Holy Island

On Monday we visited Holy Island, where the Lindisfarne Gospels originated.

Holy Island can only be accessed by a 2-mile causeway during low tide.

This is a statue of St. Aidan, one of the early monks on Holy Island. SAZ says she likes to believe he's holding a holy morel in his hand. I tossed a coin into that little well in front of his statue since I missed out on my wishes at the Trevi and Swan Fountains.

Near the water we found many old boats and many of these converted boat sheds. Cool, yeah?

This is a fuzzy picture of a wooden statue that I find absolutely fascinating in the parish church on Holy Island. It's really large and quite startling to encounter when walking in the door.

Picture Catch Up

Kirsten and the Coordinatrix hiking to Culag Woods in Lochinver. It was so green.

The view from the lake at Culag Woods

I like to take pictures of Kirsten taking pictures. I have lots.

The Iron Bridge -- This was the first cast iron bridge and the valley where it was built was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

The view from the road to our B&B in Keswick

I visited the Castlerigg Stone Circle near Keswick. When we arrived, there was some sort of ceremony with hand-holding and chanting and rock hugging going on.

Sitting on some fort ruins on Hadrian's Wall. We ate our lunch here and the entire time I thought about how funny it was that I was munching a sandwich on what was once a hugely fortified military structure. Ha ha, Romans!

I've never seen tug-of-war as an event in the highland games in the States. It's surprisingly fantastic. The participants literally dig their heels into the ground and then there's a man standing to the side for each team and his job is to turn red in the face yelling for them to pull together.

I'm Never Coming Back

I've found my perfect place in life. We arrived in the Lake District yesterday evening and it is my favorite place. I realize that I describe everything on my trip as just. so. beautiful, but the Lake District is the realization of every idyllic vision of England a person could have. The hills are so green and they're criss-crossed with stone fences that keep in all the sheep. I love the sheep! Especially the little black ones. I'll post pictures when I can.

We're staying on a farm outside Keswick. The farmhouse was built in the 17th century and the big wooden beams still cross the ceiling in the sitting room. Our bedroom looks out onto sheep and mountains. This morning we got sent off full of hot English breakfast--eggs and bacon and sausage and tomatoes and mushrooms and toast.

We attended church in Workington today (on the west coast of England) after getting thoroughly lost and having to ask directions of the locals. Once we actually arrived, they absolutely loved us up there. They hugged us and gave us candy and begged us to stay and one man offered to take me to Gretna Green and marry me. Amid the lovefest, I had this conversation with a group of older people, which I found amusing:

Kindly British Person: Oh, you could stay here. You could come stay with us. If you stay, you can have whatever you want!

MBC: I want a sheep farm with a sheep dog and some wellies to wear.

Kindly British Person: We can arrange that!

MBC: And I need a husband [put it out there when you have the chance in Britain].

Kindly British Person: We can get you one!

MBC: Can you? Because no one else has managed that.

KBP: (turning away from me) David! Where's David? (turning back) He's 28.

MBC: Oh, that would be okay (although older would be better)

Then the Kindly British Person and another person in the group conjectured over how much David had been kissed in his past and they finally decided between them that however much he'd been kissed, he could marry me. David himself did not get to weigh in on this because he was on the other side of the room bouncing little boys on his knees.

Bath Miscellany

The street signs in Bath are carved into the sides of the buildings. I find it charming.

One day it was sunny and I went and read outside the Royal Crescent and watched the British youth play soccer on the grassy area out front. It was lovely.

This is the Pig and Fiddle (for SCS)

I am so proud of this curry. Not because I made it. On the contrary, I was lying on the couch watching my favorite bits of Persuasion in slow motion while it was created. A and I did the shopping for it, though, and while we were searching for coconut milk and curry powder, we stumbled onto bottles of curry sauce for SIX PENCE. That's like 10 cents. There's nothing you can buy for six pence in Great Britain. Except for this. I was very, very pleased.

Glastonbury, Wells and Portsmouth

Wednesday we visited Glastonbury and Wells. Glastonbury is home to the Tor, a large, mystical hill that some people believe was King Arthur's Avalon. Long ago it was an island with an abbey on its shores and local legend claims that Christianity was brought there by Joseph of Arimathaea. Monks at the abbey purportedly found the body of King Arthur on their land, but that may have been a publicity stunt to bring money to the institution. The abbey was the second largest in Britain in the early 1500s (after Westminster) but Henry VIII had it destroyed when he broke with the Catholic Church. The abbot was taken to the top of the Tor and killed, his head was posted outside the remains of the abbey, and his drawn and quartered body was given to Anglican churches in Somerset. The abbot's kitchen is the only building on the property that remained intact (monks couldn't worship there and there was no lead in the ceiling to be stolen) and that is where I made bread with a darling fake monk. The Coordinatrix took a video of it, but I haven't yet decided if she's allowed to post it. Too bad we can't cut me out of it and just show the cute British monk boy.

Abbey Ruins

It was pouring (England, why you gotta be that way?)

Lady Chapel Ruins

Wells Cathedral may have just become my favorite cathedral. It's so beautiful inside! Go look it up online, because I don't have access to any of the photos of it right now.

