Stow Landscape Gardens Trip(4-Aug-07)

The weather was predicted to be clear without rains for Sat, 4-Aug-07 and it being a weekend we decided to visit Stow Landscape Gardens in Buckingham. We took 9:50 am X5 bus from stop opposite City Center McDonald's. It took nearly 40 mins to reach Buckingham. Behind the bus top we got down was Tesco super market and we had a small coffee break there while waiting for Ashish. Once Ashish joined us, we started on foot till we reached Swan club, where we decided to take cabs for Stow as it appeared far. We took 2 cabs and reached Stow around 11:00 am. After taking paying the entry charges at the reception we were just in time at the Stow tea house to join a free guided tour of Stow landscape garden. Even though Stow is a garden, surprisingly you won't find flowers here, thus the name Landscape garden. Brief history of Stow Landscape gardens available at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-stowegardens/w-stowegardens-history.htm. We were joined by a group of 8 other visitors in our guided tour. We found the details provided by our guide about the history of Stow pretty interesting. The landscape was beautiful a places. We also came across the Cooks Monument after Captain James Cook's discoveries in the South Pacific. It was then when we came to know that Captain cook was captured, murdered, cooked and eaten by the cannibal tribes during once of his explorations. The tour went on for about an hour and a half where in we covered most of the garden. The garden mainly consists of several small Temples of 18th Century build for various reasons. There are a number of lakes too, which are so designed and built that one can be easily drained into the other and so on. The Stow garden also houses the Stow School. There are a couple of Golf courses around the Stow school. After the guided tour was over we broke for lunch. Once we were done with our lunch, we decided to explore remaining areas on our own. With sufficient photos clicked by our friends for memories we finally settled at The Temple of Concord and Victory for some rest. We left Stow by 5:30 pm after having tea and some snack at the Tea Room.

Group:Vikram,Pankaj,Vikas,SreeHarsha,Sriram,Ashish,Dipesh,Yogesh