Claremont

As far as the blog is concerned, the last time we visited Claremont Landscape Gardens was in 2012, when we appear to have visited no less than three times. With nothing later being recorded.

So recorded visits were resumed on the Bank Holiday, the Hook Road car booter having drawn the short straw on this occasion. As it turned out, just the day for a picnic at such a place; still, sunny and reasonably warm. Lots of young families out with their children.

Not so impressed with the warm sausage roll on this occasion. Sausage good but the roll bit was all fluff and fat, a bit like the crusty part of a croissant. Good effort nonetheless.

Lake looking rather good with full-on shimmering. The large carp which used to be there had been replaced by lots of small fish, maybe up to about six inches long, with pale red parts to their fins. But the novelty was the addition of two rowing punts, Charlotte and Henrietta. Punts which were vaguely punt shaped tubs made of fibre glass, with the upper works rather nattily finished in varnished hard wood, not a bad compromise at all between expensive wood and ugly fibre glass. The Trust was being very safety first about the whole business, despite the water only being a few inches deep over most of its extent, and we were made to wear rather bulky hi-vis life jackets, which rather detracted from the pastoral ambience. And, even though there were just the two punts, there were also instructions about in which direction to row around the island. However, no carping, it was all good fun, if not quite up to the Raquette (see reference 3).

Click to enlarge on the illustration and you can just about see one of the punts, middle right. As usual with this sort of shot, the Lumia makes things in the middle distance look a lot smaller than they did to the eye. Still, the shot as a whole was quite successful. The white patches just above the shore line were daisies rather than bare patches, spurned, it seems, by all the geese wandering about, complete with goslings. While the grass was eaten down to the ground, barely green - so what with that and the tramp of visitors, quite a lot of grass was roped off for repairs.

The large cedar tree, just off the left of the illustration was looking well for its several hundred years. but no goose, not even a duck, sitting in this tree, unlike the one at Painshill (see reference 2). Camelias a little past their best and the rhododendrons mostly yet to come. Trees generally, with their fresh young foliage, looking very well in the bright midday sunlight.

Note the fairly recent replanting of the trees behind the amplitheatre to the left.

PS: I learn from the Trust web site today that 'over the years Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent and ‘Capability’ Brown all put their own distinctive stamp on the pleasure grounds', famous throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. For a good part of that time the country retreat of the Duke of Newcastle.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=claremont.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Yesterday+to+Painshill+for+a+stroll.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/outdoor-options.html.