Hallo, Bloggies - that is if there are any of you left out there. The blog kind of spluttered to a halt round about the time we hit the wall and knew the honeymoon was over. Diary entries would have been along the lines of 'went to visit Woburn Abbey, but it was closed. Didn't really expect otherwise' . (all recited in true eeyore tones). However, a good friend got us out of the glooms by suggesting a walking tour of london. Well....
We ignored the advice of all and sundry and decided to take the car into lunnon (just as well we did - the tubes were on strike), but we found out why people don't really like driving in the city: intricate street systems and conflicting street signs, road works and diversions all over the place, and heavy, slow traffic. nevertheless, in spite of all of that, and thanks to jane's growing talents as a navigator - i only had to contradict her twice and on one of those i wasn't qwuite right.. - we survived unscathed, althought i would swear that we went over Tower bridge at least 3 times rying to escape the one-way system.
Saturday we went to St Paul's. Not as big as York minster but more beautiful. Definitely on the Must see list. While Jane sat down in the ground floor and found herself in a small service, i climbed up all 500 odd very vertcal steps to the tippety top of the dome. Brilliant views, but i wouldn't want to be a roofer on the job.
Back out of the city to the nearest affordable lodging on the M25. Getting quite fond of the service bay hotels. Cheap, cheerful and clean. On the Sunday, in for the walking tour. 10 minutes into the 2-hour tour, the skies opened, and we spent most of the tour ducking under shelters and feeling cold and miserable. Fascinating stuff, though. Tour was on 'ancient London', and while much was on the standard naughty goings on in the priories and nunneries (including the very model for Chaucer's Nun's tale), there were also some nice wee gruesome bits like the story of the poor old Duke of Suffolk, who lost his head in the 1500s. It turned up in the 1800s sans body, so they put it in a glass jar and displayed it in front of the altar for 50 years or so, until a vicar could stand it no longer and shoved it in a biscuit tin and put it in a dark cupboard. They finally buried the last of the Duke in the late 1950s. Various other charming tales tripped from the lips of our dripping but cheerful guide.
So that was the weekend. Back to the grindstone during the week, til someone (bet you'll never guess) hit the Big six oh! And doesn't timefly when you're having fun. Off to Yorkshire rabbit and chardonay jelly in a 16th century pub, now surrounded by 20th century suburbia. Lovely company, lovely setting. Think I've decided to grow old disgracefully. MMM Pass some more jelly! All for now, boys and girls.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Mid term break
Okay, hopefully, having got to grips with the blog thing, this will come as a post, rather than a comment.
It has ben a remarkablybusy week, so again, I'l just capture a few highlights.
The English are great tourists. It probaly started with the Norman kings, who would tour the country with their retinues and land on unfortunate barons, who they would then stay with and eat out of house and home - although possibly the tourism bit was started with the Vikings, who would pop down for a bit of rape and pillage during the summer season (the Celts, Romans,and Anglo-Saxons seemed a bit more settled in their invasions, although the roads weren't that terrific then).
But the English have definitely carried on the tourism tradition - and no wonder! Most seem to live in tiny terrace houses or apartment blocks and, apart from finding their social life in the pubs - much different from NZ - seize every chance that they can to tour England and elsewhere. And, of course, they have been joined by new waves of invaders - Americans, Indians, Africans, New Zealanders, Vietnamese, East Europeans, you name it. So when it is holiday time, everybody, just everybody is on the roads visiting the hotspots.
The trick, apparently, to becoming a tourist hotspot, is to become a market town some time during the Middle Ages and then try and stay that way for the next 700 years or so. This has worked for places like York and Stratford apon Avon. But the places that went all industrialised during the Industrial Revolution pulled down their medieval buildings, built huge factories, abandoned them and or generally became large and ugly, and the tourists stay away in droves (Glasgow, I am told, is an exception to the rule, but i ain't been there yet).
It's fine to be cutsey. English towns compete to be cutsiest, and some succeed very well. Even the odd disaster, such as a 17th enury fire that destroys half the town is no barrier. A lovely story from Stratford-a-A shows how disaster can be profited from. Apparently, when Shakespeare retired, he built a large house in Stratford with a large mytle tree in the front garden. A generation or 3 later, a vicar bought the house and built his own house next door, objected to all the tourists visiting the garden, and so had the tree chopped down. The locals, who liked the tree and the tourists who visited, then broke his windows. The vicar objected loudly, the town council supported the townsfolk, and so the vicar left town and, as a final act of spite, had Shakespeare's house demolished. Ande so one now visits a fine early Georgian house where the nasty vicar lived, with a reconstructed Shakespearian garden, and that will be ten pounds, thank you. This is one of about half a dozen more and less authentic Shakespeare sites in the town, which also happens to be a market town, thus, medieval, cutsy etc.
So, Stratford. Beware, by the way. Stratford is a common name. Within spitting distance of us, we have Stony Stratford, Fenny Stratford, and Old Stratford. Avon, too, seems to be the name of every second river. Mot of the others seem to be called Ouse. Beautiful, crowded and commercial. Worth the visit. That was our Saturday.
Sunday was down to Surrey, Jane Austin country, and the site of a small church where an over-devoted lady was walled up for several years (2 occasions - she took a break in the middle) to remove herself from the temptations of the world. She simply had a small hole in the wall, through which food was passed. Not my cuppa tea.
