Boarding @ Home: Day 106/84: Garden Waste & Furleigh Wines

Much Virginia Creeper to trim … Avril rose very early to trim the parthenocissus quinquefolia growing over our parking area wall from next home along. It's a treat in autumn, our own Fall Show, but after so much sun and rain this year it's made its way too far. It added to the already accumulated trimmings from the buddleja and the metre high weeds so with the boot choc-a-bloc I headed east to Preston and the Council tip. There's no garden waste collection here in Weymouth as we have in South Northamptonshire each fortnight. It was open with no queuing and when I went to stagger up the steps to unload the fellah in front took pity and did the job for me. I'd also swept up the patio too before we read the meters there and Avril did her best to weed kill. On the way home I managed to top up the Ghibli at Morrisons ready for tomorrow's return to The Lodge. We'd had amateur success the previous evening getting our Somerset House wifi working to enhance the WhatsApp services which were reluctant with its help to send pictures.

Opening weekend went well for Dorset. Although the national media on Sunday night did relish showing 'The 5pm Clapping for the NHS' it majored on the crowds in London's Soho not social distancing. Our own local constabulary were reporting via the Dorset Echo that we had mostly been staying well within bounds. As mentioned earlier from Pete's Aunty Vi's and Hamiltons, trade hereabouts is getting going steadily as would seem to be good common sense; but yes, we can readily empathise with those who've been locked down in apartments for three months or more wanting to get out to pubs and restaurants and be pretty excited about it all.
Bridport trip a failure but an incident! After Avril had attended to July birthday card needs and acquired three new books from a Remainder Shop for £5, we headed across to Furleigh Estate north of Bridport for supplies of their Bacchus Fumé. However for 30 minutes we were stopped in our tracks at 730' above sea level as a heavy lifter craned a car from the ditch and loaded it on its trailer. Onwards then to the vineyard where we were welcomed by a feral black cat standing on its hind legs and eating catnip from a flower tub.

That should have good luck of course but no. A resident engineer caught up with the news that their website had misled us; opening currently was only Thursday/ Sunday 11/3pm not all week 9/5pm. We were Monday arrivers at 3.45pm … mind you they seem to make online shipments each day, just the shop is on the limited hours. Leaving the vineyard we turned right and headed towards Yeovil initially then back towards Poundbury passing for the fourth time through Maiden Newton.
Maiden Newton famed for Le Petit Canard. We'd not heard of it but Duncan had made his way there a couple of years back with Brigitte and recommended it greatly. It's on the list to be visited but not till later this year it seems …. It's a fascinating village about 9 miles north-west of the county town Dorchester at the confluence of the River Frome with its tributary The Hooke. Both these rivers have cut valleys into the surrounding chalk hills of the Dorset Downs. Maiden Newton GWR railway serves the village and the A356 main road also passes through. In the Domesday Book it was recorded as Newetone and is famously the basis for the village of Chalk-Newton, South Wessex, in many of the works of Dorsetshire author Thomas Hardy. Our own home in Melcombe Regis seems to be Budmouth Regis! Not everyone knows that Somerset House stands in Melcombe despite the polling location! After two centuries of decline Melcombe's fortunes were dramatically revived by the patronage of HRH The Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George III, in the 1780s and then of the King himself who regularly used Melcombe as a holiday resort between 1789 and 1811. He is commemorated by a prominent statue on the 'Melcombe' Esplanade recording the gratitude of the inhabitants and by the locally well-known White Horse of Osmington which by an oversight showed the King riding out of the town not into it; which is said to have angered him so much that he never returned!

The well-known terraces of large late Georgian town houses on the Esplanade date from this period. Melcombe eventually merged with Weymouth to the west of the river.

So much more than Le Petit Canard; in the vicinity is evidence of Roman occupation and early British settlements and the parish church of St Mary contains Norman features.