I e-mailed this in daily installments to my friends, and this is just a compilation of those e-mails. I have corrected some bits of misinformation, and added some other corrections in square brackets [ like this ].
Day 1 Wed., Sep. 6 / Thu., Sep. 7 Taking off again.
I had Dolores pick me up at 5:30 so I could get the airport by 7. I was actually at the airport, checked in, and through security before 7. I had dinner at the Billy Goat Tavern. The double cheeseburger is only ¼ pound so I had a triple. It was OK, but won’t win any prizes. Their website features the SNL cheezeborger skit, which clearly states “No Coke, Pepsi”. In reality, the signs here clearly said “No Pepsi, Coke”.
I am writing this at the airport while waiting for my flight to board. Boarding won’t be for another half hour, at least, so I’ve got some time to kill. The waiting area for the flight is on the small side, so I’ll keep my seat until just before boarding.
United uses new (to me, at least) check-in kiosks. A very friendly attendant helped me use it. I could probably have figured it out on my own, but I appreciated the assistance. She also explained my name on the ticket. I was listed as Edwardstopar Tonry. I thought I had forgotten to put a space in the name. But she said it was the airlines’ way of doing it. Don’t know why.
Up in the air, there was some turbulence from time to time, but not too bad overall. The seat was smallish, but this only became a problem late in the flight, when my leg started to get crowded and unhappy. I expected better entertainment from United, but they’re putting all their effort into entertainment for personal devices, and not for their own screens. In theory, they offered several movies, but I only saw two for sure. The rest of the entertainment was apparently sit-coms. The two movies were Moneyball (which they had not advertised in their magazine), and the recent King Arthur. I kept scrolling past this weird, medieval thing before I saw the guy pulling the sword out of the stone, and figured out what it was. It was pretty bad, and not because of the black guy or the Chinese guy.
And then they tried to kill me. For breakfast they served a croissant, some strawberry jam, and some strawberry yogurt. No substitutions. Fortunately, dinner hadn’t been too awful or too long before.
We got in an hour early, which is good, because the passport line was incredibly long. Dolores can tell you how long the line was to get out of Dublin last time we went. This was worse, though it started to move faster after a while. It took an hour to move through it. And then the nice, polite immigration clerk gave me the third degree, wanting to know what hotel I was staying at, and what did I plan to do the next day. Even the Canadians haven’t been this intrusive.
I thought I had left my magazine on the plane and I bought a book to take its place. I hadn’t lost the magazine, so now I have two things to read. [I kept buying books or exchanging them for others at hotels – I had a nice long book at home, but I didn’t want to risk losing it.]
The subway into the city took about an hour, I guess. I had to walk a couple of blocks to get to the place where I could pick up my London Pass, but first I had to get above ground. They build their subways deep in Europe – three or four staircases and a long escalator.
Then back down again with the Pass to get to the hotel. The underground stop near it is St. Pancras/King’s Cross, named after two railway stations across the street from one another. And, yes, King’s Cross does have a platform 9 ¾, and yes, tourists do line up to get their pictures taken there. And I have a photo to prove it.
The hotel Arriva is a few blocks away, but not too bad a walk. It is spartan, to be blunt, but the staff is friendly. I had brought my voltage converter, but forgot my adapter for England. The clerk loaned me one from their stock, which I returned after dinner when I had bought my own. The room is mostly bed, but not cramped. The desk is about twice the size of my laptop, but sufficient. Their is no chair, but the stool hasn’t been a problem yet. The bathroom is small, but modern. Tomorrow, if the shower is OK and the breakfast is good, I’ll give it fairly good marks.
I went looking for a restaurant past King’s Cross station, but couldn’t find it. I’ll have to check the map again tomorrow, because it sounded nice. I did find another one that I’ll try soon for their mixed grill. It sounds good, but too much for tonight. I wound up at a bar around the corner from my hotel, getting bangers and mash. The potatoes were good, and the sausages were almost as good as brats.
Time to sign off. I got maybe three hours of sleep on the plane, and almost three more after I got to the hotel, but I’m still a bit tired.
Day 2 Fri., Sep. 8 Museums and stuff.
I slept in and didn’t get down to breakfast until almost 9 AM. I was afraid I might be too late, but lots of people came in after me. It was a continental breakfast, in a buffet style, so you could go back for more. Nice cheese and ham, plenty of toast and jams. Not too bad.
Late breakfast meant late departure for the museums, and I didn’t get going until almost 10. It’s easy to find the Underground in London, and it’s easy to get to the right track. But getting out again is a real challenge. Some of the stations (like mine) are so deep they need 3 levels of elevators to reach the surface. And you never know where you’ll show up on the surface.
I took the subway to the Kensington stop, and then followed the signs to the museums, down a long tunnel. After a while, there was a sign for the Natural History Museum “Way Out” (English for “Exit Here”). I decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum first, and kept on. After a bit, I chanced to look to my right and saw the entrance for the museum – but no sign. There are several entrances to the Vic and Al, and they’ve just opened a new one. This entrance from the tunnel gets you into the lower level. They charge a pound for a map, which I needed to find the coatroom, which charged me another pound to look after my jacket.
