August 21, Tuesday

The sun shone Tuesday when we set out for the day. Our first stop was Snapes Maltings. Remember that I said earlier that Margaret hunted up her concert schedule for the Snape Maltings proms, when I was asking about proms.

We got out of the car into a cluster of big beautiful red brick buildings beside the River Alde at Snapes. These buildings were originally granaries and malting sheds. The grain stored in the granaries was wetted, then spread on the floors in the malting barns and allowed to sprout. The sprouted grain was loaded onto boats and barges at the river and sent to breweries and distilleries.

The buildings had been cleaned, remodeled, and updated to a very fine appearance. They housed a well-known concert hall, shops, art galleries and restaurants. Other new buildings were built to blend in with the antique ones. Many of these were upscale town houses and apartments. Snape Maltings was every bit as unique as it appeared.

We walked through the lobby of the concert hall. It was a building of “rustic elegance.” We couldn't get in to see the auditorium itself, as there was a rehearsal going on. From the concert hall, we shopped the shops. Most of the goods, as one would expect, were more than I would want to pay. But I did get an idea for crocheted place mats.

Before we left, we strolled around the rest of the complex and on a path along the river. I could see myself, if I lived there, coming to Snape Maltings frequently for lunch and a pleasant day out.

If you follow the River Alde from Snape Maltings to the coast, you come to the town of Aldeburgh. Aldeburgh runs along a beach of small rounded brownish stones, called a shingle beach. Lionel was first interested in getting some fish and chips. He had come to Aldeburgh to get fish and chips. They had eaten great fish and chips in Aldeburgh a few years back, and he wanted them again. We drove up and down the main street of town, but they couldn't identify the remembered chip shop.

Finally they chose one that seemed to be the right place, a white-painted building with a sailing ship painted on the big glass show window. Lionel parked the car, and we lined up with the immediate world for fish and chips. It had to be the right place if that many people wanted to get in it. The line was out the door.

Once we got the aromatic bundles of newsprint in our hands, we drove over to the beach and parked out on a breakwater. Nothing was heard for a while except fish chomping and an occasional “Pass the vinegar.” The sun peeked in and out of the clouds as we sat in the car and savored our treat, serenaded by the wash of the sea.

After eating, we got out and walked along the beach to a Martello, a circular fortress on the beach. We couldn't get into it, so we walked around it and back to the car. The winds from the sea were cool and fresh; you could smell the ocean. We then drove to another section of the beach nearer town. Again we got out and walked on the beach. The sea was quiet, just slow undulations lapped the stones. A curiously detailed Tudor brick building, called the Moot House, stood behind the beach. I took several pictures of it. I almost had to line up. Other tourists were also photographing the picturesque building.

As we left Aldeburgh, we made one more beach stop. A huge metal sculpture, a modern interpretation of a scallop shell, stood on the shingles as a monument to the great musician Benjamin Britten. Across the top of it, cut through the steel so that you could read it by the brightness of the sky, were the words: “I hear those voices that will not be drowned,” a quote from Benjamin Britten.

From Aldeburgh, it wasn't far to Dunwich (Dunnich). Lionel and Margaret had showed us a video about the history of Dunwich. We remembered that video as we walked on Dunwich Beach under grey skies. In medieval times Dunwich was a large port and a town of importance in the wool trade. Then in the late 1200s, a huge storm swept a great part of the town into the sea. Just a few years later, another storm swept more of the town away. Houses, churches, guildhalls, all disappeared into the sea. The storms were followed by erosion and over the years the rest of the town fell into the sea.

There is just a tiny village and not much beach left at Dunwich. It is said that a yeoman in medieval dress roams the beach, and if you listen carefully, you can hear church bells on the waves there. There were people on the beach with us, just walking around. I suppose they were listening for the church bells. I was.

Just across from the car park at Dunwich Beach were carpets of purple heather that spread to the horizon. We walked over to it. When I got closer, there were yellow gorse blossoms among the heather. The colors were gorgeous. Once, years ago, I was hiking on Holy Mountain on Holy Island in north Wales, and the mountain was in bloom with heather and gorse. I've kept that image in my mind for years. Now I had found it again.

This was Dunwich Heath, acres of historic heath protected by the National Trust. We had just been lucky enough to stop at Dunwich Beach when the heath was in full bloom. Did I take pictures? Oh, yes. Lots of pictures. One note, though. I wasn't tempted to run through heather and gorse with arms outspread and hair flying like I was at the meadow at Grayfriars. Both plants are stiff and scratchy, and gorse has prickers on it. That's what Eeyore ate, remember, gorse. It's like thistles.

The afternoon was spent by the time we got back to Sandlappers. We freshened up and set out again, this time for dinner. We went about five miles to the Five Bells pub in the village of Hesset. During the meal Lionel asked the waiter if the church in Hesset had five bells.

