West Wycombe

Okay, as per usual I am running short on time.

Today was a class and field trip day. We had class at eleven and discussed how the estate we visited in the afternoon, West Wycombe, the seat of the Dashwood family, related to Sense and Sensibility. 

(In the event you happen to have read it and to care: It adds an ironic dimension because the real life Dashwood was just so bad and the fictional Dashwoods are just so good.  Austen's contemporaries would have understood the connotation of the name though Victorians would have missed it. Being Victorian, they probably missed it on purpose.)

Wycombe is a half hour bus ride from Oxford. The bus was supposed to have air conditioning. But if any air was blowing at all, then I somehow missed every single draft of it. Thank goodness there were lovely and constantly changing scenes shooting by beyond the permanently sealed window, because I was verging on a heatstroke-- or giving in to my nausea-- or both. At once.

The BBC was actually filming a Dickens film at the estate today, so we had to pick our way past their equipment, and you'll see it in the pictures I took below (sorry). Little Dorit? Ever heard of it? It's coming to a PBS channel near you later this year, so watch for it.

These pictures being out of order, This would be a part of the side facade. 

This is a seriously big place. The family lives upstairs for 3 months of the year so that National Trust tours can go on downstairs-- and, evidently, so BBC can produce and direct movies.

This is the side of the house. As this is a very large house, and could house the entire Waterford complex in the saloon, it took me a while to get around over here.
There was a fresco on the ceiling behind the pillars. There were frescoes everywhere inside of the house, but cameras were not allowed. The detail showed up fairly well, I think-- the paint was pretty faded.
Doesn't the lion look happy? His lioness reclined just on the other side of the stairs.
Okay, so then we continued on our way around the house. We were given a half hour to make our way around to the back, which was a bit much, really-- ten minutes would have sufficed. With our free time, the lot of us ran amok with our cameras, the true tourists that we are.

I took a ton of pictures. I'm doing my best to pick the best/ most pertinent ones out for you.

There was a statue of Adonis on the far side of the back entrance to the estate, almost within sight of the back porch and visitors' entrance (where the BBC had set up camp and a bunch of faux Italian props). 

Please keep in mind what I told you about Sir Francis many many entries ago, Sir Francis Dashwood, the second baron Le Despencer and the main architect of this house and landscape-- he was a man in the mold of Hugh Hefner.
Well, goodness. Now I'm interrupted, mid-entry. My pictures are still out of order. Blogger may drive me crazy one of these days, if I can't figure its game out.

After class, and before we got on the ridiculously hot chartered bus, we of Staircase 12 went for a walk around Oxford to find the Corpus Christi college and get lunch. This bit of fence caught my attention-- it has both barbed wire and flowers springing from its stone. I was caught by the odd combination.

Of course, for dinner? (This is a side note.) We had curly fries and lasagna as our main course. And for dessert? Pineapple and chocolate ice cream. Together, in the same bowl.

Evidently that's simply how they operate in England.
The alleys are so narrow, I feel certain that some of our bigger Americans would not fit. I feel like everything here is toy size; that could be because Texans do things bigger than normal, and Brits do things smaller than normal.

Maybe normal is all relative.

Either way, the difference is very attractive.
Apparently we're back to the Wycombe trip now.  This is another shot of the front of the house, slightly more panoramic than my first shot.

That large Jeffs bus would be the hot chartered bus that will haunt my dreams tonight.
In the front of the house, as if the temple to Adonis at the back weren't enough, there's another statue of him to greet visitors. 

Wycombe had these amazing views. We crested hills and it was just like BAM-- it hit you-- you couldn't move-- dazzled with picturesque glory--

 I shall continue with more pictures in a new entry-- because OF COURSE I took more. I think I've figured out the picture posting problem; we shall see.