Monday through to Friday, we went up to the Lake District then across to York and back. Most of England, outside of the towns, is green and pleasant rolling country, followed by more green and pleasant, followed by... but every now and again, something breaks out. The Lake District is remarkably different - steep, glaciated crags, with glacier-bed lakes at their bases. Very dramatic, very beautiful. Visited Beatrix Potter's house/ writing studio - very Peter Rabbit- ad Wordsworth's house - a dark and grotty former pub. Both places very tiny. But then again, the B&Bs we stayed in at both Lake Wyndermere and York were 3-storey buildings, all of one room wide, and that room only about 8 feet or so. A friend described the houses as Lilliputian . By contrast, however, i have never seen a building as vast and ornate as York Minster.
Called in on Jane's aunt in Kirby Stephen, saw the village school where her great grandmother taught , and visited the farm that her family having been farming since the 1600's. A second cousin runs it now, breeding Swaledale sheep.
York was very very busy, touristy, crowded, etc, etc. Lots to see, not enough time, well worth visiting. It, too, had been a market town when it wasn't being a Roman, Saxon, Viking, etc fort, often fought over.
That's probably more than enough. Next blog, promise, a note about English food.
It has ben a remarkablybusy week, so again, I'l just capture a few highlights.
The English are great tourists. It probaly started with the Norman kings, who would tour the country with their retinues and land on unfortunate barons, who they would then stay with and eat out of house and home - although possibly the tourism bit was started with the Vikings, who would pop down for a bit of rape and pillage during the summer season (the Celts, Romans,and Anglo-Saxons seemed a bit more settled in their invasions, although the roads weren't that terrific then).
But the English have definitely carried on the tourism tradition - and no wonder! Most seem to live in tiny terrace houses or apartment blocks and, apart from finding their social life in the pubs - much different from NZ - seize every chance that they can to tour England and elsewhere. And, of course, they have been joined by new waves of invaders - Americans, Indians, Africans, New Zealanders, Vietnamese, East Europeans, you name it. So when it is holiday time, everybody, just everybody is on the roads visiting the hotspots.
The trick, apparently, to becoming a tourist hotspot, is to become a market town some time during the Middle Ages and then try and stay that way for the next 700 years or so. This has worked for places like York and Stratford apon Avon. But the places that went all industrialised during the Industrial Revolution pulled down their medieval buildings, built huge factories, abandoned them and or generally became large and ugly, and the tourists stay away in droves (Glasgow, I am told, is an exception to the rule, but i ain't been there yet).
It's fine to be cutsey. English towns compete to be cutsiest, and some succeed very well. Even the odd disaster, such as a 17th enury fire that destroys half the town is no barrier. A lovely story from Stratford-a-A shows how disaster can be profited from. Apparently, when Shakespeare retired, he built a large house in Stratford with a large mytle tree in the front garden. A generation or 3 later, a vicar bought the house and built his own house next door, objected to all the tourists visiting the garden, and so had the tree chopped down. The locals, who liked the tree and the tourists who visited, then broke his windows. The vicar objected loudly, the town council supported the townsfolk, and so the vicar left town and, as a final act of spite, had Shakespeare's house demolished. Ande so one now visits a fine early Georgian house where the nasty vicar lived, with a reconstructed Shakespearian garden, and that will be ten pounds, thank you. This is one of about half a dozen more and less authentic Shakespeare sites in the town, which also happens to be a market town, thus, medieval, cutsy etc.
So, Stratford. Beware, by the way. Stratford is a common name. Within spitting distance of us, we have Stony Stratford, Fenny Stratford, and Old Stratford. Avon, too, seems to be the name of every second river. Mot of the others seem to be called Ouse. Beautiful, crowded and commercial. Worth the visit. That was our Saturday.
Sunday was down to Surrey, Jane Austin country, and the site of a small church where an over-devoted lady was walled up for several years (2 occasions - she took a break in the middle) to remove herself from the temptations of the world. She simply had a small hole in the wall, through which food was passed. Not my cuppa tea.
Monday through to Friday, we went up to the Lake District then across to York and back. Most of England, outside of the towns, is green and pleasant rolling country, followed by more green and pleasant, followed by... but every now and again, something breaks out. The Lake District is remarkably different - steep, glaciated crags, with glacier-bed lakes at their bases. Very dramatic, very beautiful. Visited Beatrix Potter's house/ writing studio - very Peter Rabbit- ad Wordsworth's house - a dark and grotty former pub. Both places very tiny. But then again, the B&Bs we stayed in at both Lake Wyndermere and York were 3-storey buildings, all of one room wide, and that room only about 8 feet or so. A friend described the houses as Lilliputian . By contrast, however, i have never seen a building as vast and ornate as York Minster.
Called in on Jane's aunt in Kirby Stephen, saw the village school where her great grandmother taught , and visited the farm that her family having been farming since the 1600's. A second cousin runs it now, breeding Swaledale sheep.
York was very very busy, touristy, crowded, etc, etc. Lots to see, not enough time, well worth visiting. It, too, had been a market town when it wasn't being a Roman, Saxon, Viking, etc fort, often fought over.
That's probably more than enough. Next blog, promise, a note about English food.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
First Beginnings.
Hallo, World.
This is my very first attempt at blogging. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...
This is my very first attempt at blogging. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...
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