Neil,

It's such a pleasure to see photos of things I've only read about.

It sends chills down my back to even think of cutting down 400 year old trees.

You should work for the tourism folks. Your stories and photos make everyone want to visit.

I love figs and have one tree but it is struggling.

I also wanted to tell you I'm probably the only person in the world who has never been to Starbucks.

Thank you for another information packed article with such stunning photos.

vic

Dear Vicki, only the second person because you would not catch me in there either. I do my own cooking, thank you. Glad you enjoyed a brief tour of a lovely place, well it is to us anyway!
The people around her are not Happy to say the least, to see their trees cut down for a two week event! 400+ years for two weeks does not sound very fair to me!
The Tourist people would not have me for I tend to go where Angels fear to tread, and say the truth to politicians, and they do not like the truth!
I was taught how to cook the Royal Parks figs by the Chef in the Trafalgar pub in Greenwich. How can I put this nicely, the pub is given a barrel of Brandy each year that was "liberated" from the French in 1805! So the Chef as he is not allowed to touch this Brandy (only certain people are), used to cook the figs with Stilton & Port for us, just for a taste of this Brandy!
My Boss the Admiral used to take me over there for lunch, and a glass of this, probably the most exquisite Brandy in the world. Of course it has to be whitebait as a starter, for that is as far as they come up the river. By law all MP's should meet there once a year and eat white bait. However as they were all caught fiddling their expenses in The House of Commons, they are not so keen to have to pay for it themselves!
Regards.
Neil

Enjoyed reading your second article very much, Neil--- thanks for taking the time to photograph, name things, and explain it all to us! You did a great job!

Neil,

Reading all the wonderful articles on Cubits always seem to jog my memory of things long forgotten.

Seeing some of your buildings reminded me of visiting Greenfield Village in Michigan when our children were young. It's really cool as they have transported several buildings from all over and made it into a little village that you can visit. This link shows a cottage from your country that is there:

http://www.cotswolds.info/plac...

The most amazing thing for us about this cottage was one of the ceilings was the exact same design as one of the ceilings in our home that my husband built - 300 years later. It was a wood ceiling and mortise and tenon. We actually had 3 ceilings that were mortise and tenon and carried the 2nd floor of the house. The beams were 800 pounds a piece and it was just my husband and I building our home. We used wall jacks to hoist them but the beams even bent the wall jacks and even started pulling up the sub-flooring the wall jacks were nailed into. We were able to set about two beams a day. When people would come visit to see our progress, they thought the ceilings were really cool but when we would tell them there were no nails at all, they would run out of the house, thinking the ceiling might fall down. We giggled a lot.

Here is another home we visited when the children were young and if I remember correctly, there were at least 2 if not 3 rooms in this home that had literally been brought over from England.

http://cleveland.about.com/od/...

I thought you might like to see how we do have a little bit of your beautiful country over here.

I still can't get the 400 year old trees off my mind. You would think with us working with wood it wouldn't bother us be we are definitely tree huggers.

vic

vic

My Dearest Vicki, thank you very much for that! I am going to Winchester soon! This used to be the Capital of England, long before London. King William the Conquerors chapel is there, but that is a mere baby (1075). The Cathedral is over 1220 years old and the whole half mile long (each side) of it floats on oak logs. In the New Forest, don't ask me why they call it that for it was named that in 1084 there are a lot of yew trees. Some of these were thought to be 2000 years old, we discovered different, some are 3500 to nearly 4000 years old.
Working on one of them is mind blowing!
Regards.
Neil.