Why would someone my age go to England for two weeks alone? Even more—hire a car and drive around for a week? That’s what amazed and confounded people in both England and America. Well, first, England is my favorite place in the world other than home, and I long for it at times. Second, the prices were favorable, although the pound was not down nearly the way the euro has been against the dollar. Third, Glenna, my usual travel companion, was going to Spain earlier in September with JR, and I admit to being a wee bit jealous. So I just had to go.
In May I bought a crazy expensive airline ticket. In the subsequent months, I was excited by day and waking up at night believing my friends were right and I was crazy. One worry was whether my feet and legs would hold up with all the walking I knew I would be doing. But the bigger concern was the driving even though I have certainly driven there enough and even alone when I lived there. But that was a long time ago! When I got there, though, I was committed. So there were no more bad thoughts—only fulfilling days if also frustrating moments.
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| Selfie at breakfast in London
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These days, what makes traveling alone less lonely are the multiple ways of communicating with the world back home. I bought an international phone plan which allows for unlimited texting (sending and receiving), reasonable phone rates, and a given amount of data which you can keep down if you mostly use wifi. Loads of places have free wifi now, pretty much obviating the need for Internet cafes which used to be ubiquitous. With wifi you can keep up with your email and, in my case, a politics junkie, the news.
SPOILER ALERT: If you are planning to watch the Great British Baking Show when it airs in the US, skip the next paragraph and the picture below it.
I also watched TV in my room morning and night, sometimes news, sometimes British TV shows. One I happened upon was a cooking competition on BBC2 called the Great British Bakeoff. I saw the last three episodes. It was won by the person I wanted to win, a sweet, unassuming young woman of Bangladeshi descent named Nadiya Hussain who wore a headscarf and had a husband and three kids. Her winning offering (which had to taste good as well as look good) was a gorgeous wedding cake.
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| Nadiya's winning entry |
Another night I happened upon a quiz show where the celebrity contestants were given 8 letters and 30 seconds to see who could come up with the longest word using them. This is right up my wordsmith daughter’s alley (who was regularly beating her parents at Boggle at a very young age), so I was texting with her to see if she could beat them—which she generally did. Sometimes with more than one word!
I stayed in B&B’s and small hotels which now almost always are ensuite (having your own bathroom). Years ago, it was almost impossible not to be sharing the loo and the shower room. The rooms almost always have TV's too even if they are still often tiny. Obviously they have bowed to popular demand. This point was made most bluntly but with British understatement by the young man from whom I bought some Cheddar cheese in Cheddar. I asked if it would last for another week before I went home. He said just ask at your hotel in London to have it put in their frig. When I asked if they would really do that, he said, well, with Trip Advisor, these days they don’t have much choice. We travelers have all travel-related businesses over a barrel, but we shouldn’t abuse it.
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| The cheese made it home |
By the way, I know there are plenty of sites these days, but I used booking.com to find places to stay. I like the fact that almost all places allow you to cancel up to 24 hours before without penalty. They are also very clear about what amenities each place has.
My goal on this trip was to do mostly things I had never done before in my many trips and the two years I lived there. I planned in detail—what I would do each day and where I would stay each night. I started with a long list of things I had not done yet (and a few not for a long time that I really wanted to do again) and whittled it down to something manageable. And I did most of it. There were a few disappointments. Because of traffic, I didn’t get to Varulamium, the remains of a Roman settlement in St Alban’s. At Hatfield House I was able to see the Stuart-era mansion which was very nice, but I had really wanted to see the Old Palace where Elizabeth I lived as a child when her father Henry VIII banished her from court, but they were having a wedding there.
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| The Old Palace from Hatfield House |
One stop I was really looking forward to was Flag Fen, the remains of a Bronze Age settlement in Peterborough. When I got there, I saw a sign saying that the previous day had been the last day for the season. I was bummed, especially since I had gone over to East Anglia just for that. At Cheddar I didn’t get to go through Gough’s Cave because of my car misadventure (more on that later). In London I really wanted to see more of the East End which has always fascinated me, so I decided on a Sandeman walking tour. When I got there, no tour. I looked on the website later, and the time had been changed from 2:00 (perhaps a summer schedule) to 3:30 and was no longer given on Wednesday, the only day I could have gone. Bummed again. The Charing Cross Collector’s Fair which even on the door to the place said every Saturday at 10:00 wasn’t going on. Not too disappointing. More was the fact that the Theatre Musuem in Covent Garden apparently no longer exists. Oh well, these things happen when you’re traveling. You just have to regroup and go to a hastily-planned Plan B. On the road that meant switching some of tomorrow’s events to today taking into consideration that your B&B for the night was determined.
I used just about all methods of getting around. The first week was in the car (which I drove 997 miles in 6 1/2 days). It was an Audi A1/S Back Sport which was fun to drive. I wasn’t supposed to get that nice a car, but I had ordered an automatic and the Hertz agent didn’t have any in the economy range. He told me three times what he was giving me. I was clueless and so didn’t react; I guess he must have been frustrated at not being appreciated. The first thing I did after renting it was to write down the license number since I didn’t have Glenna to count on remembering it.
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| My fun-to-drive Audi A1/S |
Then I plugged in my GPS. I decided to get UK maps on my Garmin Nuvi instead of renting one. Good decision. As you all probably know, the rest of the world is full of roundabouts. It has been shown that they save time and there are fewer accidents. Despite that, here in Greenville there is a hue and cry about installing a first few. Anyway, roundabouts work really well, and the Nuvi gave wonderful directions (“at the roundabout take the third exit to the A60”). One feature of the new Garmins (I thought) was that they no longer say ‘recalculating’, I’m sure because people complained. As a result, you may not know that you have taken a wrong turning; she just finds another route. Not always such a great thing. But one time I actually heard her say it, so I figured that that time I had REALLY screwed up. So I went back the first chance I got. Honestly, I don’t know how we got around in foreign countries before these nav systems, as the British call them. I guess we just made a lot of wrong turns and asked a lot of questions.
