Sightseeing with Carol and William

My work friend Carol and her 19-year-old son William arrived last Thursday, and we've been busy sightseeing and travelling around England ever since. Today they have gone to Bath on their own, leaving me able to catch up on some things at home, including finally updating the blog! Things are starting to blend together already in my memory and my brain is tired, so I apologize in advance for the probable rambling nature of the following.

Thursday: Oxford

Carol and William arrived in Oxford on Thursday at around 10am, bleary-eyed but cheerful after the long plane ride and bus ride from Heathrow. Since check-in time at the University Club was not until 2, we took a taxi to my place at Wolfson to deposit their luggage and relax for a bit. They were determined not to sleep until 8pm, and did very well!

After some relaxing (and me enjoying several Starburst from the giant bag Carol brought me!), we headed back into town on the Wolfson minibus to do some sightseeing. We started with lunch at the Eagle and Child pub, of course. It was just okay, I'm sorry to say. Poor William kept having to choose something else as they were out of his first and second choice, but he finally ended up with gammon steak. That was a bit of a disappointment for him since he thought it was steak (it's ham). He also didn't care much for the fried egg that comes with it, which means that I got to add it to my ham and pineapple sandwich, wahoo! Carol had a "jacket potato" (baked potato) with mushrooms that were a little too fancy and European for any of our tastes.



After lunch we visited Keble College (above) and its colorfully-mosaiced chapel, which they thought was interesting, then headed across the street to the University Museum of Natural History with its dinosaur bones and the back-room Pitt-Rivers Museum. We spent lots of time in the Pitt-Rivers, thoroughly investigating the shrunken heads, voodoo dolls, antique rifles, Egyptian mummies, and amulets from a variety of cultures. Carol found a chair after awhile and almost dozed off - I shudder to think what kind of dreams she would have had in there!

We took the city bus back to Wolfson, where we hung out until David got home. He drove everyone and the luggage over the University Club, and after checking in we walked to dinner at the King's Arms Pub. David and I have often passed that pub and it's always busy and apparently popular, but hadn't tried it yet. It was quite good.

Carol and I had four-cheese pizzas that would have been good if not for the fact that one of the cheeses was of the blue-cheese variety. Edible, but a little strong for us. David had a fish pie that he liked pretty well and William had chili with bread that looked delicious. The highlight for me was the dessert (I was the only one to order any), which was a delicious brownie with whipped cream on it! So good. We then left Carol and William to get some sleep (it was after 9 by then), and headed home to pack.

Friday-Saturday: Durham

David took Friday off and we all spent Friday and Saturday nights in Durham, a small northern city with a university, cathedral and castle. After much deliberation, we decided to drive (the train prices were horrifying and the car gives more flexibility). It was a long trip with some nasty traffic towards the start, so we all owe great thanks to David for all the driving!

We headed out mid-morning, after Carol checked out and we brought their stuff back to our place. Lunch was McDonalds and KFC at a rest stop, at tables on an overpass over the freeway. Traffic was worse than expected until we got past Leeds, but we eventually got there.

We stayed at the Travelodge, which is a large chain lacking in ambience but with a good price and clean rooms. It was just outside the city center, so about a 15-minute walk to the main sights. Next door was an Italian restaurant called Che Vita, which was really, really good. We ate there both nights! I had the best bread pudding ever, both nights! It was made with brioche (an eggy French bread) and had chocolate sauce in it and warm custard all over it. To die for. This time I wasn't the only one with dessert, and the others were fabulous as well: banana waffles, raspberry tart, hot fudge chocolate cake with ice cream, chocolate caramel pudding...



Durham Cathedral was really nice - better than I remember when I visited from Edinburgh six years ago. It is mostly Norman/Romanesque, meaning from the 11th/12th century and with lots of big, solid pillars. It was made of light-colored sandstone and included the tombs of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede, two northern English medieval celebrities.



