After the Floods
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
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10
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Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Wyck Rissington,
United Kingdom
Friday, July 27, 2007
Today was our last Cotswolds ramble. Gloucestshire is recovering from the greatest floods in a generation. We walked to the nearby hamlet of Wyck Rissington. On the way we found a great deal of mud. In one area we walked across fields a foot deep in swift-flowing, bitterly cold water. The older kids (and Amy) crossed under duress, but Alec required a piggyback ride. On the other side he was happy to find mud to stomp in.
In Wyck Rissington we saw the old church where composer Gustav Holst had his first job, as an organist. Another interesting story about this church -- the former Vicar had a vision in a dream, and built a complex maze of hedges to celebrate Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne. Shortly before his death thirty year later, he destroyed it so that it would never fall into secular hands.
After a long, muddy ascent, we ended on the hill above the village, with a panoramic view of the Cotswolds. Most of the villages are invisible, hidden in folds of the land along the river valleys.
The morning of our last day we visited the model village. This is a 1/9 replica of Bourton-on-the-Water, made by hand of the same Cotswold stone as the actual village. The detail is so complete that the model village even has its own model village, at 1/81 scale.