Traffic was fairly often heavy, particularly on the motorways. But I observed two interesting features which I think we might consider. At various places on the motorways, they had painted chevrons on each lane of the roadway. Road signs said that one should drive so that two chevrons were visible between you and the car ahead of you. The chevrons would stop after a couple of miles, presumably because you now had the idea of how far back you should be. The second feature occurred during high traffic times on the motorways. There were overhead signs telling drivers how fast they should all be driving (done in lights so the speed could be changed according to conditions). They have found through research that traffic moves better when everyone is traveling at the same speed rather than letting drivers speed up or slow down at will. I was frustrated at having to go 50 or 40 until someone at breakfast told me the theory. It now seems like a good one to me.
In London I primarily used the tube. The only way to go if you are going to be there several days is to have an Oyster card and get a week pass. Then you hop on any tube or bus or any of several overground trains and never have to buy another ticket. When you have to switch lines underground, the distance from one to the other can be long, so it sometimes makes sense to do as I did and take a bus—which are easy to figure out also if you have a London Mapguide. You see a lot more too. In addition, I took a train out to Sevenoaks and a taxi on to Chartwell.
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| My Oyster card |
And I did a lot of walking. According to the heart app on my phone, for the week in London I averaged 11,393 steps and 5.56 miles per day. To and from Heathrow the only way to go is the Heathrow Express to Paddington. 15 minutes and you’re there. When I left on Thursday, I had had a miserable cold for the whole week in London and it was only getting worse. That day from hotel to Paddington (only two blocks) to train to Heathrow gate, I walked 2.52 miles, almost all of that at Heathrow! At Dulles I walked another 1.42 miles. That’s just plain crazy. Needless to say, when Martha picked me up at GSP, I was exhausted.
The British are famous for talking about the weather. According to a book I was reading on the trip (That’s Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us by Erin Moore), the reason they talk about the weather so much is because they are polite and the weather is non-controversial. So I must be polite and mention the weather too. The first week was absolutely glorious. Everyone I encountered talked about how wonderful it was after the ‘rubbish’ summer they’d had. The second week in London was good for the first couple of days but then returned to form and rained. It didn’t stop me. You just pull out your umbrella (or brolly) and carry on.
The British also have a reputation for having bad food, or at least uninspiring food. I’ve always thought that was a bit unfair though I admit it can’t compare to other ethnic foods. For breakfast, they still serve the full English breakfast almost everywhere though exactly what that includes varies. It consists at least of egg, bacon (what we would call a ham slice), sausage, toast in the rack, cereal, juice and coffee or tea. It often includes canned pork and beans and may include fried tomato, fried mushrooms, and less often fried bread (not so great—pretty greasy). Maybe even fresh fruit. Basically, pretty fried. I asked one English lady one morning if they eat like that at home. She laughed and said no but that it’s just a treat to have it on holiday.
Despite my defense of British food above, the food I had on this trip was not as good as I’ve had on many other trips—too heavily battered fish, so-so toad-in-the-hole crust (but delicious sausages, fresh from the butcher's case at the farm B&B where I was staying), so-so steak and ale pie, uniformly barely edible mash. You get tired of chips and peas in England, so I soon abandoned meals served with those. On the road, I hadn’t built in time to stop for lunch, so my breakfast generally sustained me. One day, though, I did have a delicious leek and goat cheese soup with a hunk of wonderful bread. Three nights I ate in my room—a fresh loaf of bread from a Blists Hill shop (more later), good English cheese and butter, grapes, wine, and a sweet.
The best meal I had was in a country inn, The Mason Arms in Kemberton, near Telford. First was a delicious brie and garlic toast which was followed by penne carbonara and salad (which I had been longing for)—with red wine, of course. In London Paddington (where I was staying) I had pretty good Chinese, good Lebanese, and really good Italian at San Marco--pizza and delicious plain old spaghetti and salad accompanied by wine.
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Paddington Bear on
London St in Paddington |
I had two teas, one at Highgrove, Charles and Camilla’s country home, and the other at the National Gallery in London. In both cases the scone was tall and dense, almost dry. Of course, preserves and clotted cream can make most any bread product taste good.
What enhances any trip are the people you meet along the way. I’m perfectly capable of going long stretches without any conversation with other people, but I did have a few interesting encounters. One evening I ate in the café at the farm B&B where I was staying. I was the only one in there so the chef wanted to talk. He’d been to the US several times since his brother lives there, but he still seemed really local. The next morning, I talked to an English lady who had lived in Florida for many years but who was still very English. When she comes back to England for a visit, she pretty much stays put rather than touring around. Others have told me they do the same when they come back. Maybe we would too.
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| We were definitely on the farm |
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The naughty dog who got into
the fish pond |
At a lovely B&B near Telford, I had a long conversation at breakfast with the owners about our various travels. Always a fun topic for me. In London I was stopped in Trafalgar Square by two Dutch high schoolers who asked if they could ask me some questions. They were there for a week with their classmates and tasked to talk to as many people as possible to practice their English. What a good idea.
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| The converted old barn where I stayed at Model Farm B&B |
Another conversation was at Highgrove. After the garden tour (more later) a couple invited me over to their table to have tea with them. Since we were at Charles’ house, we got onto the topic of Diana. The lady and I bonded over our mutual favorite picture of her—the one where she is back from a long trip wearing a dress with a big skirt and throws her arms open wide to greet her boys. She expressed how the British love their boys—William and Harry. That came up when I mentioned that when we were up near the house at Highgrove, one woman in the group expressed wonderment that they would have a huge magnolia obscuring the views from a couple of windows. The guide said that was all right because sometimes a certain young man comes back from a few days attendance at rock concerts and needs that darkness to get his sleep! One of the really nice things about that guided tour was how many stories we got of Charles and his family, how well the guides actually know them. She described George as really noisy, loud and curious.
