Does this room look familiar?

You might have seen it before looking like this.

Today we visited Basildon Park, a National Trust stately home that sometimes doubles as a TV and movie set. Several of the rooms were used in Downton Abbey (as the Grantham’s London house) and the recent movie of Pride and Prejudice.

Basildon is an imposing Georgian house built in 1776.

It looks a bit more friendly from the gardens at the back, though still somewhat formal.

The building has passed through various hands, and largely fell into disrepair in the early 20th Century. In fact, the ceiling panels to that dining room were sold off and are now in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. The restored ceiling looks pretty good, though, if you don’t look too closely at the round paintings.

It was bought by Lord and Lady Iliffe in the 1950s and they lovingly restored it as far as they could to its original Georgian glory, and then having no kids gave the house to the National Trust. The Iliffe family made their money from printing and publishing, including the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

There’s another nice ceiling in the Octagon Room.

The walls are covered with red felt. This was Lady Iliffe’s idea, and she put the felt up herself, with only the aid of a stepladder, a butler, and a cook. (Oh, look, the Oxford comma is feeling better today.) This is what it looked like in Downton Abbey.

They didn’t let us even walk on the carpet, let alone sit on the furniture, but I guess Maggie Smith can trample where ever she damn well pleases. She’s a national monument herself.

OK, on with the tour. The breakfast room, with the strange Indian scenes in the wallpaper.

The old servant’s quarters turned into a tea room.

The light fixture dangles from a bunch of bananas held by a badly painted monkey scampering through the ruins of a lost civilization. Well, you couldn’t just have a light fixture dangling from the sky, could you?

The So Red It Burns Your Eyes Out Bedroom.

The Jesus Is Watching You And He Knows Karate Sitting Room.

The I Never Knew You Could Do That With Seashells Dressing Room.

The Nobody Was Murdered Here Library.

The Giant Vacuum Cleaner To Suck Up Unwelcome Guests Bedroom.

The Scullery of Dubious Recipes.

As always, the gift shop in the old stable block. What would the National Trust do without stables to stuff with moneymakers?

The equine archeologists of the 25th Century are going to be devastated by all the fine stables destroyed by the National Trust.

We hiked back to the boat via Lower Basildon, sneaking a peak at the church…

grazing on wild blackberries, and watching the mating dance of the Polythene Haybale (fasciculo stramentum).

Then we went on down the Thames, past more lovely boathouses.

I’ll take this one. It has a boathouse and a turret.

We got as far as Reading (pron Redding) where there was a huge stream of young people carrying camping gear going upstream along the towpath. Apparently it is the Reading festival this weekend. Apart from that the town seems to consist almost entirely of NO MOORING signs. At least, it does if you are trying to find somewhere to pull up for the night. When we finally came to a public mooring, there was a nine quid a night charge, but it was next to a nice park with picnic tables, so I paid up happily.

In case anyone is worried about the swan with the fishhook, I emailed the Queen’s Swan Warden and received a response back first thing from his personal assistant saying that she has passed the information on to Swan Support in Dachet. However, the seems to be no shortage of swans, at least in Reading.

It could be they are gathering their forces. I’m going to be battening down the hatches soon in case they launch their attack tonight.