Then I went back to where I had come in to begin viewing the collection. The medieval collection was very heavy on religious art, mostly from churches, and not missals or books. But the later parts of the collection had lots of beautiful furniture. Tables with marble tops and inlaid wood, and a wonderful inlaid table top without a table under it.
There was a very dark room with paneled walls and ceiling. I took a few pictures with a 1 minute exposure. They are a little blurred, but very clear and well lit. They had some stained glass for me to practice on, too. The “backlit” setting on the camera does make for a better image of the stained glass.
There was a twenty foot long table fountain in white ceramic. And four wooden pillars with carved capitals – very nice. There was a thing called a flower pyramid – a Delft tower five or six feet tall with little holders for sticking flowers in.
I thought about lunch while I was there – it was a bit early, but I was near the cafe. There’s a sign there encouraging people to eat and support the museum. I didn’t mind supporting the museum, but I didn’t want to buy it, so I passed. I had planned on about 2 ½ hours at the Vic and Al, and that’s about how long I stayed.
I went back down the tunnel to the Natural History Museum, and headed off toward the beautiful old Victorian main building. But there was a longish line waiting to get in, and a staff man came up and told people to use the other entrance. So I did and found another longish line, but this one was moving.
I thought maybe they were giving away gold inside, to have such lines. The reason for the long lines was that the museum guards were searching every purse and package being brought in. Nobody was worried about bombs at the Vic and Al. The map was another pound to find the coatroom, which charged me two pounds, but it was easier to find.
I decided to have lunch here, because it was later and I was getting hungry, and because I could get something to eat and not take out a mortgage. Both museums sold bottled water for ₤1.60 a bottle, but the cafe here had some pastries at reasonable prices. I got a yogurt and honey cheesecake for ₤3.80. They offered to smother it in strawberries, but I foiled them, too.
There was an interesting exhibit on human evolution. It listed four or five of our most recent ancestors, without taking sides on which were more important. There were lots of casts of bones, especially skulls, to show the different stages of human development. But they kept pointing out the big brow ridges on this older type, while ignoring the almost as large brow ridge on the later type next to him.
I skipped through a bunch of stuff, heading for the dinosaurs. Oddly, they stuck a huge skeleton of a giant ground sloth in the hall with the plesiosaurs. It was a nice skeleton, though.
The dinosaur section was large, but oddly laid out. Some skeletons were overhead, and hard to study, And there were some animatronic dinosaurs, which weren’t worth the space they took up. There were two stegosaurs, both considerably smaller than the ones in Jurassic Park. They had a nice triceratops skeleton, but it wasn’t displayed very well. I got a nice picture of the body, but the head was in shadow and hard to photograph.
I sat down to rest after I left the exhibit, right across from the dinosaur store. One of the store employees was trying to interest people in one of their products by dancing around with a dinosaur tail strapped onto his rear end. I got a couple of pictures of him cavorting around, but he cavorted too fast to get many decent shots.
I then went back to the hotel, coming out of the Underground by yet another way. Back in my room, I looked for the restaurant I couldn’t find yesterday. It turns out that it is in the station, just beyond Platform 9 ¾. If I had gone further I would have found it. But I found 2 other places to try, one on the other side of the block from the hotel. It’s called the Queen’s Head.
They’re supposed to have great beer and good food. The place was packed with people, standing room only, and pouring out into the street, despite a light rain. So I went to the other one, McGlynn’s Free Tavern. It’s about 2 blocks from the hotel, and the bar was also crowded, but not so badly. And the restaurant attached was almost empty. So I got a steak and kidney pie and a beer for ₤14.70. The pastry was nice and light, the steak was very tender. There may have been kidneys in the pie, but I wouldn’t want to swear to it. Still, it was good.
Back at the hotel, I am borrowing the desk in the lobby to type this. The stool in my room is not really comfortable enough for typing. I can surf the web on the bed, but it’s hard to type there. So I came down to the lobby. And now I will sign off.
Day 3 Sat., Sep. 9 A nice day for a walk.
It was a beautiful, sunny day today in London. It wasn’t supposed to get any warmer than 62, but I think it shot well past that, into the upper 60s. I had a long walk planned for early in the trip, from Westminster Abbey to St. Paul’s Cathedral. My feet were sore Thursday from standing in the immigration line, and walking around to places. But they weren’t too sore. Friday I did a lot of walking at the museums, and getting to and from them. Again, the feet were sore, but got better.
So I decided to do the long walk today. It was nice weather for it, and I had to find out how the feet were going to handle a lot of walking. I was on my feet for most of 6 to 7 hours, and they ached from time to time. But if I sat down for a little bit, I could keep on going, I rested for an hour or two at the end of the day, and the feet were good to go out to dinner. So I think I’ll be OK for walking around a lot, as long as I take some breaks.
My first stop was the information office at the Underground. I knew there was one at the stop I use, but I didn’t realize how large a stop it was. I walked down this way, then down that way, and then up some steps, and there it was. I looked at the subway map and decided I should take the Piccadilly line to Green Park, then transfer to the Jubilee line to Westminster. A very pleasant girl told me she would walk a few blocks to Euston Station and take the Northern line south of the Thames, and walk back across the bridge. That might involve fewer transfers, but it required a lot more walking. And what was I taking the Underground for if not to avoid walking. My way worked pretty well, actually.