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| The noisy, loud and curious one |
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| The one who needs his sleep |
One big difference that is very apparent between England and America is the concept of space. The UK has a population density of 671 people per square mile whereas the US’s figure is 85 per square mile. It often just feels crowded there. Everything is done on a smaller scale (other than palaces and grand estates, of course). This concept manifests itself in various ways. For example, in a breakfast room in a B&B, the tables are crowded in so that it is difficult to get out sometimes. The tables are very small and contain all the paraphernalia needed for the English breakfast I already described. In the picture you can see my breakfast table in London. And mind you, this is actually supposed to be a table for two!
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| Crowded breakfast table in London |
In many B&B’s the rooms are very tiny, particularly in London where already small rooms have had to have bathrooms carved out of them in recent years. In the picture you can see my room in London. It was on the ground floor, and I could hear the trains rumbling below me—very loud. But it didn’t keep me awake; I guess I was just too tired from my long days.
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My tiny London room at
the Belvedere Hotel |
The streets are often narrow because they are old as are the houses on either side of the street. Cars have gotten bigger, but they can’t make the streets bigger. I encountered one space problem on the street of my London hotel. In the picture you can see the truck carrying what looks like garbage bags trying to get between the truck parked there to deliver building materials to a hotel that was being renovated and a car parked on the other side. Two guys were directing the driver through the small space, and he seemed reluctant to believe their direction to come forward, maybe because he knew he would be held responsible for any scratches on his new-looking truck.
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I didn't stay to see
whether he got through |
And speaking of scratches, I experienced my own space problem. I woke on my last day on the road saying to myself one more day, just be careful. England is full of small towns where the shops are on the main road which gets a lot of through traffic also. Cars can typically be parked on one side or the other of these already narrow roads. Thus when two cars are approaching each other, one has to stop and wait for the other (or maybe of bunch of others) to go before he can take his turn. I was stopped in a tiny town on my way from Weston-Super-Mare to Cheddar. I have never had a good sense of where the other side of the car is; Glenna is forever telling me to get over toward the center when driving in the UK. Of course, this time I didn’t have her and I misjudged where the curb was relative to my wheels when I started up. I went up over the curb which must have been a high one because I really landed hard. I looked back briefly and saw what appeared to be a sign right at the corner. I drove a few miles when I started to hear a noise. I glanced down at the instrument panel and saw a message flash by that a tire had lost pressure. Fortunately I was coming into a town and I pulled into a parking spot in front of an optician’s shop, but unfortunately my front left tire was indeed flat. The people in the shop were very helpful in calling a shop in Cheddar who came out to assist me. The ‘tyre’ turned out to be beyond help. The bill: 142 pounds.
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| My expensive misadventure |
I went on to Cheddar and Hungerford as I had planned and then drove back to Hertz-Heathrow, getting more and more nervous as the miles wore on. Sure enough, the guy noticed what I had done (scratch on the fender and additional nicks on the already-nicked hubcap). Total payment to Hertz: 501.77 pounds (at an exchange rate of 1 pound=$1.53). I hope to be able to recover some or all of that from my credit card company. Obviously I had turned down the 20 pounds per day CDW offered by Hertz!
Well, so far I haven’t talked about the places I saw or the touristy things I did. So here goes. In London I saw three plays/musicals. How could you not? The first was
Kinky Boots which was fabulous in acting, music and costumes—and a good story to boot. Based on a true story, a young man has inherited a failing shoe-making business from his father until he decides to make specialty boots for transvestites. The English have always loved transvestism, so they were howling at the style show with all the kinky boots and clapped along with
Raise You Up, the signature song at the end.
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| Kinky Boots marquee |
The second was the great Mark Rylance (of
Wolf Hall fame for those who saw it this past season) in
Farinelli and the King, the true story of the singer Farinelli who developed a close relationship with the king of Spain who went in and out of sanity. Mark Rylance had a chance to be funny in this one, and he was so good and was obviously enjoying himself. At the curtain calls he didn’t hog the applause and gave special attention to the one who sang for Farinelli, an up and coming opera star. One review I read said that he is the premiere actor of his generation. On our side of the pond we are just getting to know him. Everyone reading this should be sure to see him with Tom Hanks in
Bridge of Spies. He makes you actually feel sorry for a Communist spy.
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| Farinelli and the King tube poster |
The last was
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. This play is based on the book of the same name which our book club read. Great book. It’s the story of a boy Christopher with autism and how he copes with the world. The staging was incredibly innovative. The floor and the walls of the stage were divided up by a grid pattern, echoing the order that autisitic individuals live by. The set consisted of a bunch of white cubes which were moved about to make a desk or a car or a bed or whatever was needed. Some of the cubes on the walls also opened to reveal a niche containing a prop needed for a particular scene. When a room was needed (for example, the police examining room), lights along some of the grid lines would light up to make a room with an opening so that someone could walk through the ‘door’. Christopher could draw on the floor or the walls to make his points, and the lights followed along. When he gets mad at his Dad and goes to London in search of his Mother, he has to take the tube. For this scene, they used a horizontal row of lights to indicate the edge of the platform. Several rows of the blocks sank to indicate where the train tracks were. Christopher loses something on the tracks and jumps down to get it. Others waiting there try to get him to come back up. All the while we are hearing the train whistle. It was so realistic that I was actually afraid for him. Altogether, it was a brilliant (their favorite word) evening.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-Time marquee |
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| The grid and cubes stage set |
On the way home, I passed through Piccadilly Circus where they have retired the famous static Coke sign (among others) and now have a huge electronic advertising space.
