Monday January 23, 2006

Another walk around Penn

Only one walk this weekend household chores preventing a second in ever increasingly colder and brighter weather in the UK. We repeated a walk I did on my own last year a fairly short four miler and three pubs dividing the four miles into three short stints. We started at Penn church built of many different materials; flint, sarson stones, Roman bricks and limestone clunch. It goes back to the 11th century. Inside is Penn Doom a 15th century painting of Christ in triumph on judgement day. However it seems to be on loan to the Victoria and Albert museum a lot nowadays. We set off down a lane and then into woods and across fields. Our first stop was at the pub The Royal Standard of England which is a wonderful old building. I had a very tasty sausage sandwich - hand made sausages and chips. We noted that the pub was to be used for filming of Midsomer murders on Monday. We will look carefully at new shows to see if we can spot the interior of the pub. The pub was given its name after Charles II hid in its roof after the battle of Worcester in 1651. His gratitude was shown by his bestowing the unique name on the pub. I could not get a decent picture of the pub but took a shot of one of its interesting chimneys.

Feeling full we then set on for the rest of the walk. We followed paths enclosed in narrow strips of woodland and open fields. Apart from a few muddy stretches it was most enjoyable.

We then came across Tylers Green where clay deposits have been used to make floor tiles installed in many famous buildings in the UK. (Hence the name Tylers - Tilers). We decided not to stop at the pub here but carry on. The next part of the walk had us slightly lost but the sight of the spire of the church at Penn had us back on track. After taking our boots off we had a liquid refreshement in the Crown again a very old pub. A bit more history about Penn apart from its link with Pennsylvania that I mentioned when I did this walk the before the village has a reputation of beng a healthy place. During the plagues in the 15th and 16th centuries children were often sent there to benefit from the fresh air. A Edmund Burke the noted parliamentarian who lived in nearby Beaconsfield setup a school for the sons of French gentlemen killed in the revolution. A churchwarden's son a Jack Shrimpton was a successful highwayman at the start of the 18th century very often pulling in one hundred and fifty pounds of swag every day until he hung from the gallows in 1713.