Mr Bond has left the common

Here’s all that remains of the Scottish manor house which, a mere few weeks ago, stood in the middle of Hankley.

Here’s a close up of the scaffolding. It’s a bit sad, really. Still, we won’t really miss it.

Sadly, the church has also been removed, leaving just the faintest hint that it once stood. I thought they should have left it so the MOD could use it when the young soldiers have their training exercises.

Now, all that is left, is for the release of the film so we can see Hankley blown up.

Anyway, that was yesterday…today we had a lovely day planned. We were going to visit The Grange at Northington, an English Heritage place just north of Alresford. We were then going to pop into Alresford for lunch at Caricoli (where we normally have Sunday brunch) followed by a post lunch stroll along the river. Sounds perfect and it may have been had English heritage decided this wasn’t the plan for us.

The road to The Grange is little more than a farm road (which is fine) that meanders through some very scenic countryside but then stops at a big, evil-looking electric gate. The gate has a sign next to it which says the gate will be locked between 6pm and 8:30am every day. I unnecessarily looked at my watch. it was about 12:30 and it wasn’t dark, so I figured we should be ok. I had taken the precaution last night of checking whether the place was open and was assured that it opened on April 1.

We stopped Sidney and I went and checked the status of the gate. It was securely locked. There was no sign to indicate why it was locked. After some disappointed deliberation, we decided to try and access The Grange from the mythical North gate. I say mythical because all we found around the back was another gate (though open this time) declaring it was for residents only and anyone else would be tortured and dumped in the river.

When we’d driven through Arlesford, we were greatly perturbed by the masses of people. We don’t often go on a normal day so it was quite a surprise to realise that, with the shops open, the high street is agog with people. Even when the place is Sunday-empty, there’s often nowhere to park so you can imagine what it was like as we drove through on the way to The Grange.

We decided to go to Winchester instead. There was a sign pointing us in the right direction that said it was but seven miles distant. How could we not go to Winchester after this disappointment?

As it turned out, English Heritage did us a vague sort of favour. There’s a restaurant in Winchester. It’s called the Chesil Rectory and is housed in a building dating from 1450. The building was originally bequeathed to the city of Winchester by Queen Mary Tudor. It’s a pretty little building and we’ve been wanting to go for ages. Today turned out to be the day.

And we had a lovely meal in a lovely setting. (The waiter did ask if it was ok if we sat upstairs. Mirinda asked what was wrong with upstairs. The waiter said nothing, it’s just upstairs.) We’ll definitely be coming back for an evening meal as it’s very close to the car park.

Afterwards we had a jolly long wander up Winchester High Street, giving a cheery wave to Alfred as we walked by.

Being the middle of the Easter weekend, Winchester was pretty crowded but not as bad as Arlesford looked. We walked up as far as the cathedral then came back down the back streets, taking a brief detour along the water meadows where we spotted a few moor hens. One, in particular, had decided to climb a tree – very unusual. This one was far more normal.

Speaking of birds…we spotted this gorgeous little Grey Wagtail as we headed back to the car. He was having a jolly time, popping up and down near the asphalt…as wagtails are wont to do.

And, apart from a brief queue for a lovely ice cream, this was about it. All that remained was for us to drive home in the very considerate rain that waited for us to get out of the open before drizzling down. An unexpected day but still a lovely one. Actually, any day that includes Winchester tends to be lovely.