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The now-electronic advertising space
in Piccadilly Circus |
I also planned some musical events. On Sunday in London, I went to evensong at St Brides’s Church, the Sir Christopher Wren-designed church of Fleet Street where the 12 musicians are all professionals. Some of the modern music was a little odd, but the soprano had an absolutely bell-like voice. Beautiful.
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| The Wren interior of St Bride's |
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The steeple of St
Bride's from Fleet St |
On Tuesday I went to one of the noon-time concerts at St Martin’s in the Fields church at Trafalgar Square (very much not in the fields now). That day the musicians were a cellist and a pianist. Full house. The third piece was spectacular—Brahm’s Cello Sonata in F, Opus 99 which gives equal billing to the two instruments. While I was listening I was gazing at the very modern east window which to me represents Christ on the cross.
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Baroque interior of St Martin's in
the Fields |
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The east window--
Christ on the cross |
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| St Martin in the Fields from Trafalgar Sq |
I love it when I’m going through a church and the organist just happens to be practicing as occurred at Ely Cathedral or there is a concert I didn’t know about in progress as at Hereford Cathedral where their well-known organist was playing. As usual, you cannot see the organist, but they put a camera on him so we could see him playing and pedaling. At St Alban’s Cathedral, I just happened to be there during evensong. And at Hatfield House, I was there when a wonderful string quartet was rehearsing for an evening performance (and the chatelaine and her two small children were right there listening).
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| Organist on camera |
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| Rehearsal in progress with family in window well |
I love church architecture, so I always visit plenty of those. There are a couple of cathedrals that I haven’t yet visited, so I checked off a few. St Alban’s in Hertfordshire, once a part of a Benedectine abbey honoring the first English saint, I had visited before, but I remembered really liking it because it just looks so ancient. As usual, it was built over centuries, so as you walk from the back to the front along the very long center aisle, it gets older and older.
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| St Alban's with its mixture of architectural styles |
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| Ancient wall painting uncovered |
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| The shrine of St Alban |
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| The ceiling of the crossing from the shrine room |
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| The north transept |
Because I was in Ely to go to an antique consortium, I also went back to Ely Cathedral, which has elements of Romanesque and Decorated Gothic. I located the brass of one of the early bishops which I had rubbed back in 1973. Back then, the brasses could all be rubbed; today I’m sure none of them can be. Instead they have brass rubbing centers where you rub replicas. I feel very privileged to have been able to rub so many of the originals.
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| View of the lantern of Ely Cathedral |
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View of the choir through the
entry to the cathedral compound |
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| Gothic windows and arches and vaulting of the nave |
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Romanesque windows and arches
of the transept |
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The very long nave
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| The lantern in the crossing |
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| The rood screen in front of the choir |
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| Colorful kneelers in the choir |
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| The bishop brass which I rubbed many years ago |
I also like ruins, whether castle or church. So I visited Kirtstall Abbey in Leeds, Yorkshire, the farthest north I went. It didn’t turn out to be one of my favorites, but it was a lovely day and there were loads of families there which is such fun to observe as well as a market in the cloisters. Quite a few walls of the abbey buildings were still standing, at least in part. I like that because you get a good idea of what it looked like. This particular one was Cistercian from the 12th century and thus pretty simple. Interesting fact: Some time after Henry VIII dissolved most of the abbeys and they fell into ruin, the road went right down through the center aisle of the church.
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| The nave center aisle which became a major road |
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| Market in the cloister |
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| Ancient mosaic pavement |
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| The abbey is now in a park setting |
A new cathedral (for me) was Hereford in Herefordshire, built in 1079 though little of that Norman architecture remains so that today it looks Gothic from the outside. The more interesting aspect of the place is the library. Long ago, books were incredibly valuable because they were rare and expensive. Thus they were chained to the bookcases. At Hereford, there is a reconstruction of their original chained library. Scholars had to sit at the tables in that room to read the books, primarily bibles. Nearby is one of the four existing versions of the 1217 Magna Carta, the revised version that is actually more what our present-day laws are based on than the original 1215 version. Their piece de resistance, though, is the Mappa Mundi, a wonderful round map of the world on vellum dating from the late 13th century. It includes Paradise and heaven as well as the countries known at the time and the great cities of Jerusalem, Babylon, Rome and Troy. There is a lot of detail and decoration. Of course, it was written in Latin, but there is a helpful translation on the wall.
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| West front of Hereford Cathedral |
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| Romanesque nave |
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| Detail of the nave arches |
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| Nave ceiling |
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| The crypt |
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Cathedral school boys on their
lunch break |
In London, I’ve already mentioned St Brides’s and St Martin’s, both Baroque. There have been churches on the site of St Bride’s for 1500 years. I also visited St Bartholomew the Great in the East End. Because it was spared in the Great Fire in London in 1666, St Bartholomew’s is the oldest parish church in London. It looked absolutely ancient; I liked it.
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| St Bartholomew's Church |
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| Looking east toward the choir |
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| Looking west toward the entry |
I’ve saved the best for last, not because Leicester Cathedral in Leicestershire is any great shakes (it didn’t even become a cathedral until the 1920’s and before that was called St Martin's Church) but because of my interest in Richard III. He was the king whose reputation was ruined by Shakespeare (hunchback, killer of the two Princes in the Tower, himself killed by the future Henry VII at Bosworth Field). Sorry, I don’t buy it. I’ve read enough to believe that history has been unkind to him.
