No one's here.

I no longer update this blog, but would be happy to talk about Poland, England, or traveling in Europe with anyone who stumbles across it! I can be found at flightpattern38.blogspot.com where I blog about insects and other wildlife, and at justanotherthrifter.blogspot.com, which is my personal blog.

A bit of Quaker history - baaaaaaaaa!

Picture 1: a view from near the summit of Pendle Hill.
Picture 2: lamb in the valley on our climb down from the summit.
Picture 3: the only sign on the entire 5-mile trail or near it that actually indicated our destination (the English aren't ones for directional signs on trails OR roads, it seems, from this experience and our driving experience)
Picture 4 & 5: peacock pictures from Warwick Castle, taken yesterday.

Our only activity today, other than driving, was climbing Pendle Hill. Located in Lancashire west of York and northeast of Manchester, Leeds, and that general conglomeration of industrial cities, it's the highest thing for miles around. The tourist website I looked at yesterday claimed that, on a perfectly clear day, one can see the ocean from Pendle Hill. I'm a bit skeptical for a couple of reasons. Now, the day was completely hazy when we climbed Pendle Hill and overcast until we were about halfway down the Hill and nearing the end of our hike but it seemed pretty clear that, while Pendle Hill is the highest thing for many miles around, there are equally high or higher hills in pretty much any direction. Further, that central part of England is bounded on the west by the Irish Sea, the south by hundreds of miles of England, the east by the North Sea, and the north by hundreds of miles of England and Scotland. So I'm not really sure what ocean they're talking about. :) The view was incredible, however, especially after the trail that mom and I took to get up the Hill. Not that the trail was ugly since it was actually incredibly beautiful as well, but it was very contained.

We started in the lowlands pretty much due east of the hill in a teeny tiny village called Barley. From the visitors' car park and cafe in the center of town, we walked up a small road that ran past the Village Hall and then out the eastern edge of town. It pretty quickly turned into a limited access road and, past the last house, no public vehicles were allowed - only county utility vehicles. The road started to go up pretty steeply and quickly lost its paving and became more and more pot-holed. We walked by two beautiful reservoirs, the upper one almost empty of water with canyons carved by streams of water at the bottom of the reservoir visible. Our trail followed the feeder to the upper reservoir, Ogden Clough, into a narrow, treeless valley full of sheep. The hike was really fun because the trail consisted of public footpaths that had been drawn right through private sheep pastures. Every now and then we'd round a curve in the valley and startle a mama sheep with a lamb or two, and they'd all take off running with the lambs usually impeding each others' escape and their mother's by trying to huddle underneath her as they ran. Not productive, little guys. The narrowness of the valley made it completely silent except for the nervous baaa-ing of the sheep and the low noise of wind passing along the moors on the rim of the valley so that, even though we were never more than a two hour walk back to the village at our farthest point, we felt completely severed from civilization. Finally, our trail cut steeply up one of the valley walls and after a panting climb we emerged up on the moor. This ecosystem was amazing - inhabited by just a few plant species that I could see, and they were clearly adapted to living up on the windswept heights. The moor looked flat, like a field of mini-shrubs across the hills, but as we followed our now-paved-with-stones path, deep channels kept opening up in the landscape. Not geological channels like gullies or valleys but places where the plant cover was not continuous and we could see that the plants held about a foot of rich-looking dark dirt in place on top of the hill. In the channels the bare rock and lighter dirt was visible. I have no idea why those channels existed but it showed what at first appeared to be a two-dimensional landscape to be instead a complex rumple - we were glad of the stone path because navigating across all of those channels would have taken much longer. After a good ways of walking across the upland moor, we finally arrived at the summit where all of a sudden the ground (what was not beaten down by tourists) was covered in normal grass and blankets of little white flowers. Not sure why they were just on the summit and not elsewhere in the uplands, and why the moor plants weren't on the summit. The view was absolutely gorgeous and there were things to see all around. Unfortunately, the pictures aren't very good because of the haze. As soon as we were a mile or two down the Hill, of course the sun came out and the weather was clear and beautiful. Coming across that upland moor and following our meandering little trail through the sheep pastures in the valley, though, we could understand how people in this part of the world could have been attracted by George Fox's teachings in the 1660s. His simple message seemed to fit in that harsh landscape and vast scene in contrast to the rich worldliness and fussiness of the city churches or even the small village churches of that time (and today). So Mom and I felt that the hike was a great experience (+ exercise!) and are glad that we included it in our tour of England.