Yesterday we drove to Portsmouth on the southern coast. It's the home of Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, the Royal Naval Museum, and other sea-lover attractions. Ships are really big. I only got us lost twice on yesterday's journey, but one of those detours involved a trip through Limpley Stoke, a village with the narrowest streets I have EVER seen.

Tomorrow AandA go home, the Coordinatrix and I go to the Lake District for two nights, and then we join our good friend Pinchy in Scotland for two weeks.

As We Like It

Yesterday we visited Stratford and Warwick (pronounce that without the second w). I toured Stratford about two years ago, but it was January and COLD the day I was there. It's a really different city when you don't have to scuttle into buildings for warmth as often as possible.

Warwick boasts a giant castle that was inhabited until quite recently. It's all done up for the tourists and I kind of hated it (admittedly my traveling companions say I skipped the best part, but I did see the singing plague victims). It's very much what visiting a castle would be like if Disney got its hands on one. I'm sure it would be fantastic with kids, but I wish I'd lingered in Stratford and remembered to toss two coins into the swan fountain to snag myself a husband instead. I did take this one picture while I was there so you could see that it is very impressive despite my bad attitude. All of the people are wax creations. I'm not sure what that floating white thing is. Ghost? Camera problem?


In the evening we returned to Stratford and watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "As You Like It." It was brilliant, as anticipated. I just saw the Utah Shakespearean Festival's version of "As You Like It" at the beginning of the month, and it's always interesting to see two productions of the same play by different companies. The RSC had interesting costumes. The play began with very traditional, formal, dark-colored outfits and when the characters entered the Forest of Arden, their clothing gradually became lighter colored and more modern. At the wedding at the end, they wore white (or light colored), contemporary outfits. Very nice. Here's my question for the RSC: Was that a real rabbit that was skinned on stage? It looked real.

We Should Have Brought Enzo to England

We rented a car on Monday. The Coordinatrix is the designated driver and I am the designated navigator. The Coordinatrix is better at her job than I am. It's a good thing she's so even-tempered, because driving British-style is tricksy, particularly since we were upgraded to an Audi that opens with one of those fancy button clicky deals. The button in our clicky thing is dead, though, so we have to use the KEY and if we use the KEY, the car alarm goes off if the ignition isn't turned on within 15 seconds. Brilliant, right? It took us three car alarm incidents before we pulled out the manual and figured that one out.

Monday we went to Wales. The sun was shining! First we went to Tintern Abbey, my new favorite place. It's a fairly impressive ruin from the outside.


The inside, though, is so hauntingly beautiful. There's something about the fact that is a ruin, that the roof is gone and the outside is covered in lichen, that make the beautiful, airy interior with its grass floor even more remarkable.





After Tintern Abbey we visited a Welsh open-air folk-life museum. There was a castle and gardens and forty other buildings transplanted from around Wales, including a cock-fighting arena (the animal competitors wore spurs and magic charms). My favorite part of the castle was this bushy plant in the rose garden. It's a secret room.



If I lived there, I would spend all my time in the bush. And I would wear makeup and fix my hair if I were going to have my picture taken coming out of the bush, which I did not do here. [Note: I always put my sunglasses up on my head like that and then my curls wrap around the glasses and I have to spend several minutes pulling my hair out of the glasses. I'll be bald if I keep it up.]



And then we got trapped in Cardiff, because I'm not such a good navigator and it was rush hour and British roundabouts are rubbish. We did eventually escape and made our way to Caerphilly to eat dinner in sight of the castle, Britain's second largest after Windsor. Word on the street is that it's haunted.

Mamma Mia!

The Coordinatrix is sort of a burster-into-song type of gal. She and the Australians on our package tour briefly discussed hijacking the microphone at the front of our tour bus for karaoke purposes. She's like that. And that is why she was THRILLED when we discovered that a local night club/theater was hosting a Mamma Mia singalong last night. The club showed the movie, hosted by a woman in gold spandex pants (she was sort of a British TV NYC Jewish mother with her handbag and comments about how Pierce Brosnan can't sing but is easy on the eyes), and we all stood up and belted out the songs when there was singing in the film. I agreed to go to humor the Coordinatrix, but it was so fun! I'm super sad that we won't be here for the Bride and Prejudice dancealong.

Bath Skyline

I'm supposed to be meeting the Coordinatrix for Evensong at Bath Abbey right now, but my jeans are covered in mud, so I've decided I'm not fit for a church service. I just spent four hours hiking the Bath Skyline Trail with its beautiful views of the city and paths that lead through fields and woods and, once, a cow pasture that was not mentioned in my leaflet and where I tried not to make eye contact with the giant cows who were (seriously) at least twice as big as the sweet Swiss cows we made friends with in Lucerne. Cows can trample you right to death. I got lost about four times but only once was it a frightening I'm-going-to-die-alone-in-Bathampton-Woods kind of lost.


Bath is a World Heritage site because of buildings like the Royal Crescent AND because of the way the town's set into the natural landscape. It's beautiful. Too bad I'm a bad photographer with a mediocre camera so you can't really see it.