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| The unimposing Leicester Cathedral |
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| Detail above the entryway |
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National Portrait Gallery:
Henry VII |
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Natiional Portrait Gallery:
Richard III |
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National Portrait Gallery:
William Shakespeare |
He has been in the news lately because bones were found under a car park in Leicester a couple of years ago due in large part to a very determined woman, Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, who believed his bones would be there. They actually found him in the first trench they dug in the place where Greyfriars Abbey had once stood (long gone because of Henry VIII again) and which tradition had said may have been where Richard was buried in the choir, not far from his last battlefield. In addition, the skeleton showed clear signs of scoliosis which does make one shoulder higher than the other. They located descendants of his sister and positively identified the remains as indeed those of Richard III. I have been fascinated by this whole story from the beginning.
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| These banners were all over |
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| Crest of Richard III in the churchyard |
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Citation at the entry of the Richard III Center
across the street from the cathedral and on
the site of Greyfriars Abbey of Richard's day |
In March the town and the cathedral held an elaborate ceremony to rebury his remains. Richard was the Duke of York, so I at first thought he should have been buried at York Minster, not the relatively obscure Leicester. But while there, I learned why: people are supposed to be buried in the nearest consecrated ground which today is Leicester Cathedral, just across the street from the one-time abbey and, until a few years ago, car park.
The cathedral has done a wonderful job of the burial and exhibits and educational materials. I was lucky enough to get to talk for a long time to the rector who was responsible for the whole thing and who is now writing a book about it all. They actually rearranged the church to make a space for him, moving the choir forward into the nave. The beautifully simple sarcophagus is made of Swaledale fossil stone from North Yorkshire (a nod to his home). They chose fossilized stone because it has long dead organisms embedded in it. The plinth is darker Irish Kilkenny marble. The head of the tomb is raised at the west end so that Richard is looking up at the stained glass windows depicting the Resurrection at the east end of the church. The stone has deep cuts in it in the shape of a cross which allow light to penetrate the grooves. His remains are encased in lead and then English oak and lie in a brick-lined vault in the crypt right underneath the sarcophagus. The oak coffin was designed and built by the very descendant who provided the DNA to identify the remains. Now isn’t that special?
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Recreation of tomb with pall over it and crown on top,
part of the excellent educational displays |
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Guide talking to visitors in the
choir where Richard's tomb is |
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| The beautifully simple sarcophagus |
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| Richard's motto: Loyalty binds me |
The town has built a wonderful Vistor Center, Dynasty, Death and Discovery, where the car park was, using all the modern museum techniques: interactive displays, moving images, holograms, etc. It was really well done. They tell the story of Richard as well as the project for finding him. At the end was the actual pit where he was found. They have a hologram cycle which shows his bones come and go from the pit. It was a magical Sunday for me.
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Nice sculpture of Richard, Anne
Neville, his wife, and
Edward, their son |
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Hologram film which depicted various people who
knew Richard talking about him |
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| The actual pit where the body was found |
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Close-up of the hologram showing Richard's body
as it was found where you can clearly
see the scoliosis of the spine |
As with other things I did, my focus for historic homes and places was visiting ones I’d never been to before—and to see homes from a variety of periods. A place I’d been looking forward to seeing was Hatfield House, just outside the northern stretch of the London ring road in Hertfordshire, because of its association with Elizabeth I (who lived in the old palace as a child and young woman).
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National Portrait Gallery:
A young Elizabeth I |
In 1607, just into the reign of James I, the Cecils built a new house right next to the old one and still live there. As is so often the case, these huge places from the outside aren’t very appealing. In Naples, Italy a man once told us that the lack of ostentation on the outside is deliberate—to avoid the tax man! But the inside of Hatfield House was beautiful—lots of wood, armor, portraits, antiques and a wonderful chapel. I walked around the grounds which were also very nice.
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| Hatfield House |
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| Marble Hall with second floor peepholes above doorway |
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| Grand staircase to upper floor |
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| Ceiling of grand staircase |
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| St James Drawing Room |
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| The Long Gallery |
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| The Chapel |
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| The Armoury |
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| The walkway between the house and the Old Palace |
Next was Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire. I recently read a really interesting book on Catherine Parr which said that she lived here with her
first husband which is what made me want to go there. At the Hall they did say that she visited but not that she lived there though it was owned by the Burgh family of which her first husband was a member. Maybe some poetic license.
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| Catherine Parr, 6th wife |
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Henry VIII, he of the
six wives |
But it was a wonderful place. One glance at the very long exterior with its brick and half-timbering and I knew I was going to like it. Its Tudor great hall and extensive kitchens with their wood beam ceilings were the oldest parts; I am always a sucker for those two spaces. These kitchens were the best I’ve ever seen with two huge fireplaces and another for ovens as well as side rooms for game and bread and more. The displays really made you feel as if you were back in a Tudor kitchen.
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| My first site of Gainsborough Old Hall--the north side |
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| The L-shaped south side |
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| The Tudor Great Hall |
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| The oven wall of the kitchen |
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One of the two great
fireplaces in the kitchen |
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| The game room off the kitchen |
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| The light source for the kitchen |
The newer part of the house (relatively speaking, of course) was interesting also, as much for the displays as for the rooms themselves. One area focused on the Mayflower voyage to America because the Burghs were financial backers of the Puritans. Another area focused on a later owner and his voyages with Darwin.
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The poster says: In this quiet corner of England
in the 17th century a journey began which was to
become the foundation for the birth of a nation we
know now as the United States of America. |
The next historic place was two days later at Blists Hill Victorian Village in Shropshire, a recreation of a Victorian town in one of the early industrial areas. It is set in rolling countryside within Ironbridge Gorge on 52 acres, and there were businesses of all types with people in period costume. Some of the buildings, like the iron works, were original to the place. Others were brought there and some were recreated using traditional building methods. It was very interesting, partly because it was so extensive but also because they paid a great deal of attention to getting the details right. In one house, the owner of the time had let out his back room to the traveling doctor. In some establishments, people were working with the methods of the time—the ironmonger, the woodworker, the baker. I couldn’t resist the smell of the bread and so bought a loaf for my picnics the next couple of days. The workers were all willing to answer questions and tell about life in that time. I heard the blacksmith telling someone that he had been a computer programmer but had now been at Blists Hill for 10 years and loved it.