After spending the afternoon at Pendle Hill, we drove up here to the Lake District where we are spending the night in Ulverston. The village of Swarthmoor is just a mile or two up the road including the original Swarthmoor Hall - another Quaker history site and of course the namesake of my alma mater. I'm old!!! We're going to explore the Lake District over the next couple of days, spending the next two nights in Keswick. On Sunday there will probably, hopefully, be an exciting surprise change to our itinerary! We might leave the Lake District that day to do something elsewhere and come back to Keswick to spend the night. We'll see!

Of peacocks and castles

Hmm, for some reason I can't get pictures to work on this connection so they will have to wait until tomorrow night. Pity because we took some beautiful pictures of peacocks today but they won't be any less pretty for a day of sitting on my hard drive.

Mom and I had one more Shakespeare-related site to visit this morning before leaving Stratford-upon-Avon. We got out of the hotel quickly this morning and went to the countryside to see Mary Arden's house, the place where Shakespeare's mother (Mary Arden) grew up. The site actually consists of her modest brick farmhouse and farmyard and a nearby larger Tudor farmhouse and farmyard. A bit confusing at first since we didn't know which was which. Turns out an enterprising farmer (Palmer) living in the supposedly nicer-looking Tudor farmhouse told unsuspecting tourists years and years ago that his was actually the house where Mary Arden had lived. Apparently the farce was uncovered but it's unclear why we still tour Palmer's farmhouse - nothing special there although it was charming. According to the exhibit, Shakespeare spent some time on the farm while growing up. It had been left to Mary Arden in her father's will, so she was a property-owner in her own right. Cool stuff.

Our next stop was Warwick Castle just north of Stratford-upon-Avon where we ended up spending the remainder of the day after arriving about noon. There were plenty of different kinds of exhibits to see and a few shows. The whole thing reminded me of the Renaissance Faire at home, but much better done and centered around an actual medieval castle instead of artificially constructed in an empty field. But the exhibits and shows were in the same vein. Mom and I saw all of the exhibits that took visitors on tours of the castle; walked the ramparts; climbed the towers; watched a demonstration of a real and HUGE trebuchet (I have videos!); watched a falconry exhibition that used eagles, an owl, and a vulture instead of falcons; ate ridiculously fatty burgers and sausage rolls; climbed into the jail; and took probably over a hundred pictures of peacocks. It was a great day. The trebuchet demo was really great. The audience sat on the castle-side of the river with the trebuchet and its crew safely far away on the other side of the river. There was an announcer who explained to us how the mechanism worked and how we (the visitors had been recruited into the army) were going to use it in our siege against London. Finally, we did a countdown and the trebuchet launched a huge stone all the way across the open field and into the trees on the far side. I think the announcer said it was a distance of about 200 yards and was not the maximum that the trebuchet was capable of - they were operating it at half capacity. Mom's favorite thing, I think, were the many peacocks wandering around a garden outside of the castle walls. We took many bad pictures of them and got a few good ones.

We finally left the Castle around 5 pm and drove to our next hotel a little ways north of Birmingham. We took an accidental detour through the town of Lichfield which ended up being quite convenient. As soon as we realized that's where we were headed, I remembered something having to do with Lichfield from the class I took on Quakers at Swarthmore in 2008. After some brain-racking I was able to say that George Fox had been in Lichfield at some point and done something, probably preaching, and ended up in an altercation (nonviolent, of course) with some other folks. A little while later Mom remembered that he'd served a good length of time in the Lichfield jail and now that I'm typing this, I think some famous letters of his were written while in Lichfield. So, after this impressive display of our collective brain power, Mom and I decided that we were quite pleased with our accidental detour through Lichfield.

We're spending the night in a town called Rugeley. There's nothing touristy to do here and we enjoyed being able to settle into our hotel for the evening around 8:30 after a delicious dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. Tomorrow morning it's up early and on the road for a 2-hour drive north to Pendle Hill - another spot where George Fox did something at some time involving some other people. We're pretty sure he wasn't thrown into the Pendle jail, though.

Just a quick post because I was super tired last night and now we need to move quickly to check out of our hotel and get on the road! We had a great day in Stratford yesterday: saw Shakespeare's birthplace; the location and excavation of the house where he lived for the last 18-19 years of his life; the house owned by his son-in-law, Thomas Nash; and the house, Hall's Croft, where his oldest daughter and son-in-law lived for a number of years before moving into Shakespeare's old house upon his death in 1616. Long morning! Then we had a late, delicious, lunch at the White Swan Hotel and walked about a mile out of town to see Anne Hathaway's Cottage the the beautiful little garden out there. We did see the mural in the White Swan, Grandma and Grandpa, and it's pretty amazing that it's survived since 1550! It was quite pretty and in good condition - I guess since it was hidden within the walls of the hotel until a big renovation. Do you remember when that was? Our waiter told us and Mom and I think it was early 1900s...