This part of the trail goes through a farm (several sections did), but these sheep wouldn't give me the time of day. Further along this path, I had to walk THROUGH the pasture with the horses. Big horses.

This is Sham Castle. It's just a wall built by Ralph Allen in the 1760s to improve the view from his property and give local stonemasons work.

This is the view as I was descending the Skyline Trail back into the city.

I hope this video isn't freaky. I can't view it before posting it (or after posting it). I took it near the beginning of the Trail.

New Favorite Activities in Bath

1. Use the free wi-fi at the Pig and Fiddle. Well, it's not really free, because we buy ice cream or hot chocolate or sausages to keep from being free loaders. But they've got a great corner seat from which to eat the sausages and use the Internet. And there's a cat.



2. Walk past the Jane Austen Centre. There's always a guy out on the doorstep in Regency dress. And he's contractually obligated to smile and tip his hat as you go past. And then you feel an overwhelming urge to get your hands on a copy of the 2007 version of Persuasion so you can watch Rupert Penry-Jones woo someone in Bath. And then you cry because the DVDs here play in the UK but not in the US, so if you spent your 20 pounds on a copy of the movie, you could only watch it while you were in the UK and then you'd have to leave it behind. And you're too cheap for that.



3. Wander in parks. We discovered the back way into town along the Kennett and Avon canal today via the Sydney Gardens. So lovely. [I have pictures, but my camera just died so I'll add them later.]



4. Eat lunch near the Abbey and watch the buskers perform. Today there was a man in a pink bathing suit type get up riding a unicycle and juggling knives. He was very engaging. And the singers are nice too.

Photos of Bath

Bath is beautiful and all but it rained all day yesterday and the day before which does not show Bath at its best. Almost all the buildings in Bath are made (or at least fronted) with white Bath stone. It glistens in the sun and turns dark and dreary in the rain. The sun came out right before I stepped into this Internet cafe (super-hip, jazz-playing Internet cafe), so I hope I'm not missing our one hour of sunshine this week.

The Royal Crescent

The Circus (a circle of row house built by John Wood)

Ironworks outside a rowhouse. These were used to snuff out the torches that link bearers carried in front of sedan chairs back in the day.

Unattractive picture of me walking into town from our flat.

Assembly Rooms (I don't know how I made the chandeliers glow like that, but I like it.)

Bath Abbey - This is a statue of Peter that was beheaded by iconoclasts. Instead of attaching a new head, they just carved a head out of his huge beard. He looks odd. Especially compared to the statue on the other side of the door.

My favorite detail on Bath Abbey--angels climbing the building. The bishop who had the abbey built had a dream about God sitting in heaven and angels ascending and descending ladders. His dream is carved on the front of the abbey.

Yesterday I ditched the Coordinatrix and AandA and visited the botanical gardens in the Royal Victoria Park. I had the gardens almost entirely to myself because of the rain. Beautiful!

This last photo is actually from the gardens in front of the Royal Crescent. Love the cabbage roses.

Bath

Renting our townhouse in Bath may be the smartest thing I have ever done. Ever. We are so happy to be in a flat where we can unpack for two weeks and use our kitchen to cook our own meals and bbq in our garden. The Coordinatrix and I are staying in the bedroom off the master bedroom, which is tiny but cute—vaulted ceiling and rounded doorways. I’m sleeping on the trundle bed, and the whole situation is very elementary school slumber party. And there are books in the house. Our living room has a bookcase full of books that I mostly don't want to read, but still . . . Books.

Yesterday we went to church and met lots of locals. One man came up to us and said, Hello, girlies. What’s your pleasure? And then we all stared at him because we had no idea what he was talking about or if this was a standard UK greeting. We never did manage to make the conversation normal. A woman with three children drove us home after our meetings and her little children were darling. The 9-year-old boy sounded like a tiny MP every time he spoke. Love the British accents.

Why Didn't I Bring Jeans?

We are in London and we are cold.

We've been having long days and late nights. We ventured into the city for Bastille Day in Paris and watched the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. We strategically positioned ourselves on the fringes of a crowd and had our path to the metro charted out before the fireworks began. We left a little early and got back to our hotel around midnight. Enzo drove us to Calais in the morning, we took a ferry to Dover, arrived in London by bus, and then the Coordinatrix and AandA and I took the tube to the city and got the last four tickets to Les Miserables (it seemed like the appropriate show to see considering it was the day after Bastille Day). I blame the two late nights for my extreme tiredness yesterday, which I believe is how I ended up in the men's restroom at the British Library. The man in there using the facilities seemed undisturbed by my appearance and assured me not to worry about it, but I was still a tiny bit mortified and decided I needed a nap before more adventuring in the city.

My two new London loves:
1. One pound (price, not weight) sushi from Sainsbury's (grocery store)--cheap and lovely (which is not to say that it's going to replace Thornton's chocolate as my treat of choice in England).
2. Mock the Week--A British TV show that reminds me of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

We're going to hear a performance of the Mozart Requiem at St. Martin-in-the-Fields tonight and tomorrow we head to Bath. First, though, I have to find some warmer pants.