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| Glenna and our Kia |
I left London last September
saying that I needed to go back soon to revisit the countryside. The charm of the British Isles is definitely
in the small towns and rural areas, not in the cities. So when Glenna said she’d like to attend the
wedding of a friend in August, I jumped at the chance. Even better—the wedding was near
Stoke-on-Trent where I’d long wanted to visit a pottery factory since I collect
British royal memorabilia, the vast majority of which is china items.
We flew into London on Friday,
the 17th and immediately set out in our rental car for
Staffordshire. I long ago mastered
driving on the left side of the road, but I hadn’t done it for several years
and so was a little nervous. I soon got
back into the hang of it, but if you ask Glenna she would say that I never did
figure out where the left side of the car was relative to the road. Everywhere there are very narrow roads which
really weren’t meant for two cars, so I often drove just hoping that I was in
the right spot so as not to hit the bushes or the oncoming car.
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| Jubilee bear |
Our first stop was at the
Royal Crown Derby factory in Derby. We got
a wonderful tour and saw the whole process—the clay coming out of the molds
followed by drying and multiple firings
and glazings. We watched women doing
incredibly detailed work with tiny brushes.
It was fascinating. In honor of
the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, they had a special exhibition showing photos of
royal visits to the factory over the years in addition to a display of the many
commemorative pieces they have produced.
I have very few RCD pieces, and after the tour I realized why—all that
handwork makes the pieces very expensive.
I bought a tiny bear for £95.
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| Anglo-Saxon warrior |
Saturday we visited two Wedgwood-Doulton shops, but the
highlight of the morning was a visit to the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent
to see the Staffordshire Hoard exhibit. In
July of 2009 a local treasure hunter struck gold literally when he found the
first few of what turned out to be 3500 pieces of Anglo-Saxon gold, silver and
garnet intricately-carved militaria which had been hidden in a field for 13
centuries. It totally overwhelmed the
otherwise amazing pottery shard mosaic in the foyer of the museum.
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| Closeup of pottery mosaic |
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| Pottery mosaic at the Pottery Museum |
That afternoon it was the
wedding of Jan and Lewis which was held in the garden of Jan’s parents’ home
near Stone. The couple had added their
own touches—games such as chess and Twister, a direction marker with the home
cities of all the guests, and a wedding cake of cheeses in addition to more
food than I’ve seen at any event and a really funny speech from the father of
the bride which made Jan’s red Scottish cheeks even redder.
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| Guest hometowns against a beautiful sky |
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| Wedding (cheese) cake |
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| The River Liffey |
After a
walk around Grafton St, the center of activity, we found a wonderful pub for
dinner. We had beef and Guinness pie and
Irish stew and later Irish coffee and Bailey’s.
And to top it off a four-piece Irish band played while we ate. They were great, singing sad songs written by
the leader and cheerier jigs and reels.
They drew quite a crowd.
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| Irish band in Sheehan's Pub |
On Monday our day started with the first of many
wonderful Irish breakfasts where we always chose scrambled eggs and
salmon. We also grew to love the tasty
Irish brown bread and wondered why someone doesn’t sell it in our country.
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| Qwire of St Patrick's Cathedral |
The morning was another long walk, first to St
Patrick’s Cathedral which is on the site of St Patrick’s 5th century
church and of which Jonathan Swift was once dean. Next was Christ Church which we didn’t go
in. Strangely these are the two largest
historic churches in Dublin and both are Anglican. Further along we walked by what is left of
Dublin Castle and its walls. The Chester
Beatty Library was on the grounds.
Beatty was an American mining magnate who retired to Ireland and left
his magnificent collection of manuscripts, prints, early printed books, and
other art objects to the public. We were
particularly interested in the Islamic manuscripts which are always amazingly
beautiful. My favorite was one that was
long and narrow, decorated in reds and golds, and filled with very tiny script
except for white spaces which themselves formed Arabic letters. Stunning.
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| Dublin Castle with modern additions |
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| Memorial to Jonathan Swift |
We had only
seen the highlights of Dublin by now but had to push on to our next
destination, heading south toward Limerick.
