Tag Archives: Wykeham Arms

Win Guide to August

August 11, 2015 thewinchesterguide Leave a comment

Dino Fest 2015

Don’t be alarmed but the Dinosaurs are back and they have chosen to base themselves in Hampshire. It’s Dino Fest 2015, a monumental year of “roarsome” events for budding palaeontologists, eager explorers and their parents who may be looking for rain-proof indoor fun. Winchester is offering Dinosaurium at the City space, Winchester Discovery Centre for free. It’s an opportunity to see local artists create creatures from paper, card and other materials. There will be an Edwardian specimen jar with a ‘real-life’ dinosaur to examine. If you fancy going further afield, there are plenty of events happening across the county including Milestones Museum Basingstoke, SeaCity Museum, Southampton, Westbury, Eastleigh, Andover and Salisbury. If you go to more than one event you can collect stickers to enter some competitions, with prizes including an annual family culture card for Hampshire, or a torch-lit trail of the Dinosaur Gallery – a live science show at the Natural History Museum with a Museum expert at midnight.

Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium is offering extended opening hours, from 10am – 5pm for the whole of august, to provide plenty of educational entertainment for the summer holidays. To carry on the Dinosaur theme, you can book to see Dinosaurs at Dusk, in the largest stand-alone 360 degrees planetarium cinema in the UK, where you can lie back an watch moving images of dinosaurs above your head.

Running Horse, Littleton — Running Horse, Family Fun Day

Head to the Running Horse in Littleton on Saturday 15th August, where there will be a ‘Family Fun Day’ including a bouncy castle and face-painting for children in the garden from 1pm. Whilst we’re in the village, Littleton Pre-School celebrates its 40th birthday this year and welcomes children from 2 years, so don’t forget to get your child registered for September. Based at the Millennium Memorial Hall which is set in the idyllic countryside grounds, it is a perfectly crafted space for indoor and outdoor play and learning. The pre-school is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday between 8:30am and 12:15pm, with extended sessions available until 3pm on and Wednesday.

Remember Chesney Hawkes? The Railway Inn will be giving you a chance to spend an evening with him on Friday 14th August at 7.30pm as he leads you through his musical journey with Percival Elliott and Anthony Starble. Of course, music fans might be at the Boom Town Festival, from the 13th – 17th August on the Matterley Estate. This may well be the Festival’s last year on the Estate due to planning restrictions, however the 2015 edition is set to go ahead.

The Hospital of St Cross Gardens will be open as part of the NGS Gardens Open for charity on Sunday 30th August, 2-5pm. Admission £4, children free. Or you can take a tour of the walkways and Church Tower on the 21st August at 7pm, tickets £20. The Hospital is one of England’s oldest continuing almshouses, founded in 1136 by Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror. It is the oldest charitable institution in the United Kingdom. It’s worth making a day of it by walking through the water meadows and rewarding yourself with some summer food and drink at the Wykeham Arms, or browsing at the Kingsgate Village shops: P&G Wells Booksellers, Cornflowers Gift Shop, Kingsgate Books and Prints and Kingsgate Wine and Provisions.

Graze Festival

The brand new Graze Festival makes it debut on 30th August in Hazeley Fields, Twyford, offering local foods, pop up restaurants, music and performing arts (supplied by Hat Fair) with proceeds raised going to support local charities. There will be a dedicated kids area too, so plenty for the whole family to enjoy.

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Win Guide to Easter

March 31, 2015 thewinchesterguide Leave a comment

Egg-cellent news! It’s Easter time and there’s lots of egg-citing things on offer! Here’s the Win Guide to Easter.

Highclere Castle is well worth a visit this weekend. Built on the foundations of the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester (who owned the estate in Newbury from the 8th century), since 1679 the castle has been home to the Earls of Carnarvon. Never a retiring lot, the Carnarvons have been noted for Egyptology (the 5^th Earl was present at the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb), for an association with HRH Elizabeth II’s race horses (the 7^th Earl was racing manager for her majesty) and now synonymous with the thespian equivalent of royalty in the form of Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville et al. as the filming location for Downton Abbey. This weekend, Sunday 5^th April, the Highclere team will be holding an Easter Egg Hunt event to raise funds for local charity Naomi House and Jacksplace. Lady Carnarvon herself will be judging an Easter bonnet parade. Spider-Man and Elsa from ‘Frozen’ will be wandering the grounds, and there will be market stalls, a vintage car display, a climbing wall and zip wire, a petting farm and birds of prey on offer to boot! Tickets are a steal at £5 on the door.

