel.com/) at Great Chesterford for my second visit (during the first of which I may have slept in a bed once slept in by the late Mrs. Thatcher) and BH's first visit. A fine small hotel in the old style, old style enough that most of the lady guests and some of the gentlemen guests dressed for dinner. A rather odd village with rather a lot of large old houses, a number of old cottages and a lot of new infill, some large, some small. Presumably serving as dormitory for both the nearby genome engineering establishments and the not far Cambridge proper. And at least one of the old cottages was infested by house martins, almost invisible but given away by the noise they were making.

It was also alleged that the village is home to one Germaine Greer, an allegation which is neither confirmed nor denied in her extensive Wikipedia entry. Someone who has had an interesting life and whom I heard speak just once, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, about Shakespeare. Memorable for me for her unexpected diffidence as a speaker; I had expected such a media hound and self publicist to be rather more brassy.