The other thing I needed from her was a bus map. She apologized that they were out of print and out of date, but she did give me one. Now I know what buses run near my hotel, and where they go. And I used them today.
Finally I got off to Westminster Abbey. Coming out of the Underground, the first thing I saw was the top of Big Ben. The rest, unfortunately, is swathed in scaffolding. I played around with the camera settings and got at least one good picture, even though the sun was right behind it. Then I went down and crossed the street to get a photo of Churchill’s statue. It was, however, in the possession of a pigeon who had no desire to move. Some people were taking pictures anyway, but I didn’t want the bird. I was looking for something to throw at it, when it finally flew off.
There was a long line to get into Westminster Abbey, and it kept getting longer. The building was full of people, many of them with audio guides, blocking up the aisles. But the traffic flowed reasonably well for the numbers, and some areas were pretty clear. I wanted to see Edward the Confessor’s tomb, but there was a bunch of people coming out as I came up, with another crowd waiting to take their place. So I went into a nearby chapel. When I came out, the crowd was gone, and the tomb was closed off. It’s only open to special groups, and that was what I had seen.
There are more monuments to people, most of them famous, here than in any other cathedral I’ve ever seen. And many of them are spectacular. I would love to show them to you, but they don’t allow photography inside. They do have a photo gallery on their website that one can download at will.
The structure itself is amazing. The nave is somewhat narrow, but very tall, with marvelous vaulting and ceiling. The choir (or “quire”, as they spell it) is large and well decorated. There are named seats for important church people, and also for representatives of the Commonwealth countries, The wall behind the main altar [the reredos] is all sculpted and painted. Even the cloister has partial stained glass windows in the tops of the arches.
I then went up Whitehall to the Banqueting Hall, built by James I in stone to replace earlier temporary wooden structures. His first effort burned down, so he gave the job of rebuilding it to Inigo Jones, who revolutionized architecture in England. It’s very simple, and very beautiful. And the ceiling is by Rubens. In one of those nice memorial traditions the English have, the Banqueting Hall is closed every January 30, in honor of Charles I, who stepped out of a window here to the scaffold when they cut his head off. And it’s not just kings they remember. At Westminster is a multi-volume set of books listing all the civilian dead of World War II, and it’s available online.
I kept on up Whitehall to the Strand. At Trafalgar Square I got a very nice clear picture of Nelson on top of his monument with just one shot. As I was going east on Whitehall, an anti-Brexit march was going west. There were a lot of people, and a lot of noise, but not a lot of sense. I was happy to leave them behind when I turned up the Strand.
The Strand runs into Fleet Street and somewhere along the way I stopped at a pub for lunch. It was my second stop for lunch today. The first place had nice lunch prices outside, but not inside. And I couldn’t get waited on. So, after several minutes, I left. But I was still hungry, and the pub offered a chicken and bacon sandwich at a good price. It was run rather oddly – you gave your order for food and drink at the bar, and told them where you were going to sit. The barman gave you your drink, and a server brought your food when it was ready.
I figured this out when I first got there, because I saw a guy ordering. I gave my order and sat down, and a German couple came in and sat near me. When they finished looking over the menu, I told them how to give in their order and they thanked me. [It’s nice to pretend to be an expert.]
I stopped at Somerset House to take some pictures. It’s a really beautiful building, still in use by ever so many different groups. The Courtald Gallery has a big section, and another section is used by the Naval Test Board. [It used to be used as Admiralty offices, and by the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Antiquaries, the General Register Office (responsible for recording births, deaths and marriages), and the Inland Revenue, though not all at the same time.]
On I went, resting my feet when I could, which wasn’t as often as I wanted. I finally got to St. Paul’s, and took a trophy picture to prove I had done it. I will go back later and do a proper visit. Today it was just someplace to walk toward. My feet needed a rest and I needed to study my bus map to see if I could take a bus home. So I stepped into a pub, which provided me with beer and a place to sit.
There are 4 buses that pass near my hotel, and one of them goes to St. Paul’s, so I took that one back. Another goes to St. Bart’s, which is also on my itinerary. And I might find some more easy routes if I look harder.
I wanted to go to the restaurant in King’s Cross Station, but they don’t take reservations for the current day after 4 PM. So, I’m going there Monday. Tomorrow is another nice looking restaurant nearby. Not having reservations anywhere, I searched for someplace nearby that didn’t require reservations. I found O’Neill’s, a very Irish place (Marty would have loved it) just beyond St. Pancras Station. They have a Megagrill, a mixed grill with an 8 ounce steak, a 7 ounce slice of ham, a piece of chicken breast and a couple of sausages. It sounded nice, but it was more than I can eat nowadays. But they have a smaller version, and it was very good. (And not too much smaller.)
I have to go back to St. Pancras Station sometime and take some more pictures. I only have a picture of the end of the building. The rest is just like it – a flamboyant gothic-victorian wonder. They don’t build things like this anymore.
