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A trip to Selborne

Each year on or near her birthday we try to entice Olive out for the day but she leads such a busy social life it’s not always easy to find a free day. This year (2003) we all went to look at Selborne House, home of Gilbert White the 18th century naturalist. We paid a lot of money to tour the house only to find it mainly shut while the builders removed the roof. By general consent we decided it was a total swizz to put it mildly. I was however fascinated to read that in order to discover whether a tortoise could swim Gilbert put it in a barrel of water and noted that it merely walked across the bottom with its life slowly ebbing away. Well if that’s the sort of behaviour that makes a great naturalist, then I think I’m a pretty good naturalist too. As a boy I discovered that wasps showed no inclination to resume their aeronautical activities once they had been chopped in half.

Here we are at Selborne House. The house was being refurbished and half closed so we had to look around the garden instead.

After spending enough in the gift shop to fund a whole day’s work on the house restoration, Olive finds some plants she can buy.

Where's the beer? Looks like there should be a glass in his hand

Back home we can relax in the conservatory. To see Selborne House without its covering of scaffolding and tarpaulins you can look here.

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