“We had a six bell peal,” the fellow answered, “but Drinkstone stole one of our bells.”

That was good for a chuckle. He went on to say that their church bells weren't rung much, as the wooden frame was very old.

So the custom goes on.

“Five bells in the tower, five bells for the pub.”

BURY ST. EDMUNDS

August 22, Wednesday

It was grey when Lionel, Bob, and I left Tostock for the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, better known as the Duxford Aviation Museum. It was downright pouring when we got there. There were hangers and hangers of military planes from all the wars of the last century. For me, the special interest was to see the planes I'd only heard the names of in papers and books.

Volunteers were rebuilding and repairing rescued historic planes as we watched. If they couldn't get a part, they created it. Planes that had been restored were on display. The hangers were chilly and damp, though. The rains were unremitting. After a disappointing lunch at a little coffee bar, we all sloshed over back to the main building and gift shop. Bob bought himself a 16 by 20 inch photograph of a B17 for a souvenir. Then we left. The weather had got to us.

Lionel dropped us off at The Glen B&B in Bury St. Edmunds, where we were spending the next two nights. Syd later picked us up for supper and the evening at their place.

August 23, Thursday

I knew, almost without opening my eyes, that it was another grey day. The room was still dim at 7:45 a.m. I crawled out from under the duvet and pulled back the curtain a bit. Yes, it was grey - and wet - not raining just then, but wet. Chilly it was, too. The fastest solution for that was an immediate hot shower.

The shower was hot, all right, scalding, except for when it went cold. I spent more time fiddling with the water handles than washing. Not only that, but the shower was in a long bathtub, so long that the shower curtains only ran along the side. The end of the tub was exposed, drafty, and uncurtained, and so was I.

Later we went downstairs to the spacious and rather elegant breakfast room and started the day with a bowl of meusli cold cereal with milk and sliced banana. Then we topped the meal off with bacon, tea, beans, toast, mushrooms, tomatoes, toast with thick-cut marmalade, orange juice and our daily pills.

Back up in the room, I put on my blue pile vest, my England pile jacket, and my red waterproof. It was almost 10 a.m. Syd was picking us up at ten to go to Pakenham Mill. I looked out the window at the grey, the wet. We had left most of our luggage back in Tostock. I only had short-sleeved shirts with me as someone said the weekend would be better weather and I believed them.

I told Bob to go down and meet Syd, and I began stripping off the red waterproof, the pile England jacket, the vest, and my red window-pane-checked blouse. Then I put a pullover heavier blouse on under the window-pane-checked blouse, and put back on all the layers. I was later glad that I had.

Syd gathered us up, and asked if we would be quite content to take the country roads to Pakenham Mill rather than main ones. Of course. British countryside is one of the lures that brings us back across the pond time after time.

We drove the picturebook winding single lanes bordered by towering hedgerows. We drove through villages of country houses with high pointy gables or soft, rounded thatch. We drove on and on through the village of Pakenham. Houses in Pakenham line up along the one lane. There are no secondary streets, to speak of.

Pakenham Mill stands just beyond the last house in Pakenham. We visited Pakenham Mill before this summer, in July. (If you have it, refer back to 17. Postcards from Britain07.) I was busy setting up a picnic with Marian, and didn't tour the mill that time.

Pakenham Water Mill is under the hopes and care of a small dedicated group of volunteers, of which Syd is one. They work hard and raise money any way they can. Without the backing of a large historic trust, it's an uphill job.

The car park at the mill had more cars than we have ever seen there, and with reason. The mill was running! The great waterwheel clunked and thumped around and around doing its job of rotating shafts and turning gears.

I don't remember having seen an enclosed wheel before, but the wheel at Pakenham Mill was inside the building under the grinding wheels it was powering. I stood right next the wheel, so close. Immense drive and energy from that turning wheel engulfed me. I felt how the wheel could not only power machinery on three floors of the mill, but also (at one time) drive threshers, hoists, and other machinery in the next-door barn.

Syd showed us around the other buildings not usually open to the public.

A cluttered workshop in an old shed was the domain of one volunteer, a fellow in his 80s. He did mechanical upkeep jobs around the mill. Another building was the aforementioned barn, a cavernous place now used for storage and as a workshop for large projects. Corrugated tin sheets had been patched over openings in the walls. Sagging and rusty, they rattled and banged in the wind of this gloomy day. The volunteers hope to make the barn into an educational center one day.

The mill proper is a big, tall, white building stretched along the country lane. Only the high-roofed part of the building, about half of it, is mill. The other part, with a lower roofline, is the mill house. The miller just had to open an interior door to step from his home to his work.

The mill house was for many years a private residence after the mill closed. It had been only recently purchased by the Suffolk Building Trust and that door re-opened from the house into the mill. Windows from two walls of the house overlooked the millpond, where we picnicked in July. A whole stretch of windows over the kitchen sink and counter was right level with the pond. With that view, I might even like doing dishes.