That’s all for today. See you again tomorrow.
Day 4 Sunday, Sep. 10. Paintings, paintings, paintings.
I had an ambitious schedule for today – the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Tate Britain. That’s a lot of art, a lot of walking, and some possible problems getting to all of them.
Actually, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery are back to back on Trafalgar Square, and tons of buses go there. But the Tate Britain is about 2 miles away on a road that doesn’t attract many buses. But there is one bus that goes down that road, and stops right at the Tate’s door. So the travel problem was solved.
There was still the question of seeing everything. The National Gallery has several entrances, but only one dispenses maps. That wasn’t the one I used, so I took a picture of a wall map to navigate. But that was pretty unwieldy, and I saw someone with a map. I asked a guard, and he directed me to the MAIN entrance, where I got a map for the customary ₤ 1.00 fee.
I drew a course on the map so I could see the collection as efficiently as possible, and leaving out things I wasn’t too interested in. It helped a lot, though it got a little confusing when I got to rooms I had already seen.
There are really only two floors at the National Gallery, and the lower level was almost all closed off for work. That left the second floor, which had a real maze of rooms packed with pictures. Lots of the early medieval art was religious and mostly standard stuff, but there were some nice pieces. There was more variety as the centuries passed. I even found another Dutch picture of people playing “kolf” on the ice.
There was an interesting painting by Holbein of two French ambassadors to Henry VIII’s court. They are standing leaning on a tall, two level table. In front of them is a strange looking thing. If you stand at the right edge of the painting, the change in perspective turns the thing into a skull.
Besides Holbein, there were some Durers, Rubens, Vermeer, Hals, van Eycks, Rembrandts. In fact I saw a Rembrandt self-portrait that didn’t have any glare on it. (But only one – the other one had glare.) The Arnolfinis were there, and a van Eyck portrait of Charles I on horseback.
There were lots of famous artists, but a lot of their paintings weren’t their most famous. Michaelangelo, da Vinci, and Raphael were lumped into one room with a few stock pictures of saints. And there were a lot of artists who aren’t famous, but some of their works were very nice. I took a picture of a “Portrait of a Lady” by someone named Baldvinetti whom I never heard of before, but it’s a very good picture.
I had spent a lot of time in the museum, and need to hit 2 more. And St. Martin in the Fields was right across the street. So I headed out, and went to the church first. Of course, it’s Sunday, and they have a big program of services set for all day. At 2 PM, it was in Chinese. So I never got in. But looking through the windowed doors, it looked kind of plain.
The National Portrait Gallery was right next to the National Gallery, and easier to navigate. There were some very nice portraits there, but a lot of the people I had never heard of. And some I had heard of did not have good portraits. In one room there were 3 portraits of Elizabeth I, and only one was worth looking at. I only took pictures of the portraits of Shakespeare (their first acquisition), Elizabeth I, and Charles II as a small boy playing with a King Charles spaniel.
I also took a picture of the statue of George Washington in front of the National Gallery. On the bus ride later, I saw (but couldn’t photograph) a statue of Lincoln in front of the Supreme Courts.
It was only about 3:30, and I knew what bus to take to the Tate, so I went. The Tate Britain was all British art, and I didn’t want to see it all. I started with the room dated 1540. and crept forward in time. Again, some good stuff, some so-so stuff. Nothing really bad, but lots of stuff to shrug over. That’s OK, I was getting tired and wanted to get back to the hotel. That took a little longer than it should have because I took the bus, and didn’t check where it stopped. Because of one-way streets, it didn’t go where I expected, and I got off too soon.
Dinner was at the Bar and Block, right by the bus stop by King’s Cross Station. I had steak and kidney pudding, the pudding being a small pastry filled with kidneys, and placed on top of the steak. Pretty good. With a triple chocolate brownie (and ice cream) for dessert.
I’m not sure where I’m going tomorrow – it’ll depend on the weather. Today’s morning forecast was for high winds, rain, hail, and who knows what else. It did rain at times, and it was sometimes windy, but I don’t know if the weather is supposed to stay bad or not.
Day 5 Monday, Sep. 11 Two Museums, Some Waiting
Yesterday was my killer day – I had 7 ½ hours planned, and got it all in. I didn’t actually spend that much time in the museums, but almost, and I didn’t omit anything I wanted to see. Today was going to be a good follow-up: The British Museum and the Wallace Collection. The British Museum by itself could have take all day, without any effort.
Which is why I started with the Wallace Collection – it was smaller, and less likely to take up too much of my time. The two hours I had planned for the Wallace turned into three in a flash. It’s a wonderful museum, starting off with weapons and armor and ending up with fine art. It’s also the only museum I’ve been to so far that did not charge for a map or to use the cloakroom.
They have some kartar knives, an Indian style with a thick blade and a horizontal grip used for punching, These aren’t terribly unusual (look them up on Google and you’ll recognize them), but they had some with two blades. I don’t know why, or what good the double blades do, but they looked impressive. There was also a two-pronged war hammer.
