Chiselbury Grove Strollers

Clarendon Palace

16th April 2006

On a lovely Easter sunday and after a splendid lunch at Moy and Mike's five of us drove to Pitton village hall. We parked here and at 3pm set off on our 4 mile circular walk that had the aim of seeing Clarendon Palace. This palace is only about 2.5 miles from Chiselbury Grove and yet none of us had ever been there. For many years it was out of bounds and also overgrown with trees and shrubs. All this has now been cleared and English Heritage are looking after the site.

After a lovely walk in sunshine and noting all the Violets and Primroses growing in profusion we arrived after 2 hours at the Palace site. The cathedral can easily be seen from here. There was a flock a dark brown sheep keeping the grass short. There were a number of boards to explain the site that were very useful. There is still plenty of archaeology scattered around and we picked up two pieces of tile. Later we managed to reconstruct a whole tile by the magic of Photoshop.

On the way back we came across an organic pig farm with Saddleback pigs run by the Mr & Mrs Parsons.

We got back to the car after some 3 hours - rather longer than estimated by the description of the walk that was from Wessex Walks. Included here are many other local walks that perhaps we should try sometime.

Back at Mike and Moy's house we tucked into Simnel cake made by Ann. A wonderful day.

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Lunch begins

Cloud Chocolate Easter Pudding

WOWEE!!!!!!

Setting Off

Feeding the Sheep

Down the Trail

Spring Violets

Wood Anemones

A white one

A field strip of field that seems to have weedkiller

Watching 4 deer grazing

The trail just travelled

Beech wood with potential Bluebells

Moy photographing puddle reflections.

Why?

The wood on either side of the Track

Ann braving the big ladder

And then walkin ahead in the dappled sun.

Ash in bud

Wild clematis or Travellers Joy

Wild Primroses

View over the Clarendon Palace with the Cathedral in the distance

Ann and Peter looking at the wine cellar

The Great Hall

Ann and Sheila reading one of the boards

The terrace gardens

Cathedral in the distance

The sheep keeping the grass short

The Great Hall end wall

Wild Hellebores in flower

Saddleback pigs

Ann in conversation

A distant view of the start of our walk across the fields.

Back to the village

Ann's simnel cake

Reconstructed tile and below repeated to make a possible floor pattern