After Anne Hathway's Cottage, we walked back to the hotel and relaxed for a little bit, then headed back out for dinner and the theater. We saw the Royal Shakespeare Company in their Courtyard Theater here. The space seemed a little bit makeshift and we think it's originally a smaller theater that maybe has been made larger since the real RSC theater is currently undergoing major renovation. That's just conjecture, though. Unfortunately, they weren't performing any Shakespeare but we did see the three-and-a-half hour long "Le Morte d'Arthur," a play developed from Sir Thomas Malory's work by a writer working for the RSC. The script was 10 years in the making! The play was wonderful. Of course, fairly sordid and a bit gruesome at times, true to the Arthurian legends, but the acting and staging were amazing! Mom and I really enjoyed it.

And now Mom is ready to head down to breakfast so I should shut down my computer. So anyway, a great day yesterday and now we are on the road again!

Picture 1: Mom and me at Hidcote gardens.
Picture 2-5: Hidcote gardens.

The weather/sky/sun etc. of England are just not conducive to taking pictures. Mom and I tried MANY MULTIPLE times today to get a decent picture of a Cotswold region landscape, with absolutely no luck. Picture 6 is the best I could get, taken looking out over a sheep pasture from the end of a garden at Hidcote. As you can see, the landscape bit in the back is still horrible but at least the pastoral scene in the foreground shows up well. The sheep were everywhere at Hidcote and making a lot of noise.

We started out today with a wonderful street-side breakfast at a coffeeshop in Cheltenham. The sun was shining (the first time that's happened during the morning on our trip) and we thoroughly enjoyed soaking it up while we had our pastries and coffee (for mom). We were, of course, wearing sunscreen. I'd hoped that, since this northern Europe climate is what I'm bred for, I wouldn't have to wear sunscreen - not true. I got a little pink in the face and a little tan in the feet over the several cloudy days we've had so far, so I've reluctantly been putting sunscreen on again.

After breakfast, we headed back out into the countryside and drove through the picturesque village of Bourton-on-the-Water, the "Venice of England!" Only called that because a stream ran right through the main square of town and along the main street. We stopped off in another village, Lower Slaughter, a little while later that had the same situation and made no claims to Venetian grandeur. Bourton-on-the-Water was quite charming but we just drove around the main square and continued on. We drove through Lower Slaughter and then made our way to Upper Slaughter, where we found a tiny car park in the middle of the village. We parked and, after taking a quick look at the exteriors of the hotel and manor house in Upper Slaughter, made our way along a footpath back to Lower Slaughter. It was a lovely walk and we got to walk through fields and pasture and through farmers' gates designed to stop sheep from wandering. Lots of fun! In Lower Slaughter, we took a look at the old mill and wandered along the river through the main part of the teeny tiny village. There were 10+ artists sitting around painting different aspects of the river and village and turned out there was a local art exhibition in the village hall! I took a quick look through the art pieces - very beautiful.

We left Upper Slaughter in search of lunch, which we finally got in a largish market town called Chipping Campden after driving through Stow-on-the-Wold and Broadway. Both of these towns were absolutely beautiful in very different ways. Stow was a large market town in the heyday of the Cotswold sheep industry so the huge market square is still there and now surrounded by craft stalls. Broadway, we think, was also a market town and so called because it has an incredibly wide (very rare in the Cotswolds!) main street lined with shops. Both were fun to drive through, but Mom and I were quite glad we stopped in Chipping Campden for lunch. It was a bit smaller with a less impressive center, and less overrun with tourists. We walked around at our leisure enjoying the beautiful yellow stone of the region and looking through shop windows, and had a delicious lunch in a small deli.

Then it was 4 miles up the road to the gardens at Hidcote manor. These were very much like the gardens at Wisley in that they were diverse and segregated into different gardens with different themes. The story of Hidcote is that it was owned by an American horticulturalist in the early to mid-20th century who then donated the estate to the National Trust. He started this idea of "rooms" in gardens and the National Trust has started developing the gardens back to what they looked like at their height in the 1930s. The gardens were obviously beautiful.

From Hidcote, it was just a 20 or so minute drive to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we checked into our hotel (fairly fancy!), walked around a bit, and got pub grub in The Thatch Tavern. We walked by the White Swan Hotel, Grandma and Grandpa, and will probably try to stop there for lunch tomorrow.