There was some nice armor, including some beautiful plate, and some very nice mail. One of the mail shirts had rings about 2-3 mm across, riveted. It reminded me of Knut. There were some oriental recurve bows, two of which were metal. I couldn’t tell if they were for use or just display. They were unstrung, so they wouldn’t look well for display in a non-functioning format. But I didn’t know how they could be strung for use. The museum keeps copies of its multi-volume catalog in all the rooms, so visitors can look up what they are seeing, but it didn’t tell whether these bows were for use or display.
There were a lot of decorative armor, helmets, and shields, many very fancy. One showed Hercules killing the hydra with a club – the hydra had nine heads, and ten legs. There was a ceremonial glaive that could be used to pull pizzas out of the oven. There were several articulated crinieres, neck armor for horses, some very nice. And some mail sleeves. I couldn’t quite figure out which part was for the upper arm and which for the lower – one end always seemed too long for either. [At the Tower of London are some more sleeves, and it’s easier to see how they work.]
When the weapons and armor ran out, the fine art began. Lots of paintings, many by French artists, and many involving Venus and Cupid, and their friends. Largely the sort of thing people put on their walls before Playboy came along. But there were some other paintings, for instance a very nice portrait of Madame de Pompadour, with her hair down.
There was a cute painting “The Dead Mouse”, with a woman holding the mouse by his tail. Her neighbor seems uninterested, the neighbor’s small son is terrified, and the cat is looking for dinner. Another fun painting shows King Henry IV of France receiving the Spanish ambassador while giving his kids horsey rides.
More seriously, they have Franz Hals “The Laughing Cavalier” (who’s really only smiling), a Rembrandt self-portrait (which had no glare on it), and a portrait by Rembrandt of his son Titus. And a picture called “Time Revealing Truth” which indeed showed us the naked truth.
There were also some cases of very fine ceramics, and some marvelous furniture. There were two roll-top desks, one large and one small, and both incredibly beautiful. A gorgeous green stone top on a small table, and lots of small stands for knick-knacks or something that were quite attractive.
But time was running on and I had to go to the British Museum. I stopped for lunch at a small restaurant half a block from the museum, and got a nice cheap sandwich. It was cheap because there was more lettuce and tomato in it than beef, but it quelled my hunger.
The British Museum, like most of the museums I’ve been to, insists on checking patrons bags. So every woman with a purse, and every man with a backpack, gets stopped for a search. I don’t have a bag, so I get waived right in, but I still have to wait in line to get to the waiver-in folks.
But the British Museum has something no other museum has, and should have. They offer small folding stools (like camp stools), for free. I picked up the last one, because I wasn’t sure how many benches they might have. It was a bit of a hassle to carry around, but it was great when my feet got tired, or I wanted to read a long account of what was on display.
I saw most of what I wanted here, but I had to leave a little early because I had a reservation for dinner, and didn’t want to be late. I could have done better, but I spent too long on the Assyrian section, and the Greek section. There was good stuff in both areas, but a lot of things I could easily have skipped.
They have a restoration of the gates of a city, wood with wide bronze bands every two feet depicting the king’s victories. The sign says every band is different. Lots of oversize winged bull-men, a giant lion, and tons of guardian spirits. And lots of panels of decoration from the royal palaces. There are several panels of Ashurbanipal hunting lions. This was his favorite pass-time, apparently, and he claimed to have killed 450 in his life. And this might be right, because one panel shows him shooting lions who have just been released from a cage.
One series of panels shows the siege and capture of Lachish, a city in Judah. Archaeologists have excavated the city and found evidence of the siege. And the museum has some sling stones they found – they’re as big as tennis balls.
The Greek section begins with Crete and Mycenae, then gets right into the height of Athenian power. They have a Greek helmet, which looked awfully small, until I read the full note – it was an offering to a temple – so probably didn’t have to be full size. There was one full size helmet that had seen some action, with a large hole in the top.
There was a display of arrowheads from Marathon, slender inch-long ones shot by Persians, and itty bitty little ones shot by the Persians’ allies the Scythians. There was a fairly complete frieze from a temple, half showing a fight between Hercules and the Amazons, and half the battle between the Tapiths and the Centaurs. The two scenes are not done front and back, or left and right, but each starts part way along the wall, so the division is diagonal.
There are remains from the Nereid monument, and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and, of course, the Parthenon. That was impressive, with all the panels of the frieze in place. There was one that was hard to figure out, until you looked at the drawing someone had done a couple of hundred years ago, before half had been destroyed.
I finished up in the early English section. They had the Lewis chessmen on display, some set up for a game. And the Sutton Hoo treasure. I think the recreation of the helmet is different than what I saw last time (1981), and it’s beautiful. And there’s a nice dragon head from a ship – but not Viking. It dates to about 300 – 400 AD. It has a spike on the bottom, so it can be removed from the prow of the ship. The clueless curator said it was so they could lower it to go under bridges. Several period stories mention taking down the dragon head both as a sign of friendliness, and to avoid scaring the local spirits.
Anyway, I had to leave to go to dinner. I got to the restaurant about 7, and didn’t get out until almost 9. And there was no good reason for it. The service was slow. Very slow. The pork chop was good, and so was the beer. I asked for ice cream for dessert, and the waitress asked if 3 scoops was OK. It was, especially for them, as they charged by the scoop.
