Quiet North Hampshire is a sight-seeing treasure trove

The Vyne, Silchester Roman Ruins, Stratfield Saye, Chawton Cottage, Winchester Cathedral and the Bombay Sapphire Distillery

As a consideration while house hunting, density of nearby sight-seeing spots is probably not high on the lists of most English people.  It's a different story for the American expat.

Twelfth Night at The Vyne

For Americans who can find the time and money to push beyond the local choices of Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean, Great Britain is the No. 1 choice for foreign travel.  If they're visiting, the effort of trans-Atlantic flying means they'll be staying a while.  (Rocketing good guest accommodation up that house-hunting list as well.)  As their host, you'll probably want to spend time showing them around, so you want a range of sights that won't bore you, and aren't a hassle to reach.  If you can't take time off work, you want locations close enough for public transport, taxis, or easy drop off and pick up.  If you live in London, of course, this is no problem.  Once you move out of the capital, things can get challenging.

Not, however, in North Hampshire.  My Aunt Marian has just finished a long weekend here, reminding me of just how culturally rich our little part of this green and pleasant land is.  We spent three of her four days within 22 miles of home, packing in a delightful range of activities.  Don't let the charmless modernity of Basingstoke fool you into dismissing the whole area; there's gold in those surrounding fields.  Here's an overview.

The Vyne
The more I go to our local National Trust property, the more I love it.  (With the exception, earlier this summer, of a run-in with a particularly nasty volunteer who was channelling every sour, old, fun-hating librarian stereotype known to man.  I'll grant she might have been having a bad day, and forget it.)  The house is a gem.  Grand enough to impress, small enough to digest.  Distinct layers of history telling a story about how such places come together by slow amalgamation.  (Tudor, Carolingian, Georgian, Victorian)  And there's a good handful of blockbusters for history and architecture geeks: A

contemporary portrait of Catherine of Aragon in the chapel stained glass; a neo-classical staircase to make Wedgwood fans pant with desire;  one of the best Regency print rooms still in existence ... it's the supposed inspiration for the Duke of Wellington's rooms at Stratfield Saye;  Fascinating links to Horace Walpole and Jane Austen.  If you can play the piano, which is what my aunt actually does for a living, you can sit down and have a go at their Victorian ivories.

Outside, the gardens are pretty though unexceptional.  The real stars are the riverside and woodland walks.  In front of the house, lawns are thoughtfully dotted with deck chairs for your use, sloping down to a "lake" (created by holding up the flow of the river) graced by ducks, geese and swans.  Walk along its banks, swaying reeds towering above you, and you'll come to a remarkable marsh given over to wildfowl.  There's a wooden hide where you can sit and watch.  Or continue on for miles of meandering through the forest, silent but for the occasional hoot of a child's glee.

Every summer The Vyne hosts The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a traditional Shakespearean troop that performs, in a style the Bard would have recognised, on the lawns.  We were impressed by their Macbeth a few years ago (review here), and were equally delighted ... though considerably more cheered ... by this year's Twelfth Night.

Silchester
The Vyne has a fine collection of Roman artefacts unearthed locally, and one legend concerning its unusual name has the Roman Emperor Probus ordering the first vineyard in England on this spot.  Nobody can prove the wine lore, but there's no doubt about Romans being here.  Just six miles beyond the National Trust house, you'll find the remains of Calleva Atrebatum in the sleepy village of Silchester.  At the height of the Roman empire this was a bustling, walled town of more than 20 square blocks, complete with its own forum, government buildings, baths and a small amphitheatre outside the walls.  It was a major crossroads (much as Basingstoke is today), from where the road from London split into branches heading for Bath, Gloucester and Old Sarum.

While universities tend to excavate here every summer, and have unearthed some lovely stuff, you need to moderate your expectations.  No ruined buildings, mosaics or stacks of columns here.  Silchester's claim to fame is the only unaltered ring of Roman urban walls in England.  (You can see some fine circumferential walls in York and Chester, but they're mostly Medieval built on Roman foundations.)  Calves was completely abandoned by the 7th century, usurped by the Saxon settlements of Basing and Reading, and has spent more than a thousand years since as farmland.  At points, it takes some imaginative thinking to see that the tree covered ridge with the gentle slope down to a shade-dappled stream is, indeed, the remains of the old wall and the defensive ditch in front of it.  That's actually part of Silchester's magic.  You'll feel like you're an explorer stumbling on a lost city for the first time.  Other than the occasional local walking his dog, you'll probably be alone.  The most impressive bit is the West Gate, where a good-sized chunk of the wall looms out of the fields on either side, and the gap in its run makes clear where a stately gatehouse would have been.  The pastoral views from here are soul-soothing.  The silence is broken only by birds and wind-rustled leaves, putting you in just the right mood for a slightly melancholy contemplation of how easily the mighty can fall.

Stratfield Saye
Another local estate to benefit from Roman goodies unearthed in these fields is Stratfield Saye, though it's far more famous as the family home of the Dukes of Wellington.  Aunt Marian and I were both captivated by a quadruple-biography called Sisters of Fortune, which explored the fascinating lives of the four grand-daughters of the last surviving signer of the American Declaration of Independence.  Three moved to England and the eldest, Marianne, is reputed to have been the love of the first Duke of Wellington's life ... though she married his brother.  And, in her previous marriage, she was briefly sister-in-law to Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Wellington's arch rival.  A great case of truth being better than fiction.  Marianne is the only person not of the family "blood" whose portrait

hangs in the dining room here, and a miniature of that dining room portrait was found inside the Duke's pocket watch when he died.  Aunt Marian, who, like her historic name-sake, is also from Baltimore, had to make a pilgrimage to see where part of the story took place.