There were neat Celtic crosses in the churchyard, and inside there was a sign saying, "This is Will," which of course Carol and I had William stand next to for a photo. The sign said you had to be taller than Will to go up the tower, so I guess none of us can go! (And none of us did but William.)



Our explorations of Durham included a nice wooded walk across a bridge to a riverside path that provides a nice view of the cathedral. Despite the worsening weather, it was very scenic and fun.






Durham also has a castle ("to keep the Scots out and the English in"), of which we had an enjoyable guided tour led by a recent Durham University graduate in history. The castle is now used mainly as student accommodations, which must be pretty nice!



In the basement was a neat surprise - an ancient Saxon chapel that had been forgotten for centuries and recently discovered fully intact. It was very crypt-like, made of gorgeous sandstone, and the capitals were decorated with Saxon pagan-like images including lions, snakes, and even a mermaid.



We all enjoying the sights of Durham, but we pretty much ran out of things to see by Saturday evening. Even the cinema was closed for renovation. In hindsight, we would have spent our second night in Whitby!

Sunday: Whitby

Sunday on our way home - well, it was pretty far out of the way - we stopped at Whitby, a historic fishing village on the North Sea coast. The drive to get there was quite calm and beautiful, and took us through the North York Moors, a national park known for its rugged, heather-covered hills. (David and I had driven through a bit of the south part of the park when we went to Fountains and Rievaulx Abbeys on our York trip.) The quaint building in the second photo below is of public toilets at a rest area along the highway!



Whitby was great and a big hit with everyone. It has red-roofed stone houses perched on hills that overlook an inlet full of fishing boats. And up on the hill is an abbey ruin and an interesting parish church. It was even sunny and warm, with almost no wind, which was really strange for the coast. The weather did turn really grey later, but it still wasn't cold and I got all my abbey and church pictures in the sunshine!



Whitby also has all sorts of interesting associations: Captian James Cook lived there for 4 years as a sailing apprentice and Bram Stoker lived there for some time as well. Many Whitby landmarks, such as the parish church, were incorporated into Dracula.

Whitby Abbey was the site of an important church council way back in the 600s, when the local leaders decided to adopt Roman Catholic Christianity instead of Celtic Christianity. It was originally ruled by a Saxon princess named St. Hild and was very rich and important throughout the Middle Ages. Like the others we've visited in England, it met its demise under King Henry VIII's "Dissolution of the Monasteries" in the 16th century.




Next to the abbey ruins is the still-active Parish Church of St. Mary, which is one of the more unique churches I've seen. It has an odd shape to it, and has just one squat, castle-like tower on the end.



Inside are box pews with comfy-looking interiors, an upper loft with more seats, a charcoal stove in the middle, and a pulpit hung with ear trumpets for a 19th-century minister's wife who was hard of hearing.



Next to the abbey is a partially-restored stately home from the 18th century (I think), which now has a small museum and abbey gift shop inside. Clearly, David especially had lots of fun in there, between making a brass rubbing of an illuminated manuscript and threatening me with a wooden Viking sword!



To get from the hill down into the town, you go down 199 historic steps. They are a landmark in themselves, and provide quite a nice view of the town. We felt every 199 of them on our way back up!




The town was really crowded with people, and between all the seafood restaurants, quirky gift shops and arcade games, we all thought it was "like Seaside only quainter." We walked out to the pier at David's request, where we watched some Morris dancers (the traditional dancers we saw in Oxford in May) and saw all different kinds of boats go in and out of the harbor. David went down a ladder to the lower level of the pier, where he chatted with some fisherman about their technique and took some pictures of us up above.




Then the long drive home. We arrived home late Sunday night - around 10:00, I think. We stopped for dinner at the Oriental Condor near the train station in Oxford, picked up their luggage from our place, got Carol and William checked back in at the Club, then headed home. Everyone was very ready for bed, especially our weary driver!