Our first stop was at the Craggaunowen Project whose castle and grounds
have been turned into a display area of Iron Age structures. My favorite part was a recreation of a
crannog, a village of thatched wattle and daub houses built on a man-made
island for protection from enemies.
There was also a ring fort, an early Christian community surrounded by a
wood picket fence, and a recreation of a leather boat that, according to
legend, St Brendan used to sail to the New World in the 6th century.
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| Inside Craggaunowen Castle |
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| Recreation of a crannog |
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| Another view of the Cliffs of Moher |
My plan was to go next to
Bunratty Castle. But Glenna convinced me
that it wasn’t too far to drive instead over to the west coast to see the
Cliffs of Moher. And it was already
3:30! The cliffs are one of Ireland’s
natural highlights and were pretty spectacular.
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Glenna at the cliffs |
Then it was back across
country and down to Adare to stay the night.
We were too late to go into anything there but did see the Augustinian
Abbey, Desmond Castle and some pretty thatched cottages in town. It is often billed as the prettiest town in
Ireland. We were a bit
underwhelmed. Dinner that night was
just okay, but the owner did give us a half loaf of brown bread to take
away. More picnics!
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| Adare's Augustinian Abbey |
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| Pretty Adare cottages |
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| Desmond Castle |
The next day, Tuesday, was Ring of Kerry day. Back in 1970 my friend and I had missed doing
the Ring because our car had a flat tire and we had to go through the hassle of
getting another one. So I’d been looking
forward to this for a long time. It was
indeed pretty though we had intermittent rain all day. The prettiest views were those that had some
water in them. And I loved the orange
flowers that we saw everywhere. We
stopped numerous times to take pictures and walk around the towns, even finding
a fun antique shop in Sneem.
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| Atlantic Ocean near Glenbeigh |
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| Glenna on Ring of Kerry route |
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| Antique implement at Sneem |
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| Look at those blues and greens |
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| Colorful Sneem street |
We ended up
in Kenmare for the night, a town we really liked. The first thing we wanted was tea. We found a charming tea shop where we had the
Irish version of a cream tea (the cream is soupier than the English variety)
and made notes on what we would have in our own tea shop in America. We found a B&B right in town and then did
some exploring, finding several cute shops.
After giving up on the wifi (incredibly slow) we walked down to a finger
of the Atlantic. We couldn’t walk too
far because the path around it was flooded from all the rain they’d gotten, but
it was picturesque. We had another good
meal (shepherd’s pie and sea bass followed by warm apple pie with cream and
Bailey’s cheesecake) accompanied by an Irish folk group.
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| Cupan Tae tea shop |
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| Tea and scones--yum |
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| Kenmare street |
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| A finger of the Atlantic at Kenmare |
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| The Rock of Cashel |
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| Countryside near Killorglin |
A few days
before the wires had pulled away from the plug on the cord of our GPS. That was the only aspect of the rental that
was not insured, so we wanted to get a new cord—and also needed the GPS! So instead of stopping in Kinsale as planned,
Wednesday started with a trip to Cork to a
shop that Glenna had found with her iPhone (another great travel aid these
days). They had a cord, and it
worked! I was so relieved. I wasn’t looking forward to buying a GPS for
the rental company. Our TomTom had
warnings when you went too far over the speed limit—first a loud gong and then
a very loud mooooo. They had become very
annoying, but I was actually grateful to have them back. It also warned of upcoming traffic cameras
which was nice.
After that
detour, we were off to Cashel to see St Patrick’s Church called the Rock of
Cashel, a church on top of a hill over the town. It was a very odd shape with the apse much
shorter than the choir because of a much older castle wall in the way. It also
featured a stand-alone round tower with a conical roof, an architectural
feature seen only in Ireland.
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| Carved tomb at the Rock of Cashel |
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| Beautiful roof in Cormac's Chapel |
Next stop
was Kilkenny to visit St Canice’s Cathedral, again with a round tower. The inside was particularly nice with a
beautiful wooden ceiling with gargoyles.
