Day 30. Wimbourne still. Sept 5 2001

We slept late, as seems to be our want, then, panniers left behind, we biked back to Kingston Lacy.



It’s a small manor house, but new to us, so we explored it quite thoroughly. The detail work on the heaters, the banisters, all the minute parts of a house that plebs and the rich would normally leave undecorated is amazing, but almost saturating, until the whole display is lost in a saccharine coating.

The paintings were on a similar scale. One room, the dining room, was covered in Rape scenes, which makes one more than a little suspicious. We saw paintings by Titian and Van Dyckand a copy or rough draft of a Velasquez that made Heather gasp so loudly people nearby were alarmed.

The paintings of nude women were more than a little disturbing. Proper women did not pose nude so the artist had to use male bodies as their guide. All the women look like East German weightlifters with breasts.

Especially...interesting... was the painting of a woman fondling her breasts hanging in the lady of the house’s washroom.

Many of the artifacts were collected in “Grand Tours” of Europe, which made me think of our “Grand Tour” which will have few such artifacts but hopefully a big impact.

I was delighted to find, in the collection of Egyptian oddities a statue of the god Hetep baqet, a god of the moringa tree which I can add to my collection of tree gods.

In the gardens we we found an obelisk and sarcophagus stolen from Egyptian sands and many pathways.

  The paths in one section were so well set up for enjoying each others company that they must have been designed with that in mind. Though how they managed to get up those in victorian skirts is beyond me. Necessity is (I suppose) the mother of invention.

I have come to believe that the world needs an aristocracy so that people will sponsor the beautiful things. I only hope to be one of them!!!

However, still a member of the plebian class I , with my paramour, returned to the campsite for our much anticipated dip. The water was warm, at least a good half degree above freezing, and my insane wife plunged in head first while I waded in with trepidation. We enjoyed the water, cold as it was, until freezing temperatures drove us to the warmth of our tent.

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