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| The chemist's shop (pharmacy) |
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Dentist's chair at the chemist--
the eye doctor was there too |
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| The town pub |
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| An ad on the side of a building |
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| The ironmonger who was making objects from molds |
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The printer who printer the
paper and made lots of ads |
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| At the sawmill he was making a Pinocchio |
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| The cottage of a prosperous townsman |
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| The doctor's office in the back room |
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| The blacksmith's shop |
Very close to the Victorian Village is Iron Bridge for which the surrounding gorge is named. This bridge, built in 1779, was the very first bridge built of cast iron. It spans the Severn River, the long river in western England. I thought it would be in the middle of nowhere, but it turns out it’s right in the middle of the town of Ironbridge. Can’t waste a perfectly good tourist attraction! Even the Queen has walked over the bridge. The area calls itself the Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution which is somewhat a bit of hype, but the bridge does serve as a symbol of a new era. And the town was actually quite nice.
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| The Iron Bridge over the Severn River |
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| Close-up of the bridge |
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| The Severn River from the bridge |
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| Looking back toward the town from the bridge |
The next day I visited Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, a Jacobean country house designed by Henry Holland on 4000 acres designed by Capability Brown. Holland was a student of Robert Adam which was very apparent, especially in the wall and ceiling details. We got to see both floors where the owners spent their time as well as the basement (with its kitchen, butler’s pantry, and luggage room which we accessed by the back stairs) and the outdoor laundry. The best part was that they were hosting an exhibition of costumes from Jane Austen movies. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of Mr. Darcy, only because I adore Colin Firth. Upstairs, they focused on the making of clothes, showing the fabrics and their origins (flax, cotton bolls, silkworms, and sheep) as well as costumes and undergarments. Once again the exterior of the house wasn’t very attractive (doesn’t make for great pictures!) but the gardens were lovely and so English.
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| The unimposing Berrington Hall |
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| A few of the 4000 acres |
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| The Holland ceiling--very Adam-esque |
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| An early phonograph in the library |
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| The dining room set for dinner |
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I loved the subtle way they said:
Don't sit on the chair |
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| Costumes of Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett |
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| The butler's very capacious quarters |
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Mangle in the laundry room--I
used a later version when I was
a kid |
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| Some of the still-blooming gardens |
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| Don't these apples look luscious? |
That night I stayed in a hotel in Gloucester. After breakfast in the morning, I had a hard time finding my room. In my travels through the maze (probably because the hotel was at one time two or three separate houses), I found others who were similarly confused.
Then it was off to Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, the country home of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, friends (pretty amazing when you consider that Rossetti had a four-year affair with Morris’ wife Jane) and fellow members of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. The movement, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was largely a reaction against industrialization and the conditions under which decorative items were being produced at the time. The gardens at the home were beautiful as one would expect for the home of an artist who used natural forms in his textiles and papers. Every room had wallpaper and drapes of one of his designs, so it was really fun to explore. The shop was great; it was hard to choose what to buy.
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| William Morris |
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| Front of Kelmscott Manor |
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| Rear of the manor house |
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| Gardens at rear of house |
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| One of his many portraits of Jane |
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| Some of his blue patterns |
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| More nature patterns |
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| Red pattern in carpet |
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| His daughter May was a renowned needleworker |
My first full day in London I visited the Palace of Westminster (or Houses of Parliament) and took the really good audio tour instead of the guided tour so that I could go at my own pace. I had been there also long ago but only really remembered Westminster Hall. It is indeed memorable, a huge medieval hall built in 1097 by William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, with a remarkable roof without support columns, once not thought possible in that era.
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| The very long Westminster Hall |
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| Ceiling detail in Westminster Hall |
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| Close-up of ceiling gargoyle |
We saw almost the entire upper floor where the Houses of Commons and Lords are as well as all the halls and foyers and antechambers, etc. One thing you can’t help but notice is how incredibly much more opulent the Lords side is than the Commons side. It is also amazing how small the House of Commons is, given that it has 660 members; some have to sit on the steps. We’ve seen so many pictures on TV of the prime minister standing at his lectern being hectored by the opposition, so it was really fun to see exactly where that happens. I wasn’t supposed to take pictures, but I managed to sneak in a few. The Gothic architecture of this newer section of the palace (It all burned down in 1834 except for Westminster Hall.) makes it appear quite church-like.
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View of St Stephen's Hall looking back toward
Westminster Hall |
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| Window wall of St Stephen's Hall |
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| Ceiling of the Central Lobby between the two Houses |
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| Royal Gallery on Lords' side |
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| House of Lords |
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| Throne in Lords' Chamber, familiar from TV |
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| The decidedly less elegant House of Commons |
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Statue of Margaret Thatcher
in the Central Lobby |
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| Westminster Hall from the outside |
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Victoria Tower at the
far end |
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| East end of Westminster Abbey just across the street |
Over the years I have taken pictures of the tower of Big Ben from many angles. But there are always more. I got a few this time too.
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| Tower of Big Ben in shadow |
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Tower peaking over
Westminster Hall |
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This time peaking through
the gates around the palace |
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| Top of the tower |
There are lots of famous people around Parliament, and I captured a few.