We walked all through the town afterward, and I got an ice cream cone
I’d had a taste for. I love the
creaminess of European ice cream.
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| St Canice's Cathedral |
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| Wooden ceiling of St Canice's Cathedral |
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| Glenna waving from atop St Canice's round tower |
By that time we had to make
tracks to Rosslare from which we were to take the ferry back to Wales the next
morning. We stayed at the lovely O'Leary Farm right on the Irish Sea and had a good farm breakfast as a farewell to Ireland.
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| The beautiful orange flowers we had seen in Kerry |
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| O'Leary sheep in view of the Irish Sea |
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| From the monk's dayroom to the church south side |
On Thursday, after we landed in Pembroke, we headed
east. I had hoped to visit the
well-regarded St Fagan’s National History Museum in Cardiff, but we just didn’t
have time. (I always plan too much and
know that we have to pick and choose when we get there.) We went instead to one of my favorite ruins,
Tintern Abbey, near the border with England.
Driving down the road, you see this incredible place looming ahead. And you get to tramp all through the abbey
grounds. The outbuildings of the
monastery are mostly just walls a few feet high (no doubt the stones were
carted away to build something else centuries ago), but enough of the church is
left to know exactly what it was like.
The floor is now just grass and the roof is totally gone, and somehow
that adds to the mystique and the beauty.
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| Looking into the abbey church |
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| Lots of arches |
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| Looking from the nave to the west window |
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| Looking from the nave to the qwire and east window |
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| Statue of Julius Caesar |
After a
cream tea in site of Tintern, we proceeded on to Bath. The Roman Baths are open late enough that we
could visit them that evening. I have
been there several times before, but this time the visit included a really
excellent audio guide which gave insights into the history of the time and the
use of baths. One interesting fact we
learned was that in dating a skeleton that had been unearthed, they knew he was
well off because he had holes in his teeth from eating honey, a food that was
unavailable to the lower classes. There
was a special audio for kids; Glenna listened to some of them and said they
were really good also. In several rooms
there were holograms showing Romans going about their business. Wow!
Other historical sites should take a lesson from them.
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| Roman Baths at Bath |
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| Glenna at the Baths |
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| Beautiful fan vaulting |
On Friday
we first visited Bath Abbey, a beautiful Gothic church. Once again the ceiling took the honors, but
the carved wooden pews and qwire were also special. On display were spectacular large fabric
panels of stitchery and calligraphy depicting passages from the Bible, all done
by one woman. I wish I could have taken
pictures, but I did buy a set of postcards of them.
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| Bath Abbey |
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| Bath Abbey nave |
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| Carved wooden qwire rail |
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| Sally Lunn's house, oldest house in Bath |
We walked around the town,
past the famed Royal Crescent (which didn’t impress Glenna particularly) and
the Circus, both built in the 18th century when Bath was the center
of fashion. Glenna had been looking
forward to exploring the antique shops and markets in Bath and was
disappointed. We found a few, but not what
we had found in past trips. In
particular, I was trying to find the street where her Dad and I had shopped
while Glenna sat at a table with a drink and her coloring books. I wanted to take a picture of her there again
but couldn’t identify it with certainty.
The same thing happened when we visited Berchtesgaden a couple of years
ago where I was trying to find the steps on which her Dad and I found her (at
the age of 6) after a frantic search after she had slipped away while we were
focused on shopping (a parent’s worst fear).
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| Bath's Royal Crescent |
After getting
a few more Jubilee pieces and a Sally Lunn bun (actually a knock-off since the
Sally Lunn house was only a sit-down place and was full), we drove to
Bradford-on-Avon just for Glenna to get a glimpse of the Cotswolds. As with so many of the places we saw, she’s
been there before but was just too young to remember it well. We had a good pub lunch (On this trip I
introduced Glenna to lager and lime.) and walked around the town, admiring the
views of the river and the streets and old houses.
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| On the left the oldest house in Bradford |
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| The Dandy Lion pub where we had lunch |
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| The Avon flowing through Bradford |
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| West front of Wells Cathedral |
Then it was
on to Wells to see the great cathedral again.