This was the place by Platform 9 ¾, and I got a better view of that this time. It’s actually a Harry Potter store, and not a small one. It’s amazing how it still sells stuff. I even saw a fellow (not a child) in a Platform 9 ¾ t-shirt the other night. [I would keep running into Harry Potter all over England – he’s certainly not a flash in the pan here.]
That’s enough for tonight.
Day 6 Tuesday, Sep 12. It’s the beard.
Yesterday the weather forecast was for gale force winds, rain, and hail. It was a pretty nice day. Today the forecast was for gale force winds and rain in the evening. It was a pretty nice day, even tonight. So I did some outside sight-seeing.
I started off with Southwark Cathedral. The guide book loved it, but I’m not sure why. There’s a nice memorial to Shakespeare, because he worked in the neighborhood. And a few other very nice funerary monuments. The vaulting is very beautiful, and the trip was worthwhile just for that. One of the funerary monuments is wooden, which is rare, but it’s stained and aged so that it looks bronze anyway.
I was listening to my Walkman while I walked around, when a woman came up and said my music was disturbing people. So I turned it off, not wanting to be rude. But I didn’t see how my earbuds could be leaking so much sound as to bother anyone. So when I got outside, I turned it back on and listened without using the earbuds. I couldn’t hear anything. I asked the woman who sold maps of the church. She couldn’t hear anything.
I think the woman who complained was just a crank. We had a librarian at Founders like that – he was certain he could hear the sound when people with headsets were listening to music on our computers. I tested them, with the volume turned up all the way, and no sound came out through headsets. No matter, he was a librarian, and had to be humored. So I had to turn the sound off on all the public computers.
Right next to the cathedral is the Golden Hinde, the replica of Sir Francis Drake’s ship. [There’s another replica in Devon, too.] It’s very nice to look at, and fun to walk around on. The brochure warns you to watch your head because the average Elizabethan was only 5’ 4” tall. Hell, even someone that short was in trouble – one of the visitors when I was there was a woman who said she was 5’ 4”, and she had to go around in a crouch or bang her head.
Drake had a cabin to himself, and the other officers had a room at the stern, just below his. The rest of the crew were below decks, and must have been awfully crowded in there. It only took 15 or 20 men to work the ship, but a full complement when Drake went raiding the Spanish was 40 to 60. Don’t know where they stored them all.
Then I went to the Globe Theatre, which was a waste of time, because I couldn’t get in to see anything. But on the way I was stopped by half a dozen young people who wanted my picture. They all said they loved the beard. This is at least the seventh time someone in Europe has asked for my picture. If I charge, maybe it will pay for my vacations.
My next stop was the Tower of London, if I could find the bus. I had to take the RV1 bus from Southwark Street, but I couldn’t find Southwark Street. It’s a major street, but I kept not seeing it. I read an area map on a street post, and thought I knew which way to go. But I read it wrong, and was 90º off. Once I got that figured out, it was easy.
While waiting for the bus, I had lunch in a basement pub, a rathskeller in Germany. It was a sports bar, with two TVs showing soccer, and one with cricket. So I watched cricket with my lunch. I know a little about the game, so it wasn’t too hard to follow, but I’ve never seen a broadcast match before. They only showed the score for the team at bat. It’s possible the other team hadn’t come up to bat yet, since it was just after the lunch break. But before the action started, they showed the final out of a match from last year. And again, they only showed one score – and it the score for the defenders. When the batter scored some runs, they were subtracted from the score showing. Even if I didn’t understand how they were keeping score, I did know why the runs were being added.
So after lunch, I went off to the Tower of London. I showed my London Pass to the ticket seller, and she just told me to take it down to the line. The woman checking tickets at the end of the line waived me through, but told me to keep the card out. They only really check it as you are about to enter the gates.
It was about 2:15 when I got inside, and I decided to take the hour long tour with a beefeater. I thought he would show us more than he did, but he was a good guide and speaker. All the Yeoman Warders are ex-military men. You have to put in at least 22 years and be at least a sergeant major. There ate 37 of them, and they live in the Tower, which makes for a short commute.
He was talking to us about Traitor’s Gate when he got interrupted. The Scots Guards were on duty to guard the royal jewels that day, and were on their way to get the day’s password. Five guards, led by a Warder, came past us. As he passed me, the Yeoman Warder leading them half-turned and said “Nice beard”. Actually, I saw him later and told him his beard was pretty nice, too. [Unfortunately, I neglected to get his picture.]
We learned all about the traitors executed in the Tower or on Tower Hill. They were buried in unmarked graves under the floor of the Tower chapel. Halfway through her reign, Queen Victoria paid a visit and was shocked by how badly the chapel had been kept up. And when she heard about all the traitors underfoot, she insisted they be dug up and given a proper burial.
Most of them couldn’t be identified, but a few could. Anne Boleyn was easy. No one thought Henry would actually execute her, so no provision had been made for what to do with the body. So they went into a nearby storeroom and got an arrow box, dumped out the arrows, and stuffed Anne into it. Being a bit shorter now, she fit. And the box was found when they dug up the chapel.
