I have made patchy progress in adhering to my 2024 New Year resolutions during the first half of this year.  I’m ok with alcohol targets and weight management.  As planned, I’m spending more quality time reading books and I’m listening to less (largely agitating or depressing) news on the radio and television.  However, I’m not doing enough back exercises despite grumbling about a stiff back.  Also, my resolve to step up my creative activity has been weak since my visible darning of a load of socks and my devising of an Easter treasure hunt for First Grandchild.

Additionally, since a good start early in the year, Jane and I have not been consistent in addressing our joint aim of embarking on more short trips away from home.  We set this target with the intention of responding to periods of good weather and our relatively flexible diaries to see bits of the UK we are not familiar with.  In part that has been because the abnormally cool, wet weather hasn’t been particularly conducive to such thinking.  Also, my diary has been less flexible since I took up a new commitment on Wednesday afternoons to listen to children read as part of the local ‘Read With Me’ scheme.

We have done much better as the weather has improved and the school term drew to a close.  We have followed up our trip to Sissinghurst, Rye and Lewes with another lengthy excursion to Houghton Hall and Gardens in north Norfolk, and then on to visit friends in north Suffolk.  On all these travels this month, we were blessed with very good weather. 

Houghton Hall was impressive, the gardens-cum-sculpture park there were interesting and it was great to see our longstanding friends again.

We left early with the intention of arriving at the Houghton Hall at opening time but, after encountering tedious traffic jams around Kings Lynn, arrived a little after midday.  The car park was already extending into the overflow area but the grounds of the house are so huge that, once we got into them past the café and exhibitions (including a truly remarkable exhibition of the Cholmondeley Collection of Model Soldiers) in the splendid West Wing, the crowds seemed to melt away.

The gardens double up as a sculpture park and, immediately, we could see Antony Gormley statues dotting the acres of lawn.  Jane explained that the 100 statues comprising his work called ‘Time Horizon’ had been installed so that they were all standing at the same height above sea level.  Given the undulating land of the gardens, this concept meant that some statues barely were barely visible – with just their heads showing – while others were on tall plinths.  We have seen the multiple statues (of himself) several times before in a variety of settings but this idea of consistent altitude was a new and amusing one for me.

In the South Wing there was a small, temporary exhibition of Magdalene Odundo’s work called ‘Metamorphosis and Transformation’, an installation of blown glass vessels apparently based on an ancient Egyptian ear stud found.  That was impressive although I found some of her other work set out in the main house elegant but a little distracting in its contrast with the heavy furnishings and wall art there.

Elsewhere in the gardens, we saw sculpture by other artists we have encountered before such as Richard Long, Sean Scully and Rachel Whiteread, plus several others I wasn’t familiar with.  I particularly enjoyed ‘Sybil Hedge’ by Anya Gallaccio.  This was an unusual ‘sculpture’ made from a large, winding beech hedge that worked well in the large scale of the garden.

The Palladian style house was bathed in sun but, inside, the rooms were dark to preserve the furnishings, tapestries and artworks.  As Jane remarked, despite the size of the rooms, they felt almost claustrophobic after the expanses of the grounds.  The tapestries that adorned many of the walls contributed to that feeling but they were remarkably well preserved and had interesting content.  The sumptuous rooms, with their blurry views out onto the lawns and deer park though original, handmade glass, were well worth the extra visit fee.

The highlight of the visit for me was the Walled Garden.  This was beautiful at every turn and a riot of colour.  An interesting twist was that vegetables were grown between the flowers and, here too, Gormley’s statues (on plinths here because of the lower altitude) were watching over us.  It was clear that the volunteers and gardeners that manage the garden are not blighted by the multitude of slugs and snails as we are back at home; everything looked vibrant and healthy.

From Houghton Hall we drove south to Eye in Suffolk.  By this time, we needed to charge up the car.  We have noticed a huge improvement in the availability of electric vehicle charging points during our last few trips around the United Kingdom.  Certainly, both our charge ups on this trip were very quick and easy.

We arrived at our friend’s house in time for drinks in the sunshine.  There was also time for an evening tour of their garden, the private allotments adjoining the garden which they own and manage, and the entrance to the woodland/wetlands beyond the allotments that are now owned by our friends and others in the community.  The various types of land they look after are lovely slices of nature.  They are also a labour of love although one task not needed is slug management – their chickens prodding around in the allotments seem to deal with that!

The excellent and copious hospitality we were given in terms of food and drink put my New Year resolution targets for weight and alcohol consumption under pressure but, as ever, it was great to catch up with old friends.  Plus, our target to have more days away from home exploring the UK was helped along.