To Brightlingsea!… On Saturday afternoon for Open Gardens. Having snubbed Wivenhoe Open Gardens, we thought we would show our faces down the road where no other fucker would recognise us
But OF COURSE we turned a corner and bumped into a friendly face. OH HAI.
I say Brightlingsea Open Gardens: we only visited one garden. This was Moverons. It’s a very classy remote Brightlingsea farmhouse that overlooks the estuary. Local folk rave about it. It’s only open a few days of the year to the public.
I’ve always wanted to visit Moverons and so Open Gardens seemed like the ideal opportunity.
We cycled over, making this short journey on a combination of a mechanical hybrid and a mini-wheeler electric. Yeah like a dickhead I once again wanted to try and prove the point that the iScooter U4 isn’t the waste of money that I actually know it probably is.
My cycling partner, on her non-electric, arrived at Moverons well ahead of me. This wasn’t a good start.
We had a very friendly welcome on the gate, as well as some polite suggestions as to where we could park the bikes. I was secretly hoping that someone might want to nick the iScooter U4 and I could do an insurance job.
Moverons is fascinating as well as being a little weird. It’s a working farm that has some spectacular gardens. The gardens are all pretty much self-contained with a few passageways joining them all up. I couldn’t help think it would be an ideal location for some form of outdoor summer Shakespeare.
Maps were available, but we took the anarchic choice of doing some random wandering. Immediately I was drawn towards the radiant lavenders. They didn’t appear to grow in any particular direction. The Estuary Wild’s sun had a 360 on them. They were stunning. A mental note was made to draw inspiration for future garden plans back at base.
We then entered the courtyard with what appeared to have an upside-down tree. It was growing 180 degrees in the wrong direction. It looked a little freaky.
What Moverons is unique in doing is creating tidy courtyard gardens, and then some more wild woodland areas in which you are free to roam. It would have been rude not to.
It was here that we realised what the main attraction was. A number of local artists have created some pretty impressive metallic sculptures that are dotted around the gardens. These were all animal-themed and were extremely high quality. The sculptures blended in wonderfully with the green background as the rustic metal changed colour under different light circumstances.
We spent a lot longer than I first imagined at Moverons. I would certainly want to go back for a second visit. We did have plans for a nearby village fate on the way home. We ran out of time.
The iScooter U4 was a little more promising on the way home. I worked out that if you are in third assist and pedal ever so slightly, with so much of a light touch that you aren’t actually rotating the wheel, then the maximum third assist power kicks in. You are in effect freewheeling with a very light touch on the pedals but you have the power assist.
It’s an odd ride, for sure.