James II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, was also easy. He had one of the worst executions – it took 5 blows to behead him. And then someone remarked that they didn’t have a portrait of him for the royal gallery. So they sewed his head back on, painted the portrait and stuck him under the chapel that way
Charles II is responsible for the ravens at the Tower. Actually, they were there before the Tower was, but he made sure that they stayed. Originally, he wanted to get rid of them. But people pointed out that it might be bad luck to get rid of them. What with the commonwealth and Cromwell, and the Plague, and the London fire, Charles didn’t want to take a chance on bad luck. So he proclaimed there must always be 6 ravens at the Tower. Just to be sure, they usually have 2 spares, although they are now down to 7 total.
I saw at least 4 of them today, maybe 6. They have no fear of or interest in people. I came up to a pair sitting on a low railing and got within three feet of them to take their pictures. They mostly ignored me. They get fed well, and live a long time. A normal life span for a raven is 10 to 15 years. One of the Tower ravens lived for more than 40 years.
I went to see the Crown Jewels. It’s very different than it was in 1981. There’s a lot more stuff out now, and the displays are different, too. They didn’t really comment on it, but most of the items for the coronation date only to Charles II’s coronation. The main crown (there are lots of them) has the Cullinan II diamond in the front, and it’s almost invisible because it scatters the light so much.
I went into the White Tower, despite the sign that warned of the 204 stairs inside. I didn’t notice the word “inside” until I saw the warning again at the top of the steps leading up to the door. This tower has been redone, also. Some of the exhibits were nice, some not so much. There was a three-barrelled gun built by a Frenchman for Henry VIII. It was a breechloader, too. No description of its effectiveness.
There was another mail sleeve, and I figured out how it was worn, Unlike the ones at the Wallace, this one had a definite bend at the elbow, making the too long forearm into a forearm and upper arm. The short end is then the shoulder, and is attached somewhere inside the rest of the armor.
I had thought I had plenty of time, but suddenly it was after 5, and time to leave. I figured on reversing my route from the morning, taking the RV1 bus to London Bridge station, and the 17 bus home. But when I went to where I expected to find the RV1 bus, it wasn’t listed as stopping there. Some of the bus stops have maps that show where the bus stops are in the area. This one showed the RV1 making its return stop on the east side of the Tower, not the north where I was.
I really didn’t want to walk another block or two. I looked at my bus map, and saw that the 15 bus, which stopped where I was, later shared a stop with the 17 bus. Perfect. Except that the first 17 bus didn’t stop, and the second one stopped back from the bus stop and was about to take off when I ran up and made the driver open up.
By this time, it was getting later, and I decided to go to dinner before returning to the hotel. I took the bus all the way to King’s Cross station, and went to the restaurant across from the bus stop, the Bar & Block that I ate at on Sunday. I had a very tender lamb shoulder and an acceptable pale ale. The pale is a figure of speech, as it was a nice amber color.
When I was here in 1981, I rather liked bitter, as opposed to lager. I still like it, but my taste has evolved more to stout and porter. And those aren’t as common in London. Still, Guinness is everywhere.
Tomorrow is likely to be St. Bart’s and the Museum of London. Thursday will be Hampton Court. And then it’s on the road.
Day 7 Wednesday, Sep 13. Old churches and young kids.
I forgot two items from yesterday. I omitted the other compliment I had on my beard at the Tower. As I was going in and getting my London Pass scanned, the guy scanning it said it was a really nice beard. I should get up a vaudeville act and go on stage: Ed Tonry and his amazing beard. What do you mean vaudeville’s dead?
The other thing was more interesting. On the way back from the Tower, the bus passed St. Paul’s as the bells were doing some change ringing. It was very nice to hear, even though we passed out of hearing range pretty fast.
Today started with a visit to St. Bartholomew the Great, a beautiful stub of a church. It was a monastic church on the edge of London, and a very rich monastery it was. So when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, this was one of the first to go. In fact, the prior was appointed head of the dissolution committee and volunteered his own monastery for breaking up. He also was given possession of its lands for himself.
He died a year later, but the church wasn’t out of danger. It survived as a parish church, but the entire nave was demolished. When you go in now, the street entry is one of the original entries to the church, and it’s about 150 feet to the door. When you go inside, you are entering the choir.. All that’s left is the choir and the sanctuary and apse. And it is still a good sized church.
The Lady Chapel has been rebuilt, the original having been converted to other uses and damaged. One of its incarnations was as a print shop where Ben Franklin worked for a while. The new chapel is plain but usable, but not really in keeping with the rest of the church.
From there I went to the Museum of London, a few blocks away. There was this big fat, round tower in a roundabout, labeled “Museum of London”, and no way in. Then I saw that two other buildings offered entry to the museum. I don’t know if anything is actually in the tower, because everything I saw was in another building.
The exhibits began at the beginning – back in the middle of the last ice age, when the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine. Moving quickly forward, we get to early Britons, and then (wait for it) Romans. There was a lot on Roman London, the stages of development, and where important things were. At one point, the sign said to look out the window alongside to see a bit of Roman wall.
