In 2015 my wife and I spent 3 months travelling with our caravan. We travelled up the western side of England, from Cornwall, to Scotland to Orkney. We then travelled south to Sussex and along “the bottom” of England back home. This is an account of that bit of the journey.
Graffham is a tiny village in West Sussex near Petworth between Guildford and Chichester. We’ve never spent time in West Sussex, so we decided in advance to stay for a week at the Club site at Graffham. We were very surprised to find ourselves in a forest with a gritty floor and with our pitch being no more than a sort of alcove among the trees and rhododendrons. We can’t see anyone else, but we can hear them. We’ve passed through delight to claustrophobia to being ok with it. At least we are totally sheltered from any wind.
Littlehampton is a seaside place just east of Bognor Regis and we visited on Saturday and liked it so much we went back on Sunday We really like Littlehampton – not so much for the town, which we haven’t explored, but for the waterside. On Saturday we walked for a mile or two along the sea front and just enjoyed the sea air which we have missed for a while now. We saw a sign for a park and cafe so decided on a cuppa and walked into a fete complete with a daft dog show and belly dancers.
On Sunday we walked along the riverside quay with its holiday makers and all the lovely boats. It’s modern and smart and only disintegrates into “kiss me quick” near the sea front.
One of the main reasons for us to be in this part of the world was to visit the Watts Gallery and Chapel These two are just outside Guildford in the village of Compton. GH Watts was a very successful 19th Century artist who lived with his wife Mary in Compton. His most famous painting is ‘Hope’. He established the gallery to display his work and it still contains many of them including Hope which is on loan. The gallery was also showing an exhibition of Richard Dadd who was locked up in Bedlam and Broadmoor after he murdered his father. This was a real treat because we both find his work fascinating. If you watch the Antique Roadshow you may remember a painting of his being discovered on the show back in the late 80s. It was a scene in the desert at an oasis at night and although referred to in various writings no one knew if it still existed It was valued at the time at £100,000 and was obviously bought by the British Museum because it was in the gallery on loan. If you don’t know Dad’s work do look it up. His paintings whilst ‘mad’ are truly amazing. Mary Watts was a potter and she taught the local people how to make ceramics. Both husband and wife were fervent believers in the Arts and Crafts movement, and they ensured that local people were used for all their building work. Mary trained the lady of the manor alongside the footmen and gardeners. When the village council decided to open a new cemetery, Watts offered to build a chapel at his own expense. Mary designed it and got the villagers to make ceramic decorations for it. It is a very interesting building with a huge amount of decoration all of which has symbolic meanings.
We had a morning’s Circle Dancing with the Chichester group and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s great to get a recharge. We spent the afternoon in the city. It has a pedestrian area which we love, and many charity shops, which one of us loves. The town centre has 4 streets, North Street, South, East and West which meet at the Cross. They are exactly at 90 degrees to each other.
Our last day in the South Downs area was a little rainy so we visited Petworth House just up the road. It’s a National Trust house and it contains the Trust’s main collection of great paintings. There are umpteen paintings by Turner and by Gainsborough together with ones by William Blake, Joshua Reynolds and Hieronymus Bosch. I enjoyed seeing portraits of King Charles 1st and his children that I have seen in history books and also the famous portrait of Henry VIII standing dressed in all his finery.
Although we have enjoyed every day out, we have had in this area we both felt glad to be leaving. We suffered in mood from being shrouded by trees in the camp site but also for miles around us; so, every time we went out, we had to endure miles of seeing nothing but trees. We thought we loved trees but being able to see nothing else got on our nerves. Still we did all we wanted to do and moved on for an overnight stop near Poole
We visited Mottisfont Abbey. This is a National Trust property near Romsey. It was originally an abbey but became a private home. Our reason for visiting is the National collection of old roses which was created in the 1970s. There are 3 linked walled gardens full of roses accompanied by complementary flowers. We’ve been here a few times when the roses are in bloom and it’s a real joy.
We decided to make our last stop the camp site from which we had started out 3 months earlier near Bridgwater, where we started with the Laura Shannon dance weekend back in April. We liked this little site so much and we love this area of Somerset, so it seemed a fitting way to end our trip.