Two Families

Around the Beaulieu River, it’s largely about two families. On the west side it’s the Montagu family and the 7000 acre Beaulieu estate which extends down to the Solent. On the east side it’s about a branch of the Rothschild family, including the 200 acre Exbury Gardens, but also extending beyond to the Solent.

This morning I met up with SiL and her husband at Exbury Gardens, before they headed home at lunchtime. August isn’t the best time, most of the plants flowered some time ago. But it’s still all very impressive. In the extra the “history tree”. It’s a slice of a cedar tree which fell in a great storm in 1990, with little arrows identifying key dates in world history and the history of the Gardens, relative to the appropriate tree ring.

I travelled to Beaulieu Palace House for the afternoon. It’s a House, Gardens, the remains of an Abbey, and the National Motor Museum. Far too much to see in half a day. I started off lying on the grass and listening to Lord Montagu’s falconer talking about the history of falconry and the training of hawks and falcons. The main image is him using a lure to lure down a Gyr Falcon (interesting to learn how many of our common words and phrases come from the sport of falconry). It’s a blurred image, but I like it and it does have energy. A couple of less blurred images in the extras.