This one is one of my favorites.
The most famous aspects are the fabulously-carved west front, the
unusual scissor arch of the crossing, and the chapter house. We could see everything except the misericords
in the qwire because the choir was rehearsing.
But that was nice too. It rained
most of the time we were there, but you can’t let that stop you in a country
that has plenty of rain.
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| Lots of ribs and arches |
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| The great scissor arch |
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| Vaulting of the beautiful chapter house |
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| Ancient steps to the chapter house |
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| Croquet on the grounds of the Bishop's Palace |
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| Just a cute little girl with her dad |
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| The Vicar's Close |
The day wasn’t over yet. We drove down to the Channel, staying in
Weymouth. We found a place not far from
the seaside and walked down there for dinner, not one of our best. The next morning, Saturday,
after getting a few more pictures, we drove above the town looking for a car
boot sale. We didn’t find the sale, but
we did get some great views of Weymouth and the sea.
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| The beach at Weymouth |
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| Weymouth and the English Channel from above the town |
We continued on to Higher
Bockhampton to go to Thomas Hardy’s childhood home, a cottage in a lovely
wooded setting. The guide was quite
good, telling us lots of details of his life there and elsewhere. He started out as an architect but wrote from
an early age. I’ve read or seen movies
of several of his books.
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| Thomas Hardy's cottage at Higher Bockhampton |
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| The Hardy cottage garden |
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| Fish and chips by the sea |
It rained
off and on all day. We decided to skip
Dorchester and drive west to Chideock and Charmouth. The former is a pretty town with lots of
thatched cottages. The latter wasn’t as
pretty but is right on the water. Glenna
had been saving her fish and chips meal from a fish and chips shop for this
day, so she was determined to have it and eat it by the sea. We did indeed try, but since it was raining
buckets right then we just got a picture of it on the picnic table but then had
to go back to the car to eat.
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| Inscribed in a wall in Corfe |
Next stop
was Poole on the other side of Weymouth.
A friend of Glenna’s had told her of happy memories of summers spent
there; he said we just had to go to Poole Pottery. The town’s harbor was full of vessels
destined for the Continent, not beachy like Weymouth. The pottery was okay, but we didn’t buy
anything. So this was one town where we
didn’t spend a penny. We did see someone
throwing a pot which I always like to watch.
We had two
more destinations that day. The first
was Corfe Castle. It rained all the way
up the hill and all the way down, but it was still worth seeing. There were people dressed in medieval
costumes doing medieval things to entertain the kids and adults. I was intent on getting another cream tea
before they closed for the day, and that, together with the rain, made me rush
through and dulled my enjoyment. Never a
good idea.
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| Glenna on her way up to Corfe Castle |
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| Glenna holding up the wall |
The last
stop we debated about doing this day or the next because of the weather. We decided to chance it and were really glad
we did. Glenna was very pleased with the
lighting at sundown. Durdle Door is a
World Heritage Site that Glenna had been looking forward to seeing, and it
really was a spectacular natural site.
The door is an erosion by the sea of the rock along the coast forming
what looks like a large door. The rock
is 65-150 million years old, giving the area the name the Jurassic Coast. To get within site of it, one walks along
quite a steep path downward. I always
think of how awful the walk back up will be, but it was certainly worth the
walk. The air temperature was only in
the 50’s, so the water had to be considerably colder, but some crazy woman in a
bikini went in.
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| The English Channel at Durdle Door |
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| Sun on the water |
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| There it is--Durdle Door |
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| Glenna and the door |
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| Our cute B&B near Swanage |
It was
already pretty late and we had nowhere to stay in this fairly isolated
area. We stopped for one last picture of
the sunset, and Glenna unknowingly got into a nettle patch and immediately had
her legs covered with welts. A
pharmacist later told us that near every nettle patch is another plant that is
an antidote. Isn’t nature amazing? Too bad we didn’t know that; this was
Saturday night late when nothing was open.
