First up: Cookham. Cookham is a little village that's about 10 minutes walk from the local train station, across a bit of land looked after by the National Trust (I always thought they just cared for historic houses, etc, but apparently not!).
Cookham village is very charming...
... with some nice looking pubs and tea shops.
It's best known as the home of the painter Stanley Spencer. That's the house he grew up in on the left (with the blue plaque).
I've been meaning to visit the Stanley Spencer gallery on Cookham High Street for years - it's great to have finally got around to it! The gallery is small but very nice, with some really interesting audio visual displays as well as (of course) lots of Spencer's paintings and sketches.
It's a lot of fun walking round Cookham and seeing things you recognise from Spencer's paintings...
... like the angel in the churchyard...
... and Cookham bridge.
I had planned to go to the tourist information office in Marlow, buy a tourist map of the town and walk around seeing the historical sights (like the house Mary Shelley lived in) but - alas! - it was already closed for the day when I got there. So I just wandered around the town centre for a bit looking in the windows of all the smart shops and restaurants, went down to the river for a bit...
... then had some food in a nice tea room and managed to just get to the station in time to catch that hour's train home (phew!).
3 comments:
I am loving these little tours of yours. I went to England earlier this year for the first time and cannot wait until I get to go back again. Thanks for telling us about these places.
Thanks again for this beautiful quiet walk in the countryside! Love these posts!
In Love With Threads - I'm so glad you're enjoying them! It's a lot of fun being able to keep a sort of blogging scrapbook of my trips :)
bairozan - thank you! x
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