Monday: Oxford

On Monday, David went back to work and the rest of us slept in and spent a less hectic day seeing more of Oxford. We had lunch at a corner sandwich shop on a pretty historic street between the Club and the city center. The sandwich-shop experience is chaotic by nature (a very small space, and none of the orderly assembly line of a Subway) and made more difficult when you're just learning the "language"! I did a lot of translating between the muttering and heavily-accented clerks and Carol and William. Our sandwiches were delish - I'll definitely be going back there. It started to rain on us while we ate outside, but then stopped again before long.

Our next stop was Christ Church College, where we toured both the cathedral and Harry Potter dining hall. I managed to get Carol and William in for free at the students' entrance with my university card, but the bowler-hatted guard strictly instructed them not to look around too much or take any photos in the quad "or I'll be shot." He was a crack-up. I added that we would certainly not even think about touching the grass, and he said that was of utmost importance. (You may recall that David was once been told that not even the queen or God could walk on the grass at Christ Church.)

In the cathedral, we learned some interesting things from a friendly and funny older man working as a volunteer guide. He pointed out that a stained glass window that I was sure featured St. George (he had a shield with a red cross on it and was slaying a dragon) was actually St. Michael the Archangel. The wings were hard to see! We learned that St. Michael's cross can be distinguished from St. George's by its shape. Very educational. He also pointed out that the Victorian-era stained glass window depicting the life of St. Frideswide (a Saxon nun from the 600s) includes a toilet in the background of her death-bed scene! Fun stuff.

In the late afternoon, we came back to Wolfson so Carol and William could do some laundry. While we waited, we walked around the pond and bothered napping ducks, then over the bridge to the meadows where we bothered some cows. They were very cute and interested in us, and every time I tried to pet a cow's nose he would try to lick me. William fed one a piece of his Mars bar, which can't be good for it but he seemed to like it. It also got stuck in his teeth! Hope he's okay.

When the laundry was done, David gave them a ride back to the Club, where they had dinner (not too impressive, sounds like). I had been feeling sick all day thanks to my weekend overindulgence (the bread pudding was still worth it!), so I had vegetable soup for dinner at home.

Tuesday: Salisbury and Stonehenge

Yesterday Carol, William and I went on a train adventure to Salisbury, which is near Stonehenge. The first part of our journey, Carol and I had to stand in the aisle - which was tolerable but not that fun. But we got a seat later and overall the two-hour journey wasn't too bad.

Buses for Stonehenge leave hourly from the Salisbury rail station and take about 25 minutes. Carol and William left about a half-hour after we arrived, but I bowed out of the Stonehenge trip and stayed in Salisbury, exploring the historic town and the cathedral. I was glad I did - it sounds like they didn't have all that much fun. They liked Stonehenge itself, but there was a noisy drunk on the bus (which goes to other places than Stonehenge) and the site itself was very, very crowded. (David and I went in the winter, and it was cold and windy but not very crowded, thankfully.)

Meanwhile, I wandered around the city and explored/photographed a historic church with a big medieval wall painting of The Last Judgment, then photographed every angle of Salisbury Cathedral inside and out.

Salisbury Cathedral boasts the tallest spire and the largest cloisters in England, but neither are terribly impressive. Not too many English cathedrals have spires (most have square towers and a couple have domes), but it is still something of an accomplishment because spires and delicate and tend to topple over in storms. The cathedral is undergoing a "Major Restoration Programme" which began in 1986 and is projected to end in 2015. Major, indeed! So one whole side was unfortunately covered in scaffolding, but the west front was completed and looked very nice.



As I wandered, there was a choir singing beautifully. The choir area was full of interesting little wood-carved creatures:



I was having a nice snack of scone with clotted cream and jam in the cloisters restaurant when they arrived back in Salisbury and met me there around 4pm. (Thank goodness for cell phones, which have allowed us to keep in touch quite conveniently throughout the trip - David loaned them one of our spares.) The cloisters may not seem all that big, but they were pretty, and had a nice "cedar of Lebanon" in the middle. Poor Lebanon.