Most people will be more familiar with Wellington's public exploits: building the foundations of the empire in India, the Peninsular Wars, Waterloo, Prime Minister, mentor to Queen Victoria and godfather to her youngest son.  The estate here was supposed to hold a palace equivalent to the one John Churchill received from the crown to commemorate Blenheim, but things never worked out.  The Duke, always a man of simple tastes, made some basic alterations to the existing house.  His descendants followed suit.  Thus these days you have a fairly modest estate, crammed with treasures from the Great Duke's life that are often amusingly wedged into spaces too small to do them justice.  It's still very much a family home, only opened for a few weeks a year.  The tour guides know their stuff and all have more than a bit of hero worship for the man who established the line.

While in the area, check out The Iron Duke, an excellent gastropub in the estate village.

Chawton Cottage

At a big 17 miles from home, this is starting to push the sightseeing envelope ... but the drive alone is a thing of joy if you appreciate the beauty of rolling farmland and twisting lanes overhung by ancient trees.  At the end of the drive you'll find the charming village of Chawton, where a modest house (roughly the equivalent of a modern 4-bedroom suburban home today) saw Jane Austen write her greatest works.  Today, it's a museum to her life, family and novels.

Your enjoyment of Chawton will be in direct proportion to how much you know and love Austen's work.  Real fanatics can spend hours here, delving into possible influences for different characters and plotlines across her classics.  The casual reader may be more interested in how four genteel but cash-strapped women managed to co-exist in this relatively small space, or spend time wandering in the lovely gardens ... at their peak this time of year.  People who haven't read Austen should probably give this a pass; I know better than to ever drag my husband here!

Winchester Cathedral
Our most distant point, at a whopping 22 miles, is our county town of Winchester.  It never seems to be near the top of the English cathedral lists, perhaps because Medieval engineering and subsidence conspired to leave it without a cathedral's trademark spire.  It's a special place, however, and deserves more renown.  Like all English cathedrals, you'll need to pay to get in; the Church of England doesn't have the revenues to let tourists crawl all over its best assets for free.  Your admission (besides helping to maintain this glorious place) gets you a guided tour, and the volunteers are excellent.

I believe the greatest glory of Winchester is its chantry chapels, some of the best and most abundant in the land.  The rarest treasure, however, might be its Anglo-Saxon baptismal font, probably the best of its type to be seen.  Don't miss the Winchester Bible, the chapel with pre-Raphaelite windows by Bourne-Jones, and the caskets containing the bones of the Anglo-Saxon kings.  In their time, after all, this was the capital of the kingdom rather than London.

Beyond the cathedral close you'll find a provincial market town well worth exploring, with plenty of Georgian architecture enlivened by Medieval and Victorian neighbours.  Other than a ruthlessly ugly, but welcome, multi-story car park, there's not much evidence of the modern world.  Winchester also manages to have a decent proportion of independent restaurants and shops, making it a great place for a wander.

Bombay Sapphire Distillery Tour
Roughly half way between us and Winchester, The Bombay Sapphire Distillery straddles the crystal clear river Test in a wooded valley right out of a fairy tale.  We were early adopters last year, not too long after the company consolidated its distilling here at Laverstoke Mill and made their play for the tourist market.  (Initial report here)  All the essentials remain the same, but the eight months of development have helped them knock the rough edges off.  The plants in the greenhouses ... magnificent structures rising from the river and showing off the botanicals that go into the gin in their growing state ... have matured a bit so the display no longer looks so raw.  The tour guides have polished their patter; delivery was smoother, more amusing and had a few more jokes.  While this is a good option for a mid-winter visit (something not true of many other places in this entry), it's at its

best in the summer.  Pink lythrum and tall reeds swayed along the river bank, trout hung suspended in the water waiting on fat flies and visitors enjoyed the cocktail included with their tour on a broad sun-trap of a patio.  (Despite the clouds in my photo, we got intermittent sunshine while there.)  They've managed to capture the essence of English summer.  Which, depending on your perspective, is either ironic or perfectly logical coming from a brand developed specifically for the American market, relying on British style to generate sales.

I didn't buy any Bombay.  I confess, we're a Tanqueray house, though we've been sampling a lot of boutique, small batch distillery offerings lately.  And this is probably the least repeatable of the activities on my list simply based on price.  At £15 per person, it's the most expensive of the local attractions.  (The Roman walls at Silchester are the cheapest, being free.)  But this visit was worth it not just to give Aunt Marian a special experience ... Bombay is her brand ... but to discover a stunning cocktail called the Laverstoke.  I'll wrap this entry with the recipe.

The LaverstokeGlass – Balloon or large wine
Ingredients – 50 ml Bombay Sapphire
15 ml Martini Extra Dry (autumn season), Rosso (winter), Bianco (spring), Rosato (summer)
15 ml Bottlegreen elderflower cordial
100 ml Fever Tree ginger ale
Method – Pour the Bombay Sapphire, vermouth and elderflower cordial into a balloon glass. Stir with a bar spoon, then squeeze and drop a fresh lime wedge in. Add cubed ice and stir. Pour ginger ale in and gently stir. Garnish with second squeezed lime, two slithers of fresh ginger slices and a sprig of mint, grouped together on one side of the glass.