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When it comes to being indecisive, I’m pretty accomplished. At least, I think I am. Today is a case in point, because I had intended to visit a canalside town associated with a playwright. Then, 15 miles short, I stopped here, where my thoughts turn to a seaside city and onion domes. It’s a 4,500-acre estate, dominated by a sumptuous palace conceived in the early 19th century. A red-booked gardener played a hand in the design of its grounds, while the estate as a whole featured in a poet laureate’s autobiography.
Later, motoring north, I get a whole one mile closer to the canalside town before stopping again, this time at a second estate. It’s a mile west-northwest of a small town — birthplace, in 1866, of a lawyer who, in 1929, was appointed lord chancellor. The estate is noted for its 56-acre arboretum and was home to a baron (family motto: God careth for us) whose six daughters were rather more famous than he. One was an author who made her father Uncle Matthew in her novels.
Mid-afternoon, and still 14 miles to the canalside town. This time, I manage to get almost six miles closer before being drawn to a garden. It’s three miles north-northeast of a second small town, close to which another author, born in 1904, lived. I’m thinking of that seaside city again. The garden, meanwhile, was the work of a French-born plantsman, who created a series of “rooms” within it.
As I explore, it seems there is a surprise around each corner, and it becomes apparent that I shall get no closer to that canalside town today. Ah, well: life is “stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered”, as someone once wrote.
— Chris Fautley
How to enter
Only one entry per person by Wednesday, October 5, 2016. Normal Times Newspapers rules apply. Terms and conditions apply. No correspondence will be entered into.
Last week’s prize
The answers are The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Windermere. Monica Pitt of Solihull wins a luxury break for two at Pennyhill Park, in Surrey.