Carol and William had a look around the inside of the cathedral, and a brief glance at the original Magna Carta (from 1215) that they have in the Chapter House. Then William wanted to go up into the tower (which he did by himself at Durham before we even knew he was gone!), and this time Carol and I accompanied him too.

This was a different experience than the usual simple walk up 300+ spiraling stairs to the top and then back down again. This was a "Tower Tour" and it took nearly 2 hours, mainly because the guide was so long-winded. But also, we were able to walk up in a sort of an interior gallery right next to a big stained glass window and overlooking the nave, which was fantastic. I got some neat photos from up there - it was my main reason for wanting to go on the tour!



From there we went up a small flight of stone stairs to where we could walk on wooden platforms over the entire ceiling of the cathedral. Underneath the platform we could see the top of the vaults of the ceiling - really cool!




Then we went up a couple sets of modern wooden spiral staircases to two different levels in the tower, where we saw the bells (and heard them - that was loud!).




We didn't go all the way up into the spire (thank goodness), which is in the right-hand photo above. It is lined with oak scaffolding that is hundreds of years old and is climbed only by means of precarious ladders. But from the upper part of the tower, we went out on some balconies with great views of the cathedral, city and countryside.



Carol is afraid of heights but she was brave and did great. She did, however, refuse to look at the vaulted ceiling that I pointed out as we walked over it! Here's Carol concentrating on not hurling while descending a spiral staircase, and no-fear William gleefully Camcordering from the balcony:



I'm quite afraid of heights myself, but more specifically I'm afraid of falling from them. So my level of fear depends entirely on how sturdy and safe I feel: Airplanes are scary despite the excellent odds of surviving, because I just doesn't feel secure in such a heavy object with nothing but thousands of feet of air beneath me. The Eiffel Tower is scary because it looks like it could crumble at any second, it has outdoor elevators which are unsettling, and was only meant to be temporary in the first place. But cathedrals I'm usually okay with, because there's so much solid stone beneath me and the stairwells are solid and enclosed.

The tour guide was very friendly and and was interested in why I was taking so many photos with two different cameras. I told him I had a website on churches and religious buildings, and he asked me to write down the address for him, which I did! Always happy to have another visitor.

By the time the tour finished it was 6:45, so time to head home! That turned out to be quite an adventure in itself. I called David while we walked to the station and discovered the next train left at 7:30. So we had just enough time to stuff down a chip-shop dinner on the way (not recommended - bleh), then hop on the train. We had a single change of trains as we did on the way down, we had good seats, and everything went fine.

That is, until we were a few miles from Oxford, at about 9:15. A freight train broke down in front of us and so our train did not move for over an hour and a half while another train came and moved it out of the way. It was so frustrating to be so close to home and yet so far! But we just made the best of it, and ended up having a good time playing cards.

I also tried my hand at Wiliam's Sony PSP video game, which was really fun. I used to love video games and played them throughout college, but sadly don't have much time for them anymore. The game was MegaMan and I felt old as I said, "Wow, look at these graphics!" Quite an advance from my old Nintendo. I made it past one stage and killed several giant robotic bees, which felt good.

We finally arrived in Oxford at close to 11, mighty tired. We shared a taxi that took them home and then me home, and I am so glad not to be going anywhere today!

Today: Bath for them, home for me

William just called awhile ago and said they're in Bath Abbey and saw adjacent stained glass windows with St. George and St. Michael - the ones we learned about in the Oxford cathedral. I've instructed them to have afternoon tea in the Pump Rooms, which I hope they enjoy!

Tomorrow I'll accompany Carol and William on a day trip to London, then Friday will either be another day in London (probably without me!) or relaxing in Oxford, depending on their energy levels. They take off for home on Saturday.