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| Richard I, Coeur de Lion |
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| Oliver Cromwell through the fence |
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| Winston Churchill across the street |
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| Boadicea by WestminsterBridge |
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And just for fun--a gargoyle at
Victoria Tower... |
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| ...and the London Eye |
In London, I visited two historic homes, one of which was Spencer House on Sunday afternoon. This is the Spencer of Princess Diana though the family no longer owns the house but retains the freehold (those odd 99-year leases). It was just too expensive to maintain it as well as Althorp House which I visited a couple of years ago. The one-hour tour showed how wealthy they obviously were to have had such a sumptuous townhouse. Today the owners rent out the tour part for big events and the rest as business offices, necessary to pay for the upkeep. It was incredibly elaborate in its architectural detail and decoration—no pictures, unfortunately. My favorite room was the Palm Room with gold everywhere. The guide was really good with so much knowledge of the history, the art and the decoration. During World War II Earl Spencer had all the architectural elements removed (door frames, fireplace surround, chair rail, molding, etc.) and taken to Althorp so that all that history wouldn’t be destroyed by the Nazi bombs. It never came back but has been recreated faithfully.
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| Spencer House just off Green Park |
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| The Palm Room from their brochure |
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These markers are all over
London; this one is just two
doors down from Spencer House. |
Spencer House is just off Green Park. I was there on a beautiful Sunday, and Londoners were out in force.
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Lots of people were enjoying the sun in Green Park
|
Earlier that Sunday I took an excursion to Chartwell in Kent, another place I had long wanted to go. Chartwell is Winston Churchill’s beloved home south of London. He is reputed to have said that any day away from Chartwell was a day wasted. That, of course, included many dark days of World War II where he slept in the underground bunker not far from 10 Downing St (which is fascinating and which I visited on a previous trip) so that he could keep constant tabs on the war’s progress.
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| Winston Churchill in Westminster Palace's Central Lobby |
The house was relatively modest; it looked like someone’s well loved comfortable home. There were lots of pictures of Churchill and other world leaders, many of them autographed. There was a particularly nice one of Eisenhower. My favorite room was the one where they entertained. Unfortunately, here I couldn’t take pictures inside.
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| View of Chartwell |
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| Another view of the house |
In his studio away from the house, the walls were covered with Churchill’s own paintings. He was completely untrained but really quite good. Painting was his pressure release.
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| Some of his paintings in the Studio |
2015 is the 50th anniversary of his death (which I can remember), so they had a special exhibit on the ground floor about his death and funeral. It was beautifully done. Lots of pictures and lots of verbiage and artifacts. In one, it said he is acknowledged as the greatest Brit of all time. At the end was a video montage of the day of his funeral with the stirring British music and his voice. Several times I had tears in my eyes. He truly was a great man, a man without whom his countrymen may not have endured the war.
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Winston's bench in the Marlborough Pavilion;
the Duke of Marlborough was the first famous Churchill |
Everywhere I went I was astounded by the flowers that were still blooming in late September and early October, but Chartwell won that competition hands down. The gardens were magnificent. With his view of the pond and off into the Kent countryside, I could see why Churchill loved it so much. I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
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| The pond near the west side of the house |
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Some of the many pretty
flower beds |
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| One beautiful rose |
Right up at the top of the list of favorite days (along with Chartwell/Spencer House) was the one where I visited Kelmscott Manor and took the garden tour at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, Charles’ country home. We were to arrive no more than 15 minutes before the tour started and couldn’t take along either camera or phone. Bummer. When I told Glenna this, she said, what, not take pictures in a garden?!
And there was so much to take pictures of. But I already owned Charles’ book
We began with a very nice short video of Charles explaining his feelings about Highgrove and his philosophy of gardening and nature. Then it was off with our excellent guide to see the numerous gardens (divided by hedges or walls) covering 20 acres, each of them named. Highgrove was built in 1796-98, and Charles has owned it since 1990. From the beginning, he said he didn’t want it to be a palace but rather his home.
He is constantly experimenting, finding out what works in the gardens and what doesn’t. Charles’ governing words to the gardeners are ”Let it be”. That means that the vine that is growing on the front of the house cannot be cut. When one day soon it completely covers the front door, people will just have to part the vines to get in. It also means that the magnolia tree I’ve mentioned already will just get bigger and bigger and shut out more and more light to those particular rooms. They never weed, but there were amazingly few weeds. The grass grows over the stepping stones. It is rye and very hardy, looking really green and healthy despite all the people trampling on it. They do composting big time, never just throwing something away. When a tree comes down, they use all parts. In one case, four large chunks from a tree were used as pedestals for a shelter.
In the Stumpery, the stumps of dead trees are piled on a heap. Eventually things grow on the stumps. The effect is very artistically pleasing.
They do occasionally cut down trees after they see which ones succeed, with the goal of keeping the ones that are native to the area and getting rid of the ones that aren’t. One practice that doesn’t seem natural to me is that they trim the hedges between gardens into beautiful topiary designs. There are so many that it takes six months to get around to each one.
We saw two of Charles’ hideaways, one a rock structure and one a little house. These are strictly for him; no one visits. When William and Harry were young, they had a little play house. Now that house has been put up on a platform in a tree for George and Charlotte. The day we were there a master thatcher was just finishing a beautiful thatching of the roof.
We heard the amazing story of the 4 1/2 acre Wildflower Meadow. Over the years they have come up with six or seven wildflowers that bloom at varying times from early spring to early fall. In mid-August, they do the only cutting of the year, mowing the whole garden down. The long grasses are stacked in teepee-like bundles for awhile as they dry. Then they are picked up and taken down to the Home Farm to feed to the animals. When they are picked up the seeds fall out and are left in place. They bring in a special breed of sheep (that doesn’t gnaw at the trees in the garden) for about four weeks to munch on the stubble. As they walk about, their cloven hooves beat the seeds into the soil. The next spring the wildflowers are back. Is that a great story or what?