It took us
forever to find a B&B as we went from town to town; we finally got a tip
from a lady which enabled us to find one near Swanage about 9:30. The only place in town that was open for dinner
at that late hour was a Bangladeshi restaurant, and it was packed. Earth to Swanage pubs: stay open later; there
are plenty of people who want to eat.
The B&B
we had found was really cute. The owner
was Swiss married to an English lady. We
had a really interesting conversation with him at the enormous and delicious
breakfast he had prepared. They had run
a hotel in Africa for several years but had come back to England because his
wife missed her kids.
On Sunday, our last day with the car, we set off for
Salisbury to see the cathedral, one noted for its tall spire and its beautiful
setting. Before we got there, though, we
stopped at a fun antique shop (where we bought a tea set) and also found a car
boot sale. Glenna was pleased.
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| Glenna's favorite road sign |
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| Typical narrow road |
After lunch
and a bit of a look around Salisbury town, we walked over to the
cathedral. This was a bank holiday
weekend, so loads of people were enjoying a respite from the rain by lounging
on the green. Salisbury has one of four
remaining original copies of the Magna Carta which they highlight in the
chapter house. The educational displays
about it were very good. The interior of
the cathedral is quite plain in contrast to the decorated exterior, especially
so after the others we had seen. The
choir was again rehearsing.
Glorious.
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| Market cross in Salisbury |
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| Salisbury Cathedral |
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| Detail of west front of cathedral |
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| The beautiful cloisters |
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| The choir in rehearsal |
Then it was
on to Heathrow to give up our car. After
I explained about the GPS cord being too short for the distance needed, they
paid for it. Impressive. I had driven 1522 miles while Glenna
navigated, averaging about 150 per day.
We decided
to take the express train to Paddington.
It’s much more expensive than the tube but gets there in 15
minutes. Hardly enough time to get my
book open. We had booked a hotel just
two blocks from Paddington Station, a great location. The strange thing was that it was no more
expensive than the B&B’s we had been getting in the country—all around
£70. We got an Italian dinner right near
the hotel and called it a night though I did watch some of a new version of Brideshead
Revisited. The original is my all
time favorite PBS series.
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| London Street near Paddington Station |
On Monday morning our first task was to get tickets
for a play at TKTS in Leicester Square.
We decided on 39 Steps.
Then it was off to the Tate Britain.
Neither of us was terribly impressed with the 20th century
collection, but they have a huge holding of Turners in a separate wing. They were good though strangely absent were
the big sea and sky scenes that most people recognize. We then took the tube to Baker St where we
had lunch before going through the Sherlock Holmes Museum. I had gone there just last summer with
Courtney, but Glenna wanted to see it too.
It is a fun recreation of his home as described in the books.
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| Parlor at 221B Baker Street |
Being undecided about what to
do next, we chose a cream tea on Cromwell Rd, taking the bus to get there. The tube is often faster than a bus, but you
see more on the bus and avoid the sometimes long distances between tube lines
underground. The tea and scone were good
but more fun was watching the obviously wealthy Middle Eastern ladies having
their afternoon gathering.
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| Betty at tea at L'Opera |
The next stop
was Southbank Centre, a really happening place in today’s London. The South Bank of the Thames and the East End
and Docklands (where the Olympics were centered) were long depressed places,
but both are now resurgent. We got off
at Westminster (always have to get those pictures of the tower of Big Ben—I
probably have hundreds) and walked across Westminster Bridge and along the
South Bank with all the thousands of other revelers. There was a carnival near the London Eye. Glenna had particularly wanted to see a
Centre exhibit called A-Maze-Me which was a maze made of 250,000 books. Not long before we got there she saw that it
had ended two days before, but we did get to see them taking it down with lots
of books already in boxes but many others still standing. That would have been fun.
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| Big Ben and the Thames |
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| Carnival on the South bank |
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| The remains of A-Maze-Me |
After a
quick dinner, we had to get to the play.
We decided to walk across the Golden Jubilee Footbridge, bridges on
either side of the Hungerford Railroad Bridge.
To avoid so many steps, I took the east side, but Glenna took the west
side to get better sunset views. We
agreed to meet at the end of her side.