Well, we just keep zipping along through England! I guess I'm a few days behind now. We woke up Saturday in Salisbury (the B&B was amazing and we were sad to leave) and headed out on a leisurely trip toward Bath, stopping at Stourhead, Longleat, and Wells to see the cathedral. I was not a fan of Longleat particularly, although the house was beautiful. Seems like the current Marquess is a bit of a nut and if I owned an entire beautiful valley like that, I certainly wouldn't turn it into a safari park and amusement park sort of thing with motion simulator rides, Love Labyrinth, and fast food stalls. It was too much commercialization for me and all of the amusement stuff ruined the aspect of the Elizabethan house and parklike grounds. Mom and I were excited to see the advertised Victorian kitchen but when we got there it was one big gift shop with a Victorian oven set in one wall. Ridiculous in a different way were the boxwood hedge mazes advertised on teh map; when we got there, it was to read that the hedges had been planted in 1996 but were still too small to open the mazes to the public! As much as I'm critizing the place, though, Mom and I loved the interior of the house: the Elizabethan Great Hall and the Georgian opulence of the state rooms, dining rooms, saloon, etc. that we were allowed to see.

Stourhead was a beautiful house but it was the grounds that got me. Huge, park-like but carefully planned and landscaped by Capability Brown. We went on a long walk around a picturesque lake with views periodically opening among the rhododendrons and cedar (we think many of the trees were cedar) that showed us glimpses of classical-looking buildings at various points around the water. It was hard to believe that one person could hold a landscape of that scale in his head to plan the construction and placement of various temples, obelisks, and cottages, let alone the placement of different tree and shrub species. Our last stop on Saturday before arriving in Bath was at Wells Cathedral, not originally on our itinerary but given Grandma's recommendation and the fact that our hotel in Bath had a 24-hour front desk, we took a short detour to Wells and had time for a few minutes in the Cathedral. It was Mom's and my favorite cathedral in England so far (out of Winchester, Salisbury, and Wells) for its simplicity, the warmth of the yellow stone, and of course the wonderful weathered statues and carvings on the front of the cathedral. Really, really beautiful.

Our day in Bath, Sunday, was incredibly exhausting, I think because all of our other days so far had been punctuated by at least short car trips as we traveled from place to place but we spent the entirety of our day in Bath on our feet and seeing things. First was a walk around the Bath Abbey and surrounding streets to get our bearings. Then a looooong tour of the Roman Baths and a visit to the Pump Room for lunch. I don't think either of us expected the Roman Baths to take so long but it was a wonderfully done audio tour. Not only did we see the great main bath but the tour also took us through some exhibits built in parts of the original bath complex and took us underground in a large radius around the main bath looking at all of excavations of the adjoining smaller rooms. Really incredible and there was lots to see and read. After the Baths we walked up to the Circus and visited the Fashion Museum and Assembly Rooms. Of the Fashion Museum, we enjoyed the exhibits pertaining to women's dress in the Georgian, Regency, and Victorian periods. Particularly the Regency for me, since I was most interested in picturing the styles of Jane Austen's time. The Assembly Rooms were beautiful and the Ballroom was currently in use while we were there - a live band and a bunch of people ballroom-dancing! It was pretty neat to see the Assembly Rooms still in use. We headed up to the Royal Crescent next and toured a Georgian house and museum at No. 1 Royal Crescent, then walked the length of the street taking in the view down toward the lower part of the town and enjoying peering into the basement gardens of the houses in the Crescent. Then we walked down Gay Street to the Jane Austen Centre, located a few houses down from No. 25 where she lived for a little bit while she was in Bath. Unfortunately we got there for the last entrance prior to closing and didn't get to spend as much time reading everything as we would have liked. But what we did read was such a perfect addition to everything we'd read and seen at Austen's house in Chawton and really felt like we were getting a complete biography between the two places. We ended our day with a walk over the Pulteney Bridge and dinner at a nice Indian restaurant on the other side.

