Weekend in Guildford

So, after getting back this weekend from my little trip to the west of the UK, I've been pretty much bogged down with work of one kind or another... Finally, however, I've managed to get a short respite, and therefore, it should be a great opportunity to put a new entry into this blog.

On Friday afternoon, not long after finishing lectures, I wandered down to the train station and boarded a train for Guildford (with one change at Woking). Depsite having become accustomed to long train journeys (3 days, 4 hours from Irkutsk to Vladivostok whilst in Russia), (21 hours standing from Ruzhou to Guangzhou whilst in China), train journeys in the UK are not quite as exciting... Perhaps it is the banale normalcy of it which makes it seem somewhat less exciting, or perhaps it is simply the fact that it is in no way as exotic, nor am I, for that matter, as in those far off lands I was seen as exotic, having travelled there all the way from Europe.

Nonetheless, travel has made me accustomed to sleeping on far rougher surfaces than a seat on a SouthWestTrains train, so after briefly trying to get some work done for this week and reading some trashy magazine which someone had left behind, I stuffed my bag and coat under my chair and nodded off. Some time later I awoke again to find that people in the carriage had come and gone. I wished I could have fallen asleep again, but sadly, this was not to be, and I was forced to listen as a little boy explained to his younger sister how the world came to be. I make no claims to be a scientist of any repute, but I'm pretty certain his theories were wrong. They all seemed to end in a lot of death for some reason too, which I found amusing in a morbid kind of way. Upon telling his sister that he had no intentions of being pretentious, but he just loved science, he then carried on to ask her what she wanted to know. Her answer: "I want to know how to make tea!". Sadly, her brother was having none of it, and went on to try some riddles he had clearly just learnt on her. Being about six, the sister couldn't have cared less as to the answers of these riddles.

Finally, however, after being delayed in Woking station for a few minutes, I arrived in Guildford, and met Tom in the car park. The entire weekend had been planned out for me to go and visit my friends Tom and Eva in Guildford, as I hadn't seen either of them for quite some time, at least 18 months, probably more. The following day (for I had arrived fairly late at night, and we went straight to bed), we decided to go to the manor and ground at Polesden Lacey as the weather looked fairly promising. We took our time getting ready, and hence left a bit late - we sat around speaking to Tom's mum about knitting techniques - but we arrived at a good time, and went through to the actual manor house. After wandering around and having a brief guided tour which told us about the lady of the manor, a Mrs. Ronald Greville, we had a quick lunch-break and then went for a wander around her sizeable estate.

After wandering the grounds (our subject of conversation being obscure points of English grammar), we wandered back and drove back into Guildford. Once there, we went for a drink at their local pub, the Kings' Head, and then back to the house to watch Dr. No over a plate of pasta.

Sunday morning dawned far sunnier than Saturday, and therefore, not wishing to waste any time, and making the decision not to go climbing indoors, we went to the car and drove off to another National Trust site, the Winkworth Arboretum, located fairly near to Godalming, where some of my good friends went to school. There, I decided to join the National Trust, which will hopefully get me, in the months to come, to go to National Trust sites around the country, particularly in the South West and in Buckinghamshire. As you do in an Arboretum, we wandered the woods and we were amazed at some of the dazzling shades of red and yellow which covered the trees. We followed a long route around the arboretum which ended up going round an ornamental lake at one end of it, and then went back up to the starting point. Here we stopped once more for a coffee before driving back. Getting back to Guildford, we sat for a short while before I had to set off back to Exeter (bus to Basingstoke, and train onwards from there to Exeter). The sunsest from the bus was spectacular, but unfortunately, being inside a moving vehicle and having dirty screens to cope with was not ideal to get a parting shot of the Guildford skyline.