They were in the throes of a ten day festival, so parking was tricky and Beryl and I, having been dropped off in the town, enjoyed a little wander on our own. This village has a real green called ‘The Tye’, bordered by churches and other buildings and at a slightly lower level than the main streets of the village further up the hill. 
After lunch, Stefan and Keith sat on at the restaurant to chat while Beryl and I went down to the stalls on The Tye, with Beryl finding a very nice skirt to purchase. A piper played in the shade of the church yard, providing just the right sort of atmosphere for the scene. The fair had many traditional challenges, which are all aimed at having fun and giving money to the year’s nominated charities. One of my favourites was where you paid to see if a trusted friend could wheel you, standing in a wheelbarrow and holding a pole like a jouster, under a piece of wood with a hole in it and a bucket of water balanced on top. Your task was to pass the pole through the hole and come out on the other side without a drenching. We did not see anyone succeed. Others required more or less skill, with picking a ticket out of a box and hoping it ended in a zero or a five being much less satisfying than losing more money aiming balls at coconuts or a penny at a hole (called ‘Toad in the Hole’).
The big bargain of the day was that the Clergy House, the National Trust’s first purchased building, costing £10 in the early 1960s, had free entry. A medieval house, originally for the clergy to live in, it had become a rented cottage and had fallen much into disrepair. It had been saved from earlier demolition by chance, with the decision being stayed until the incumbent no longer needed it and by that time there had been a change of Vicar to one who saw value in preserving old buildings. One side of the building had stairs and was divided into relatively small rooms on two floors. The lower room opened up into a large, high, open hall, which we at first thought must have been part of the church, but which turned out to be a common feature of medieval buildings. A hearth stone on the floor was where an open fire would have been lit, with the smoke escaping through the shutters since there was no glass in the windows originally. The floor was of pressed chalk with a surface treatment of sour milk. As you would expect, mould grew on the surface but over time it died, adding something that made the floor more impervious. The National Trust re-treated the floor with this method in the 1990s and only a small amount of fine green mould persists under the table.Out in The Tye again, Beryl and I met a Morris dancer. He was part of a group which has been Morris dancing for charity for thirty years; a jolly chap in his sixties who posed for photos with us. The dances are traditional and involve footwork that makes the bells tied at the waist and knees ring, as well as a lot of waving of handkerchiefs and hitting with sticks. The group had a lady’s contingent, possibly not traditional, but maybe representing the wives, daughters, sisters and friends who were always left at home on practice nights. Everyone was enjoying themselves and if a step was missed it made for more fun. One fellow, dressed a little more gaudily than the others, made announcements and gave amusing commentaries, being generally too busy to dance much.
The Church of St Andrews was open and was absolutely full of flowers. Every surface had a vase and every pew a garland. Many looked like meadow flowers. Bell ropes hang down inside the church, with the bell pullers practising on Tuesdays and performing for half an hour before the services on Sundays. A band had set up and we stopped to listen to a woman with a lovely throaty voice sing ‘As Time Goes By’.
The weather had closed in and it was both windy and cold. We shivered at Littlington, where we parked near the ancient walls of the Priory Barn and an old stone wall. There we quickly examined the Longman of Wilmington, the outline of a 231 foot (70 metre) man on the moors, with 100 foot (30 m) legs and 235 foot staves in each hand. Thought by some to be of Roman origin and by others to date to Neolithic times, it was restored in 1874, with the original threshing flail and scythe being replaced with the much easier staves! Others with no souls restored it again in 1969, using concrete blocks instead of restoring it in the original carving into the chalk surface. Seeing the slap-dash way this ancient monument was treated perhaps inspired the students who added private parts, quickly removed in what I imagine to be a flurry of ‘tut tutting’.
When we got home we had a combination lunch and tea meal and then we packed and set off for London with Stefan. We had loved staying with Beryl, who is a bright and lovely eighty year old with a great sense of humour and a keen interest in others.We didn’t go straight to Walton-on-Thames, where Stefan has his motor home, but drove down memory lane, listening to Stefan talking about his early years and seeing the places where the family had lived. The farm that he and his mother had moved to when he was about ten had been an enormous, dilapidated medieval farmhouse, which had seen many renovations. Great rooms and the original hall had been divided up into many smaller spaces, with the original outbuildings providing young Stefan with many places to play and work with the animals. The house was bought by people with the finances to care for it properly, and the family moved on. We climbed the fence into what was once a public right of way through the meadow beside the house, and walked down the slope, with every step triggering new memories and mixed emotions for Stefan. A hedge has been allowed to grow over the drive and gate that Stefan had used to cross the road to the village school, with the house now very private and enclosed. We took Stefan’s photo with the house in the background.
The road took us past an aunt’s home; a lady who would not allow any modern conveniences in her two storey home at all when she lived there in the 1960s.It seemed a long way to London in the fading light, but it was a good chance to chat and to become friends. Stefan and Keith have the same great grandfather and some physical characteristics are shared sufficiently for them to look like brothers. We drove through the town of Walton-on-Thames, an affluent area with a show room for Aston Martins, a new mall and library and a lavish bridal shop called ‘Love Me Do’, and turned down a hedged lane between the fields. Only wide enough for one vehicle, it has lay-bys to retreat to if you meet another. Stefan’s motor home is enormous with a bedroom at each end, and was parked beside the River Mole, where white swans were gliding by in the dusk.
We continued to talk until weariness dragged us to bed, with lots of options for outings for the next day bubbling away in Stefan’s head.
Some traditional English fairground amusements
nine pins
pushing the bale of hay over the bar
toad in the hole
tilt the bucket
coconut shy Below: The Town Crier
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