Unfortunately there are two ways to get off the east side to get to the
west side, and I unknowingly took the wrong one and had to walk at least a half
mile to get to where we were to meet while Glenna left there to search for
me. We eventually found each other and
then really had to rush to get to the theater in Piccadilly Circus.
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| Golden Jubilee Footbridge |
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| Criterion Theatre |
The 39
Steps is a classic
1935 Hitchcock espionage tale. But this
one was a comedy as only the British can do it!
Four actors did all the parts, often switching from one part to another
by just altering their dress right on stage.
The script worked in many references
to other Hitchcock works. It was
hilarious. At the interval we had the
usual ice cream cup as Courtney and I had done last year.
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| Westminster Abbey against a blue sky |
Tuesday dawned sunny despite the prediction
of rain. After breakfast (which couldn’t
hold a candle to any we’d had in the country) we took the tube to Piccadilly
Circus and walked down Piccadilly Street, first to the market at St James
Church. I’ve always liked it even though
it’s small; I got another royal item. We
continued down Piccadilly to Fortnum and Mason, always a fun stop, and turned
left to walk through Green Park toward Buckingham Palace. In September the changing of the guard only
happens every other day, and this was not one of those days so the crowds were
small. We continued down Birdcage Walk
to get to Strutton Market which Glenna had read about and which turned out not
to be much. So we walked up to
Westminster Abbey which Glenna chose not to go in when she saw that no picture
taking was allowed. All along our route,
and indeed all over London and the UK, the country’s pride in both the Jubilee
and the Olympics was evident. There were
Union Jacks and banners everywhere.
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| Union Jacks everywhere |
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| Olympics poster in the tube |
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| Jubilee poster in the tube |
We’d
decided to go to an afternoon movie but first had lunch at Mele, an Indian
restaurant. Glenna asked in Hindi to
have it hot, and she got it. Thank
goodness for the lager and lime. The
movie, Take This Waltz, was a little odd and, in the end,
disconcerting. Afterward we walked down
to Covent Garden where we saw the street performers and the entertaining string
quartet inside.
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| Glenna's appetizer at Mele |
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| Glenna with the Thames behind her |
We
continued down to the Embankment where we sat and read for awhile, waiting for
the sunset--for pictures, of course.
That meant another trip to the Jubilee Footbridge. But not for long; we needed to get dinner and
then get to the Tower of London to see the lights on Tower Bridge and London
Bridge. The river and the city were
really beautiful on this trip. At dinner
we started our usual lists of best and worsts, our tradition on the last night.
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| Superstructure of the Jubilee Footbridge at night |
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| Tower Bridge all lit up |
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| Gorgeous shot of the Tower of London |
I had
deliberately booked an afternoon flight back home so that we would have another
half day. Wednesday started with packing since I didn’t have the energy
the night before. It’s always a task to
get most of the breakables in the carry-on bags and the rest well padded in the
luggage.
When that
was finished we walked down to Hyde Park—in the rain again—because Glenna
hadn’t gotten her bike-riding fix yet.
We didn’t get to do as much as she would have liked, but it was nice
flat riding for me. We stopped at the
Serpentine Gallery to see this year’s temporary outdoor installation, this time
by Werner, deMeuron and Ai WeiWei. It
was a structure with a pool on the roof and a sitting and mingling space
underneath all made of cork. Inside the
gallery was an exhibit by Yoko Ono, a little odd as one would expect.
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| Watery roof of the installation with Gallery behind |
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| Under the roof of the installation |
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| Glenna in a typical pose |
After a
last picture of flowers we returned to Paddington for lunch and our bags and
took the return train to Heathrow—in the rain again. The trip home was uneventful, some sleeping,
some reading, some eating, some movie watching.
It was a really good trip. I have to thank Glenna for being the usual
great travel companion and, this time, navigator. She had downloaded the New York Times Puzzle
app on her iPhone. It really helped to
pass the time in the car (driving not being my favorite thing to do) with her reading me the clues. Now it’s back to the
real world of my responsibilities and Glenna’s search for a job.
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