Just two doors down the street is the Althorp Coaching Inn, which is nearly four centuries old and just the perfect image of a country pub to our eyes, with wooden booths and a large fireplace that would make it a most welcome place to linger in the winter. The bill of fare was less traditional, listing items like lasagna and prawns as part of its "Mediterranean Menu". We both ordered codfish cakes, which was served with boiled potatoes and a large serving dish of cooked carrots and broccoli. The food was more than ample and quite good, so we had to forgo having sweets. We then proceeded up the hillside to St Mary the Virgin Church, which has quite a remarkable history, since parts of it are 800 years old and it was originally mentioned in the Domesday book. Outdoors it has an old graveyard and an old stone cross which is thought to date back to 1300. Inside, it contains some notable architectural features such as a William Morris window and 181 poppy seed benches, a type of church pew which has carved wooden figureheads at the ends of the benches. Other notable features are The Spencer Chapel, which contains a beautiful stained glass window facing east, heraldic banners, and six alter tombs, five of them having full-length effigies decorating the tombs. Another section of the church has the graves of Lawrence and Robert Washington, who were kinsmen of the Spencers and were the great-great-great grandfather and great-great-great-great uncle of George Washington, first President of the United States. The ladies in the church are very pleasant and informative in responding to questions, and among the items for sale is an excellent souvenir booklet about the church titled, The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Great Brington: 800 years of English History. It contains a number of pictures and drawings of the interior of the church; and it does a very commendable job of detailing the construction of the church over several centuries, the history of its relationship with the Spencer and Washington families, and the history of the building up to the present time.  Before leaving, you may also offer donations to the upkeep of the church at a couple of different places; or if you wish to light a candle for someone sick or dying, you may leave a donation and light the candle.

Stopping occasionally to enjoy looking at people's front gardens, we proceeded along the road out of the village. Though there was very little traffic, we felt uneasy about walking along the road. As we looked to our right, we saw another pedestrian walking along a long grassy area, so we walked carefully across a plowed field to walk there. The views coming back were magnificent and we reached the car park of the estate in about fifteen minutes.  We had to wait a few minutes to get the shuttle bus back to the house, but in the meantime one of the persons working there was kind enough to snap a picture of the two of us in front of the gates, which were a different set than the ones through which we had entered that morning. When we reached the stables, my next priority was to go to the gift shop, since I had been told that Earl Spencer spent a couple of hours in both the morning and afternoon autographing books for visitors. When you enter the store, you are handed a brochure containing numbered pictures of all thirty-five items in this year's collection of goods, which are also shown in display cases. You decide what you want and go to the counter to tell them which numbers and in what quantity you wish them, and the items are handed to you already gift boxed. (I must confess being a little disappointed with this arrangement, since most museum shops have many more items and they are out where you can browse. London has some of the best shops of this type in the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kensington Palace, and Buckingham Palace.) I chose a souvenir Althorp key ring, a package of ten postcards, and a copy of Earl Spencer's funeral oration, since I already had a copy of his book,  Althorp: Portrait of an English House and they were not selling his other book, The Spencer Family. (As I handed him the book, I told him that I would have liked to have purchased a copy of The Spencer Family, so maybe it's possible that it will be for sale in next year's collection.) As he signed, I also said, "Thank you, sir, for opening your home to us, since there isn't really anyplace else we can go that is connected with Diana", which is true because every other home she ever lived in (Park House, Coleherne Court, Highgrove, and Kensington Palace) are not only off limits but have had every trace of her eradicated from them. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of myself with him because I didn't think to hand the camera to Gerald and ask him to photograph us, so instead I waited until I could get an unobstructed shot when he was signing for someone else.

Emerging into the courtyard, Gerald settled back at one of the tables with a soft drink while I walked down to the oval to see the island and the temple. When you reach the oval, the first thing you see is the monument on the island, and as you walk around the oval the overwhelming feeling is of one of beauty and serenity. There are benches all around the path where you can pause for reflection. When you reach the temple, you will notice that a number of flowers are still left for Diana, some of them placed in front of the temple, others on the grass between the path and the pond. I stood there for about ten minutes reading the inscriptions of the passage from Earl Spencer's oration and the quotation from Diana about how she would come running to wherever she is needed, as well as looking at the graceful profile of her face. Then I proceeded slowly around the rest of the oval, passing the small rowboat tethered to the shore, and--more bizarrely--a post which had a life preserver on a rope attached to it. As I reached the point where I had entered the oval, I saw a gentleman who was one of the guides and I said, "Surely people don't try to go swimming in here, do they?" He said that they didn't, but sometimes that people would accidentally tumble down the slope while taking a picture, so the life preserver was in order to keep him from having to go in after them! I mentioned that I had seen stories in the press recently that people had been trying to get over the walls or get out to the island, and he said the newspapers had greatly exaggerated what had happened. I told him that I thought they did a great job and that the whole place was set up very nicely, and he thanked me. I then went back up to the stables to find Gerald.

Since we still had about an hour before our bus left for the station at 16:10 (4:10 PM), I told him that I thought I would go back into the exhibit area to look at it a little more closely. It was still as crowded as it had been in the morning, but I took it at a slower pace and watched the videos once again before rejoining him in the courtyard in order to sit down, have a drink and chat about the day. At four o'clock we left our table and went to the drop off point to board the coach. I looked around slowly, to impress the place on my mind, and I had Gerald take one last picture of me in front of the house before we boarded the coach and headed back down the drive. Tree branches scraped against the coach and a leaf with a couple of acorns attached fell through a window into the aisle. I picked it up and put it in my backpack before we rolled out of the gates.

Coming back, I paid closer attention to the scenery. Surprisingly, the church at Great Brington could be seen for quite some distance across the countryside. We came through another village with old houses and pretty gardens before reaching the outskirts of Northampton and being deposited at the station in order to catch a train at 4:40 PM back to London. Across the aisle from us was a mother and her teen aged daughter who had taken the day off to go to Althorp. Like us they were quiet, but they took out their purchases and looked at them before leaving the train.
We arrived back at Euston Station in time to have dinner at our hotel and then see Buddy, a musical about the life of Buddy Holly.

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