Lunch in Stoke-by-Nayland, in prosperous country high above the Stour valley. No time for anything more than a furtive glimpse of its great Perpendicular church with its flint walls and brick tower through the yew trees of the churchyard:-
Tag Archives: Suffolk
East Bergholt
The last of my posts from Suffolk is of the organic food stall just by the church which had maize and dahlias. We bought all the dahlias:-
Stoke-by-Nayland
I have been assured that I have been to Stoke-by-Nayland before. I have no recollection of it. I feel sure that I would remember the two perfectly preserved Tudor houses which flank the road down to the church, like Robin’s Croft in Chilham:-
Long Melford Church
On the way to Flatford, we found ourselves unexpectedly in the vicinity of Long Melford and stopped off in search of family tombs (Savages not Smiths). I have been quite recently when staying in Clare, but still appreciated seeing, once again, the great wool church, stately at the top of the green:-
The south porch (Dowsing must have visited):-
Flatford Mill
We went this afternoon to Flatford Mill to see an exhibition of watercolour paintings by Charlotte Verity undertaken during a period of residency at Bridge Cottage which is where the work was shown. It is impossible not to see the countryside round about through the eyes of Constable as one comes down the hill out of East Bergholt and looks out across Dedham Vale to Dedham Church in the distance:-
Then, by the Mill itself, there are views of the lock and across the river of trees which are familiar:-
Aldeburgh
We walked along the sea front at Aldeburgh enjoying the miscellaneous brightly coloured architecture and the huts selling smoked fish, the bandstand and some of the ornamental lettering:-
Snape
We went to two concerts at the Maltings, both by the Monteverdi Choir with John Eliot Gardiner conducting and Isabelle Faust playing the solo violin – a mixture of partitas and choral works, more like a church service than a concert. In the second concert particularly, Isabelle Faust gave an astonishing virtuoso performance of two Bach sonatas for solo violin (Nos. 2 and 3), helped by playing a Stradivarius and the resonant acoustic of the great barn.
In the interval a rainbow appeared over the marsh:-
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