Day 1 - Monday June 2nd

From Sweden to Stow-on-the-Wold

Up early! Took a taxi and then train to Copenhagen Kastrup Airport where we met with the others in our party. Many familiar faces from last year's trip but also some new.

Wise from last year trouble at the security check, Peter had left his gardeners knife at  home this year. However, he had lacked his secateurs for some time. Now the airport staff at Kastrup found it for him with the help of X-ray. It was at the bottom of his backpack!

We travelled with Easyjet to Stanstead Airport north of London. After landing and reuniting with our baggage, Peter got his secateurs neatly wrapped in a small box, we went outside to meet with Dee who were waiting for us with a new and larger bus.

Rousham Park House and Garden

Designer: William Kent (1685-1748)
Style: 18th-century landscape
Size: 12 ha

"Rousham and its landscape garden should be a place of pilgrimage for students of the work of William Kent."

Our first stop was at Rousham Park House and Garden. Uncomplicated an uncommercial. No cafeteria and no tourist shop. A table with leaflets and a tin can to put the entrance fee in. A few hens in the parking lot. That was all!

In light drizzle and with high expectations we went to explore one of the most well preserved landscape parks from the 18th century.

Rousham represents the first phase in English landscape design and is still very much in the state that William Kent left it, with many of the features that attracted the 18th century visitors still in their original place; the ponds with the statue of Venus, the temple and the long lines of sight into the surrounding landscape.

"He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden." *

In addition to the well designed outer landscape, there is also a smaller scale inner landscape, formed by a walled garden with a 17th century pigeon house.

To the north and east the park is surrounded by the quiet river Cherwell. A walkway follows the meanders of the river. The landscape and the weather invited us to rest and quiet contemplation. It was good to unwind in this beatuful place.

After the visit at Rousham we continued our journey to the four star hostel YHA in Stow-on-the-Wold.

*Horace Walpole over William Kent in his book On Modern Gardening, 1780.