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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
We were all ears at the group travel shows this
winter and what we heard was New Tours Please!
So each month we’ll be including brand new
itineraries in
The Kettle
that you can still book for
2013 or earmark for 2014. This month I spent some
time with our ladies in the East, Jan and Catherine
and here for starters are two brand new days out in
one of our favourite counties - Essex.
When the Black Death reached the village of Boxted,
some five miles north of Colchester, the villagers
simply upped sticks and moved to the far side of the
valley. In 1648 this no-nonsense community
witnessed a brief skirmish between the Kings men
and the Roundheads during the English Civil War
a generation after the vicar and half the parish had
emigrated to New England as part of the Puritan
Great Migration but beyond that Boxted has slept
quietly through a thousand years of history. I’ll leave
your guide to run shivers down your spine with the
legend of poor Betty Potter. We’ll begin in this
sleepy village at 10.30am to buy morning coffee and
home made biscuits (£2.00pp pay on the day or you
can add it to the tour fee if you prefer).
Suitably refreshed we’re off for the short drive to
Britain’s oldest town – Colchester. By the way for
that piece of information we thank the Roman
historian Pliny the Elder who died on the beach near
Pompeii during the eruption of mount Vesuvius.
We are great fans of Colchester and I believe that
our visit today rings the changes even if you have
been here before for in addition to seeing some of the
old town we are going to show you the very new in
the extraordinary shape of the
firstsite gallery
.
No capitals please we’re modern! At first site (pun
intended) my first impression of this striking building
was Crikey! This is what would happen if Ferrero
Roche designed bandstands. I like it when a building
does that to you – makes you think of chocolate. And
if you think I am being rude you should know that its
local nickname is the Golden Banana. The architect is
Rafael Viñoly, born in Uruguay, raised in Argentina
and currently working on one of the City of London’s
new skyscrapers on Fenchurch Street as well as the
Battersea Power Station Master Plan. This is a very
well thought out building, the gallery’s crescent shape
wraps around an existing garden space without
breaking the tree line or thrusting its modern head up
above Colchester’s historic roofscape. People often
joke about new buildings like The Shard providing
plenty of work for window cleaners but firstsite
actually produced lots of work for plumbers who
applied the copper-aluminium alloy called TECU
Gold that covers the building.
At the heart of this intriguing building the Berryfield
Mosaic, once the dining room floor of a Roman house
unearthed on this site in 1923, has been painstakingly
restored and returned to its original home. It is the
only permanent exhibit, everything else changes.
Beyond the Beaten Track - A New Essex Day