Which is a mid-sized rural road linking Cowfold Road/A272 and the Henfield/Wheatsheaf Road in West Sussex. And West Sussex is, as you likely know, a British county (once a shire) in between London and Brighton. My friends Bryan and Jean live on Wineham Lane in Royal Oak Country Park. And with much love and creativity provided their home and their hospitality for those weeks.
Yes, I was on Wineham Lane during King Charles III’s coronation. Jean and Bryan had hung bunting and the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes and had planted flowers in red, white, and blue along their porch. We glued ourselves to the TV during the procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster and back to the balcony waving. And the next day, Sunday, the residents of Royal Oak Country Park held a small soiree to celebrate: treats, decorations, games, and a toast to their new monarch. After that, news of the Coronation revolved mostly around the question of whether Princess Anne’s military plume was situated deliberately, directly in front of Harry. Four days later, when Jean and I sampled London, we didn’t see or hear evidence of an earth-shattering event. Daily life in Britain seemed to just pick up and go on.
When I left Montana on May first, the land between my windows and the mountains was still beige. Buds on our deciduous trees hesitated to open. Grass had just begun to perk up. Despite a few warm days, April had treated us to two batches of heavy wet snow and some incidental flurries. We were a child’s brown-outlined coloring page waiting to be filled in.
I’d visited Jean and Bryan before. But this time, with spring arriving in full measure there, I reveled in a land suffused with green and birdsong. Giant, twisted oaks framing the sky. Tunnels of newly-leafed trees arching over country lanes. Seen from Devil’s Dyke, the South Downs stretching out in bright green and yellow—grass and rape seed. Ivy and holly climbing up and over walls, trees, light posts, whole houses. Mama sheep and cavorting lambs–outlined against long lush meadows. Gorse bushes fading from gold blooms to green. Fields of bluebells along the roads. Jean and Bryan’s secret garden fresh, flourishing, lush. And there, especially there, birds singing. Not just the chirping or cawing of my neighborhood. But floating melodies and trills out over the park. I’d come to an aviary, it seemed.
I welcomed every errand that Bryan and Jean needed to run around Sussex. It’s a land of ancient lanes linked by roundabouts with cars and buses and lorries shooting off into one exit or another. To villages—jewel after jewel of small, old settlements. My memory is alight in narrow high streets lined with this rich spill of historic buildings: half-timbered, medieval, Victorian, Tudor, Sussex flint. Busy with real shops—green grocers, bakeries, charity, pubs. Buildings that have been used for hundreds of years—still serving their little settlements: flats above, commerce on the street. Ditchling, Wineham and Twineham, Steyning, Henfield, Upper Beeding, Hurstpierpoint, Small Dole, Cuckfield.
I close my eyes and compare that abundance, that profusion, that extravagance of historic structures to Montana’s tiny towns. In which we celebrate the survival of a 1910 one-roomed frame school or an abandoned brick corner homestead bank. Or fawn over mining ghost towns—the black ribs of their rafters outlined against our big sky. Two worlds where our differences in history and population density and commerce and governing loom large even when we speak many of the same words.
My visit included a trip to Arundel Castle—an 11th century complex much modified over the years, especially in the 19th century. A property of the Dukes of Norfolk since the 1500s. Everything any British aficionado would want in a castle: gardens and keeps and moats and great rooms and chapels, armouries, a portcullis, coats of arms, statuary and portraits. Everything but a dungeon – though maybe that was just left out of the tour.
Jean and I took the train to London. And a boat along the Thames to see the city from the waterway that has drawn humans to this metropolis for at least 2,000 years. Wharves, warehouses turned fancy homes, mudlarking visitors, and ancient pubs lining the river in front of steeples and skyscrapers. Every bridge had its own story—including one I’d never heard: that during World War II, homebound women finished construction of the Waterloo Bridge—now the Ladies’ Bridge. After lunch in Greenwich—the place on earth from which we measure time and distance–an ordinary taxi ride back to Bankside served up another magic feast for my eyes and imagination.
Jean and Bryan have tolerated my weak knees on previous trips to Wineham Lane and other European posts. But those knees proved especially vexing and wearisome this time around. They required—really I required—extra arms and handholds. Jean and Bryan made so much possible.
This was our “Wisteria Visit.” Early on, as we walked the Arundel gardens, we realized that the draping vines of purple flowers weren’t lilacs. And for an afternoon, the three of us couldn’t summon the name. Once we held the word on our tongues, we found that wisteria cascaded down many walls and buildings. Our eyes were drawn to it. “In the language of flowers, it [wisteria] says youth, poetry and ‘Let’s Be Friends.’” Originally from Asia, Europeans cultivated it. Victorians especially prized wisteria and offered it to others to say “I cling to you” as it would cling to the branches of other trees. Ironically, most all of the plant is poisonous. Work that out!!
Maybe the contradiction between flowery meanings and toxicity isn’t as unusual as it seems at first blush. As you know, all travel is complicated: it’s adventure we seek and dream about; it’s the weariness and challenges of unfamiliar places and customs; it’s realities that enchant and disappoint. It brings sweet companionship, the opportunity to meet new and fascinating people, and a particular loneliness—for me, the quiet and cat-filled world of my daily life. Still, here, back in Montana, I’ll take the beauty of wisteria and the enticements of travel. And the sumptuous British spring—even as I navigate it on creaky knees. ©