Closer to home, Sparsholt College will be holding an ‘Easter Bunny and Chick’ weekend from Friday 3^rd – Sunday 5^th April. It’s an Alice In Wonderland – themed affair with a Mad Hatter’s tea party, Easter egg hunt and classic craft activities such as egg painting. Not forgetting the newly-hatched chicks and young bunnies on display, it sounds like a must visit for families.

Winchester Cathedral - Easter Egg Trail — Cathedral – Easter Egg Trail

Winchester Cathedral will be holding its own ‘Easter Egg Trail’ between the 5^th – 19^th April. Ten decorative eggs will be hidden amongst the stunning architecture for ‘eggsplorers’ to discover, and free chocolate prizes can be claimed in the Cathedral gift shop. Services on Easter Day itself (5 April) will be 8am Holy Communion, 10am Choral Mattins (Preacher: The Bishop), 11.15am Festal Eucharist (Preacher: The Dean) and 3.30 Choral Evensong.

The Winchester Bunny Hop will be celebrating its sixth birthday this year. It’s a great initiative on the part of Winchester City Council, Winchester Bid and, this year, Chococo the chocolate shop and cafe have rightly got in on the action. The quiz allows children to hunt for egg-shaped clues hidden in participating shops in Winchester and rearrange them into an Easter themed word to claim a Chococo prize. And if that’s not incentive enough, the Chococo team have recently been hailed as experts in the field of Easter chocolates. Their ‘Robot’ egg was dubbed by the Telegraph as ‘best egg for children’ on 28^th March 2015. Even better news: they will be open every day over the Easter weekend. Quiz sheets can be collected from the Winchester Tourist information centre or downloaded here: http://www.visitwinchester.co.uk/winchester-bunny-hop-2015.

A spring-time stroll to Kingsgate Village is always worthwhile to walk off the chocolate and browse for an Easter gift, curtesy of Cornflowers Gift Shop, Kingsgate Books and Prints, P&G Wells Booksellers, Kingsgate Wines and of course a visit to the Wykeham Arms for rest and refreshment awaits. Finally, don’t forget to visit to the 17^th Century City Mill who will be offering hot cross bun baking on Friday 3^rd April, and a Cadbury Eggsplorer Easter Egg trail over the weekend.

Have fun, and stock up on Gaviscon…

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Let there be light

November 12, 2014 thewinchesterguide Leave a comment

‘Tis the season of dark mornings and pitch-black journeys home in the late afternoon or evening, but Winchester is about to deliver some festive illumination to lighten up our mood.

Winchester Christmas light 'switch on' — Winchester Christmas light ‘switch on’

There are two Christmas light ‘switch on’ events to look forward to this month. The first, taking place today (Thursday 13th November) will be an all-singing/all-dancing affair between 3-7pm on the High Street and Broadway. Capital FM’s breakfast presenters, Gillies and Emily, will host the event. Performers include Integr8 Dance, Winchester’s Military Wives Choir, Encore Youth Theatre and a cheeky panto preview from the cast of the Theatre Royal’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’. As for the grand finale at 6pm, Xfactor’s boyband ‘Concept’ will perform to a laser light and music show. Well, if you can’t have a bit of a camembert at Christmas… The event has been kindly sponsored by Denplan. The 13th also marks the start of late-night shopping on a Thursday in the city, plus free parking from 4.30pm. For full details on where and when visit here.