The real corker, through, was behind a flat white door at the right end of the kitchen sink counter. Syd opened that door, and we stepped back three or four hundred years. It was a dim room, lit by only a small window. When I got used to the light, I nearly jumped up and down with excitement. I was in an ancient kitchen, possibly the original kitchen for the millhouse.

One end of the room was completely taken up with a brick fireplace. At the left side of the fireplace was a brick enclosure for a vat used for making beer, which would ferment nicely in the warmth. Syd showed me an arched opening in the inner wall of the fireplace for an oven. It was a big oven, all brick lined. The oven proper and an outside stoker door took up the rest of the right-side wall next to the fireplace. When the house was modernized, the new kitchen and a bathroom were built in front of the old kitchen, a door put in, and the room saved for posterity. The reason for the door was that possibly the room was used for storage over the years. The mill volunteers call it the “Tudor Kitchen” although it has not yet been dated.

Syd asked if we wanted to see the upstairs. Is the Pope a Catholic? What could be more exciting than exploring a hundreds-years old home tucked into a mill building. The varnish was worn off the old wooden steps that we climbed. The floors upstairs slanted, one of them at about thirty degrees. Syd went into that room, Bob and I contented ourselves with sticking our heads in the door. There were five bedrooms up there, and a full bath! With some major restoration work, those five rooms will become a flat (apartment) in the future to bring some income to the mill site.

From the house we went through the door back into the mill proper. The hopper rattled, the millstone whirred, and soft brown flour trickled into a big paper sack held by the volunteer miller. Flour sprinkled his cap, frosted his beard, and dusted his nose. Visitors gathered around him to watch, and so did we. The flour slid out of the chute, a bit at a time, and fell into the bag with clouds of dust.

After a while Syd took us up the ladder-like stairs to see the work of the grain hopper and grist wheel. It was two floors above that floor yet that the wheat began its journey down to the paper bag. The early miller had to haul bags of wheat up three floors. Some time along the way a simple hoist for the bags was rigged up, but it took two men to operate. It took two men to operate it still when we were there. The miller could not do it alone.

I picked up bag of flour from mill shop for Margaret. She bakes home made bread with it. I was hoping to get some of that homemade bread some time.

When we had seen enough, we came out of the mill and I went elephant hunting. Syd had showed us an article in the paper about a parade of elephants created by a topiary artist. The artist worked right across from Pakenham Mill. The elephants were destined for Hyde Park in London as a benefit for Asian elephants. I hoped they had not gone to London yet.

What luck! There they were, twelve elephants of woven willows over a steel frame marching in a country meadow in Pakenham. The adult elephants were twelve feet high, the babies three feet. It had taken two men six months to create them. The artist was unkind, and had fenced the meadow and locked the gate. I hung over the gate and ranged along the fence to get pictures, albeit distant ones, of the pachyderm parade.

It was time for lunch, too soon! We left the mill for Syd and Marian's home. When we got there, Marian had set out a nice bit of lunch. Afterwards we all sat down in the sitting room. The idea was to plan for the week after we got back from France, and to go through the details of the day we all had with the kids in London so I could write it up to send it to you. (Which has been done.) We got off on so many tangents that it was amazing we did get the diary (calendar) done for the upcoming week. But London got lost in the fog.

Syd and I ventured to walk out into the stolid English mist while Marian and Bob kept on chatting. Syd got a prescription filled and I bought some more lined paper to write these “Postcards” while in France. The pharmacy where Syd got his meds was another melding of the past and present. The modern store, Lloyd's Chemists, was built around a Tudor building. I mean literally built around it. The Tudor building was encased by the modern store.

At eye level, I saw a modern counter filled with Lancome cosmetics, laxatives, and sinus tablets. But when I looked up, the ceiling was supported by a network of ancient beams, some with carved decorations on them. In the glass front show windows, hula hoops and beach toys were backed by huge antique posts, one with a Renaissance carved figure into it. These posts held up the walls and jettied second story of the Tudor house. If you are ever in Bury St. Edmunds, Lloyds is worth a stop! In fact, while I was wandering around and waiting for Syd, a clerk asked if she could help me, or if I had just come in to see the building. It must be a regular attraction in the town.

When we walked back home, with exquisite timing, we arrived with the cocktail hour. Marian served some excellent hummus and crackers with our drinks, and we were into the evening already. A delicious dinner followed. She served baked salmon, steamed vegetables, and new potatoes. With a glass of wine, you couldn't do better. After the dinner dishes were cleared, Marian brought the tea tray into the lounge.

When London had foundered in the afternoon, we set it for our after-dinner job. Tea and London chat took us into the late evening. Finally we wore out and Syd took us back to The Glen. We had to get some sleep. We were headed for France early in the morning.