The 20 acres are tended by just 10 gardeners. As our guide said, they don’t have much help so the grounds pretty much have to take care of themselves. Charles is often seen as eccentric with kooky ideas, but I think you have to respect his attitude toward nature. All the proceeds from the tours, the shop, and the café go to the Prince’s Trust, his charity that has given hundreds of millions of dollars to worthy causes.
I wanted to include a few natural places in addition to all the wonderful gardens I saw (which I wasn’t really expecting). Between the day at Kelmscott and Highgrove and the next day farther south, I figured I might as well stay in the resort town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset where I had never been. I booked a place just a block from the Bristol Channel between England and Wales which eventually becomes the Severn River. I walked down to the channel just before sunset and at low tide. I just wanted to include walking on a beach in the trip, and this was the only time I was anywhere near a coast.
The next day I drove on to Cheddar Gorge in Somerset where I had been 40 or so years ago but wanted to experience again. The limestone gorge in the Mendip Hills is very deep, cut out of the surrounding hills by a now underground river. Today you can drive through the gorge which is what I did. It was very pretty with the morning sun on the hills of the grassy north side and the almost vertical rocky south side in shadow.
Nature also cut out some caves which I didn’t get to see because of the car mishap. But I did go to the Museum of Prehistory. Back in 1902 researchers came upon a complete skeleton in Gough’s Cave that turned out to be 9000 years old. It was of a young man with a severe head wound who nevertheless lived, perhaps to be abandoned because of his disability though he was buried (speculation obviously but I got it all from the museum wall plaques). The amazing thing is that he looks exactly like us.
The museum did a good job of tracing man’s origins and path over the millennia. In the caves evidence was also found of cannibalism, also well explained by the wall plaques, especially the numerous reasons for cannibalism, among them economic necessity, religious (Abraham and Isaac), to keep one’s enemies at bay, and several more. Principally they seemed to be saying that cannibalism isn’t that uncommon in nature even among humans.
In London I visited a number of museums. One was the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, a huge London townhouse with incredibly high ceilings and large rooms. The place itself is a museum. In every room that had windows, the floor-to-ceiling window treatments matched the wall covering which was quite striking. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace amassed a superb collection of 18th century French paintings, furniture and porcelain as well as Old Master paintings and an amazing collection of armoury. It was information overload after awhile in the chock-a-block rooms. I appreciated the fact that there were places to sit in many of the rooms, something which I think all museums should have.
As a counterpoint to that beautiful place, I saw that the American Embassy was nearby and walked by it. It is a truly ugly building. The only remotely interesting or inspiring thing about it was the golden eagle at the roofline.
Along the way I passed Selfridge’s, site of the fun PBS series which some of you, I’m sure, watch.
I had visited the National Portrait Gallery before but wanted to go back there too. It is organized chronologically and is truly all portraits—mostly of famous people. I thought they did a better job of the older portraits than the newer ones. The older sections were heavy on the monarchs, of course, but the newer sections really seemed to slight them. None of the children of Philip and Elizabeth were there though there were two of Diana. I would have thought that portraits of William, Harry and Kate, at least, would be very popular.
I liked the way they displayed some of the portraits, angled out from the wall, I suppose because of the light in the room. I sent a picture of it to Glenna as an idea.
For a really odd twist that doesn’t fit into any of my categories, I next walked down to Trafalgar Square which was full of people. There was an event filling the entire square that I guess was promoting American-style football. There was a Jumbotron where I could see NFL players talking to the English MC on the stage. And there were massive signs all over. It’s fun to come across unexpected things.
. At the table next to me the 6 people assembled were having a conversation about the shooting at the school in Oregon that had just happened. One of the women was saying that in America everyone has a gun; they are just sitting out everywhere in the house, and there is nothing that can be done about it. I restrained myself with difficulty.
I also visited the National Gallery which I hadn’t actually planned to do, but Glenna wanted me to get any educational materials they might have. It was fun to walk through again and see their great European collection.
When I left there was an amazing performance artist in the square. How he did that I have no idea.
On my last day I went back to the Victoria and Albert Museum called Britain’s attic. I walked through the older galleries where I like to see the furniture and furnishings. They have lots of interactive discovery areas which I photographed to show Glenna.
An always fun part of any trip for me is shopping. I was intent this time on adding to my collection of royal memorabilia. I only found two places, one Sunday market at a leisure center near Leicester and an antiques center in Gloucester that I’ve visited many times before, where they had anything but common stuff. I use that word common, but maybe I only call it that because I already have it.
I also enjoyed picking up things for family and friends. One place I found something was the Monday market at Covent Garden. Nearby at the old Opera House lobby was the largest Apple store I have ever seen.
When I was tired of shopping on the last day, I went to a movie—a good one.
. Overall, the shopping part of the trip was not nearly as much a highlight as it has been on other trips.
For a slightly macabre ending to this travelog, Highgate Cemetery will fill the bill. I have long wanted to go but just never quite got there. It takes a tube and bus and a longish walk through some gardens to get to the cemetery which is in north London near Hampstead Heath. I only walked through the east side where there are lots of celebrity graves, not the west side where they have elaborate tombs and sarcophagi. Along the path I came across the tombs of Corin Redgrave and Sir Ralph Richardson, but my goal was to see the grave of Karl Marx. It is now along one of the major walkways, moved some time ago from a more obscure path which I also visited. The monument is quite imposing, bigger than almost anything else on that side. But I thought it was rather tasteful, and I was glad that I had gone.
Much of the cemetery is overgrown with ivy, totally obscuring some of the graves.
One of the workmen was raking leaves that had fallen from some of the many trees. I remarked to him that his was a task that was never done (reminding me of Red Fox Forest where we once lived). He agreed but went right on with his work. I was happy at that moment that I had the time and resources to go to England and watch him rake leaves--and all the other wonderful things I had gotten to do in my two weeks. I was often overwhelmed with happiness that I was there in my beloved England.
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