Today we woke up in Bath, popped over to the Abbey to take a quick peek inside (beautiful, of course!) and then headed out of the city and north toward the Cotswolds. The main point of today and tomorrow is to leisurely make our way from Bath toward Stratford-upon-Avon just enjoying the beautiful countryside. We drove through Castle Combe first and it was teeny tiny. Our guidebook says that the old version of Dr. Doolittle, filmed in CC, was a financial disaster, which really surprised me since I loved that movie so much as a little kid. We couldn't make it up to the manor house which was Dr. Doolittle's house in the movie because it's turned into a fancy schmancy hotel with a gated entrance. The village was certainly lovely, though, and I had to stop a bunch of times so that mom could quickly snap pictures through the windshield. After driving through the village we went up to Painswick and got out there to walk around the village. We went on a fruitless search for the Quaker Meetinghouse, which was NOT where all the signs we saw said that it was supposed to be. Hmph. So we found solace in some brie and cranberry paninis at a cute little deli, wandered around a churchyard dotted with 99 yew trees, and then went on our way. Our last stop was Sudeley Castle. The exhibitions were small but contained some really interesting things - mainly textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries. The gardens and grounds were unbelievable, though. Part of the castle, built in the 17th century, is in ruins and was a stunning setting for the formal gardens and the lived-in part of the castle. A large part of the grounds was roped off as private for the family that still lives in the castle (imagine living in a castle!!!) but the part that we could wander through was exactly what you would expect the grounds of a English castle/estate house to look like a few hundred years ago. Once we'd explored the castle grounds, we came here to Cheltenham and found our hotel. Tomorrow we're off to explore a few more villages in the Cotswolds, visit Hidcote, and arrive in Stratford-upon-Avon where we'll settle for two nights. Definitely looking forward to seeing some Shakespeare sites now that we've seen so many things related to Jane Austen!

More cathedrals, more flowers, and more ruins!

Picture 1: interior of Salisbury Cathedral looking down the nave; foreground is the baptismal font with Cathedral reflection in it.
Picture 2: cloisters with Cathedral in background.
Picture 3: rose garden at Mottisfont.
Picture 4: same.
Picture 5: royal palace ruins at Old Sarum.
Picture 6: Stonehenge.
Picture 7: Mom.

Today we toured Salisbury Cathedral, the gardens and house at Mottisfont (estate out in the country between Winchester and Salisbury), the ruins of the castle and cathedral at Old Sarum, and Stonehenge. Really quite a full day. Mom and I both brought plenty of books on this trip, assuming that we'd have some down-time each evening to relax...not so! We keep getting back to our B&B around 9 or 9:30, and then it's only 2 or 2.5 hours before bed.

Anyway, we started the day by finishing Salisbury. We'd gone downtown and wandered around, taking outside pictures of the Cathedral and getting a feel for the city last night, so this morning we made a beeline for the visitors' entrance. The Cathedral itself was pretty similar to the other cathedrals I've seen but unique in its incorporation of more modern art pieces and its incorporation of the modern life of the church into the exhibit. There were a few beautiful modern sculptures scattered in the space and, while modern church activity wasn't exactly made obvious, it was clear that the cathedral is still very much in use and well loved as a spiritual space. It gave it a warmth that I haven't experienced in other cathedrals. Of course, it helped that the sun came out while we were in the Cathedral and lit it up magnificently - when we saw Winchester Cathedral the other day it was chilly and grey, and all the cathedrals I saw on the Continent were toured during the winter... The real highlight of the Cathedral for me were the modern art pieces having to do Prisoners of Conscience and other peace memorials (a beautiful scultpure called "The Thornflower" and a stained glass window) and one of only 4 remaining copies of the original Magna Carta that's on display there. Seeing the MC was pretty cool.

So after the Cathedral, Mom and I booked it back to the B&B, got our car, and drove to Mottisfont. This wasn't on our original itinerary but Mom and I added it after a chance comment by a National Trust employee at Sissinghurst, who mentioned in passing that Mottisfont is home to an immense and famous collection of antique rose varieties, and is well-known for its rose gardens. We certainly weren't disappointed. The rose gardens were unbelievable - I took far too many pictures.

Then on to Old Sarum and Stonehenge. We were expecting Old Sarum to be a quick jump-out-of-the-car-look-at-a-couple-brick-lines-in-the-ground-and go stop, but we ended up staying over an hour. The complex itself was much larger than we imagined with the castle situated on top of a huge hill. And there were more walls of various structures (mainly the king's palace and the great tower) visible and above ground. The cathedral was really just lines in the ground. Mom and I are still confused about why the Bishops built a new cathedral at Salisbury when they had a perfectly good one at Old Sarum just two miles away. One of the plaques at Old Sarum implied that it was because of the tensions between church and state that arose in the 1200s-ish. The Bishops apparently left Old Sarum because they wanted to be separate from the king, which I guess makes sense. But still, what a waste of a perfectly good cathedral and what an expenditure to get a new one!

Stonehenge, of course, was unbelievable. And again, I took far too many pictures. I kept trying to get new angles, etc. We got lucky and the sun came out soon after we got there so about half of my pictures are pretty good. Then the sun disappeared again, and the other half are pretty dark and horrible. Still, that was pretty awesome.

And now we're back in the Wyndham Park Lodge (which we love) for the second night. Tomorrow we'll tour Stourhead and Longleat, then on to Bath!