26 March 2001
Dear Mum and Dad
Did another 22 miler yesterday, Sunday. I’ve got a sore right knee, but the archilles and knee problem I had in my left leg has gone! That’s funny medicine, all right.
Daylight saving started this weekend so we got up in the almost dark this morning, but I’ll be running in the light, after work, for the first time since we came back from NZ. I forgot that when I was signing on for the London Marathon I was also signing on to train all through winter. Tell you what, though, these long runs are the business, all right. Every single time I have done one, things have improved by a big leap. I have so far done 4 runs of 18 miles or more.
They don’t consider 15 miles to be a long run and they think 16 miles is the lowest limit, but 18-22 miles is the band. Each alternate weekend has been a 1/2 marathon as fast as I can go. That time hasn’t changed (1:36-ish) but my 6ml time is down to 41:30-ish and my 3 mile time is 19:51 When I input my 6-mile time, the calculator said I could was capable of a 3:12:00hr marathon. Not this year, mate. Also, my pulse is down to 39/min. I checked it at lunchtime today – how sad, no-one to talk to so he took his own pulse.
We went to Waddesdon a couple of weekends ago. Normally one goes to Waddesdon to see Waddesdon Manor, built by the Rosthchilds in about 1880 in lavish 1800 French style, then dumped on the taxpayer for the National Trust to run. Well, sort of, anyway. It’s a fabulous place with stone towers and Louis XIV wall panelling, a huge fountain of plunging horses and mermaids near the front gate and large, ornate gardens. It was closed, but we weren’t going there, anyway. We wanted to see the garden centre and to wander around the little village, which has two beautiful Victorian buildings, one a pub and the other the town hall, as well as a building that was very similar to the alms houses in Wing.
On close inspection, we could see that it did use to be an almshouse and is now 5 privately owned cottages. Lovely. Opposite is one of the local antique shops, calling itself Junk and Disorderly and right outside it was a quite magnificent Victorian bed warmer. What caught our attention, apart from the long handle, was the brass lid. Normally these bed warmers are made completely from copper and Elaine doesn’t think the colour is right, but brass is the perfect colour and with a brass lid and that long dark handle, it looks really good hanging in our living room. We had a coffee in the pub (very nice) and a wander around the garden centre (very ordinary) but it was a nice sunny day, made particularly beautiful by having lots of snow lying about.
When Elaine paid for the bed warmer with a cheque, the storeowner said, “Now there’s an old Waddesdon name,” and handed us the telephone book to see for ourselves. There were three Tearles in the book. Two of them lived in Waddesdon, one a plumber the other a builder, while the third had a Wing address and of course, that was Millie Tearle, Thelma’s mother. He’s the first person we have met in England who knew a Tearle.
Then last weekend, while Elaine went to the market, I took a short drive up to Woburn to have a closer look at a most peculiar church there. I had lunch at a Greene King pub, the Royal Oak, which is quite a large and unique looking thatched building with huge beetling brows scowling over thin, hoop-topped windows. I had a very passable cottage pie. The day was cold for wandering about in and his fire was very comfortable but St Mary’s Church, right in the middle of Woburn, has this most odd gothic steeple stuck on top of its Norman tower and I didn’t want to go back home without having had a closer look at it.
Now a Norman tower is massive, square and has those battlements along the top. Imagine a short steeple from the Notre Dame stuck on top. It’s very dramatic against a dark sky, but it just looks odd. St Mary’s church is decommissioned and now belongs to a group of guardians. It’s a very small church with a detached tower – I haven’t seen that before – and there used to be a bell in the gothic steeple. It is now a museum for the local district and won’t open till May. I’ll go back and have another look then.
That reminds me – this last 12 months has been the wettest ever recorded and the records started in 1765. The water table in the Sandridge and Jersey Farm district has risen by 16 feet! In Kimpton, not far from here, the River Kym is flowing again and that hasn’t been seen for 50 years. The springs that used to bubble up around here when it was a marsh are flowing again and lifting the seal off the roads.
The foot and mouth outbreak is almost a complete disaster. So far there are 612 cases, with forecasts of up to 4000. That’s 612 farms and tonight the disease is in the Lake District. We are very lucky that it isn’t here yet, but no one is thinking that it won’t come. We are much less likely to get it because all our stock are housed, but it takes only one careless person to bring back something that is carrying the disease from the Lake District or the Cotswolds (and we were there only a short while ago) to spread it to our local farms. You can feel the sense of dread.
I hope you are well and that you are prepared for your next winter. We’ll be in touch soon.
Lots of love, Ewart and Elaine.