Holy Austin Rock Houses

CleanSteve wanted to buy a super-tool for the garden today that can't be bought online. The item he wanted was 25% cheaper in Dudley, W. Midlands, than locally. I suggested that we have a Grand Day Out, by first getting the garden machinery, then having a picnic and visiting somewhere different in that neighbourhood.

My National Trust app suggested Holy Austin Rock Houses at Kinver Edge, near Stourbridge and Kidderminster. It seems that there were people living in the houses carved out of the local soft sandstone rock, until the 1950s. Electricity was laid on, and there was a well, but it was the lack of sewerage that drove people away in the end. The houses lay abandoned and partially wrecked until 1990, when the National Trust and volunteers began to restore them, step by step. We visited the parlour of the 1900-furnished house (top right) and the 1930-style house, the Martindales (other three pictures). CleanSteve has blipped the interior of the 1930s-style Martindales, the most recent house to be restored.

Up on the layer above, some houses had been demolished for 'elfin safety' reasons. The facade of one had been spectacularly restored and made into the National Trust's tearoom. We were too late to enjoy a cup in the terraced garden under laburnum and ceanothus blossoms. It was still a pleasure to be up there, though: the whole area exuded warmth, late-afternoon tranquility and the bluest skies I've seen since my holiday in Crete.

The windows and doors you may see were put in during restoration: originally the apertures were carved out of the rock, keeping the houses warm in winter and cool in summer. The present windows were put in to keep people from climbing in to have a nosey round the restoration works!

It was a beautiful spot, with far reaching views, and I would have liked to spend more time there. We'd been late getting there, though, having spent some time in the morning photographing a steam train passing through Stroud. ( I took 189 tracking shots, every of them rubbish!) We took a quick drive up to Kinver Edge proper, where we could walk through late- bluebell woods, right to the edge of the sandstone escarpment and look out over Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Then it was time to hit the A-and B-roads and join the M5 further down near Worcester.

Once home, I made aubergine kebabs in satay sauce, from scratch, and egg fried rice. I don't know myself these days! Perhaps I'll wake up soon and realise that the last 7 weeks of cooking wheat-free food from scratch has all been a beautiful dream. The lack of headaches is very real, though.