If you miss out on the 13th fear not, for Kingsgate Village will be hosting its inaugural ‘switch on’ taking place beneath the medieval gateway at 6pm on 20th November. The Bishop of Winchester will be guest of honour, and the evening promises be a traditional mix of music, late-night shopping and mulled wine. Kingsgate Village oozes its own sophisticated, friendly and accessible style, with Kingsgate Book & Prints, Cornflowers Gift Shop, Kingsgate Wine & Provisions and the booksellers P&G Wells. It’s a perfect Christmas (or any time) shopping destination for those looking for something special and off the beaten track with wonderful personal service from the dedicated shop owners and staff. As a bonus, from 6.30pm P&G Wells is hosting a joint book launch with the Wykeham Arms for Meats, Eats, Drinks & Leaves by Penny Ericson and Proteus by Simon Hawkins. Full details here.

And for a stellar view of the spectacle that is Winchester’s ‘perfect Christmas’, from 21st November the Cathedral will be offering a Twilight Tower Tour with a second to none view of the Christmas lights as they sparkle across the city. After the tour, you can enjoy some mulled wine and mince pies in the medieval Undercroft. There’s a minimum age restriction of 12 years and an adult must accompany children under 16 years. (Although there’s no set upper age limit for this tour, it’s a steep climb and not recommended for the elderly, infirm, disabled or pregnant.)

So shake off the winter blues and begin to embrace the impending Yuletide in all its glittering glory.

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Walking to Winchester

July 23, 2014 thewinchesterguide Leave a comment

Chuck Anderson walks us through the South Downs.

After wandering 100 miles westward along the south coast of England, the South Downs Way terminates at Winchester. It’s an easy walk along the top of the downs, though you have to cross four steep river valleys. A determined young walker could do it in four or five days. My wife and I both carry bus passes and there was the British weather to contend with. It took us four months.

The Monk's House Garden — The Monk’s House Garden

From Eastbourne we bent into a stiff, wet westerly over a series of chalk slopes called the Seven Sisters. Our legs counted eight, or perhaps seven plus a half-sister. It was cold enough in April to wear gloves. Rape was in bloom in the fields, lambs skipped about, larks sung and orchids, cowslips and harebells bobbed in the short grass. We crossed the river Ouse at Southease, where Virginia Woolf walked into the water and visited her weekend hideaway, the Monk’s House, with its enchanting garden of magnolias and masses of waving tulips.

Ditchling Beacon is famous for its views, but leaden cloud obscured all except landmarks as close as the Jack and Jill windmills. Heavy rain pursued us up to the rim of Devil’s Dyke, an impressive dry valley. Chanctonbury Ring is where, in 1760, a naturalist planted a ring of trees on top of an Iron Age fort. Many of them blew down in the 1987 gales, but it is still an impressive and allegedly haunted site.

In the charming village of Amberley our room at a pub offered a view of the Wild Brooks, a protected grazing marshland. The next day we trudged into a force eight gale which knocked us sideways. The path through the woods was littered with stout branches, so we kept a wary eye on the twisting limbs overhead. While we sheltered in the lee of a string of three tumuli called ‘The Devil’s Jump’ a crash in the forest started the cattle. A tree had blown down.

We deferred the final stretch to Winchester – two 13-mile days – till the weather forecast was more encouraging, but summer was running out: we were too late for swifts, and the swallows were ominously collecting on the power lines. The fields were golden with stubble and some blackberries were already sweet. Partridges startled us, whirring up at our feet.

Old Winchester Hill is a spur of the downs which was used for burials in the Bronze Age and fortified in the Iron Age. Now it was a mass of wild flowers. The views were fantastic, even on a cloud-chased day. We lay back in the sun for the first time, not as we had hoped dozing on sheep-bitten grass sprinkled with cowslips, but on flints among groundsel and ragwort.

Reward - Wykeham Arms — Reward – Wykeham Arms

Long before we reached Winchester we could hear the traffic on the M3. One hundred miles in four months. Possibly a record for dilly-dallying; traversing the gentle South Downs way had turned into an epic of endurance. We rewarded ourselves with an overnight stay at the delightful Wykeham Arms. As we poured our tea it started to rain outside.

For more information, visit www.randomthoughtslimited.co.uk/departure-lounge

Chuck Anderson is a writer of books, plays and television.

The Winchester Guide

Tag Archives: Wykeham Arms

Win Guide to August

Win Guide to Easter

Let there be light

Walking to Winchester

The arts & culture guide for the city of Winchester in Hampshire.