It was not bad, but today was school day, and the place was overrun with school kids. I have seen foreign school kids in museums, and they are always well behaved. I have seen American school kids in museums, and they are sometimes a bit rambunctious. But these kids were totally out of control. One girl was running on top of a display counter. There were plenty of adults with them, but no one to tell them to behave. The kids were generally interested in the exhibits, but they were all over everything. And I say this as someone who does not mind children in public.
Anyway, once I left the Roman section, I also left the kids behind. London sort of disappeared when the Romans left. The Saxons sometimes tried to do something with it, but other Saxons and then Vikings kept interfering. Finally, King Alfred got it going again, and kept the riff-raff out.
They gave some attention to medieval London, but it didn’t seem as much as they gave to the Roman city. Some things got a lot of notice, and others very little. They had portraits and histories of two London merchants who had started up with nothing and became rich and important. And neither one was Dick Whittington (or his cat). It was worth a visit, but I’m glad I didn’t have to pay.
Today we got the wind we were promised the last two days, but it wasn’t quite up to gale force levels. And after lunch, I stepped out into the rain, but it stopped after a couple of minutes. It did come back every so often, but not hard.
I went up to St. Paul’s Cathedral for the afternoon, but didn’t stay. I hadn’t marked on my list of places to see that St. Paul’s was on the London Pass. They wanted ₤16 (senior rate) to get in. If I had remembered it was on the Pass, I might have gone in. But they don’t allow photography inside. I tolerated this at Westminster because there is so much to see there, but St. Paul’s isn’t the same and I had seen it before, in 1981.
Anyway, I still had most of the afternoon to spend, and decided to check out the Temple. I walked down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street to a sign for the Temple. I went down the street, and into the walled area, and saw … office buildings. Not modern ones, but not medieval, either. It was raining again and I saw nothing I could visit, so I went back. A little further along Fleet Street I saw a sign for the Temple Church.
Now I had something. I went in and there was this beautiful little church hidden away behind all the modern buildings on Fleet Street. It was first built by the Knights Templar, with a circular design based on their church in Jerusalem. Later a rectangular section was added. The circular part is just like the chapter house in a monastery, which makes sense since the Templars were a monastic order.
William Marshal is buried there. He had supported the Templars when he was on Crusade with Richard I, and had asked to be buried with them. It was appropriate that they had an exhibit on the Magna Carta, since he was involved in getting John to sign it, and reissuing it in his own name after John died.
There was also an exhibit on the lawyers from the Inner and Middle Temples who served in the First World War. There was a curious picture of officers in training, learning (hands on) how to dig trenches. And there was the officer who had already had a long career in the army and retired. He came back, lied about his age, and was given a job behind the lines. Not far enough, though, he died at age 68.
There was no easy way back to the hotel from the Temple. So I took a 15 bus down a few stops, got off, crossed the street and took another 15 bus back toward Ludgate Hill. From there I could catch a 17 bus that would stop half a block from my hotel. It has taken a few days, but I have pretty much gotten to know all about my local buses. A shame I won’t be able to use the knowledge in a few days when I leave town.
Tomorrow is Hampton Court, and an awful lot of travel. Google says it’s an hour and a quarter each way.
Day 8 Thursday, Sep 14 Last full day in London.
I was off to Hampton Court today, and planned out the route, by bus, subway, and train. Then I realized I needed a book to read. The one I picked up on arrival was done. The one I picked up to take its place was almost done. I needed something to read for tomorrow. That meant finding a bookstore. You would think this would be easy in London, home of the English language, center of literary greatness, etc., etc. But all I had seen were small book stands in railway stations, with hardly any selection.
Google, of course, found me lots of proper book stores, but none near my hotel. I found I could get to one named Foyles on the way to the train for Hampton Court. I had to change my route somewhat, but not a lot. I did get turned around looking for the book store, but I didn’t get lost for too long. And I found a nice thick book on a real English robbery that should last a while. [It turned out to be interesting for the crime, but tedious in the telling of the story.]
My train left from Waterloo Station at 12:06. They didn’t post the platform it was leaving from until 10 minutes before departure. Still, it was time enough to get there. I bought a round-trip ticket, which is 2 tickets, one to go, and one to return. You stick the ticket into the gate, it opens and you retrieve your ticket. In the books, you had to turn your ticket in at the end of the trip, but that apparently doesn’t happen anymore. In fact, coming back, there was no gate to stick my ticket into. I could have bought a one way ticket and come back for free. This is odd, because you have to show proof of payment every time you get on a bus or subway.
It’s a short walk from the station to Hampton Court, and the view as you approach is very nice. It’s set back quite a way from the road, and as you get closer the facade grows and the center of it becomes more important and imposing. You go into the first courtyard, then the second courtyard, then the third courtyard. They are similar, but not the same. The central towers linking each courtyard are all decorated with large cameos of Roman emperors. I don’t know why, either.
It’s all brick, except for stone around windows and doors and gates. The brick is all red, except for some black bricks stuck in for decoration. The style is still palatial, so the brick does not seem wrong. The chimneys sticking up are beautiful. I though they looked nice, and took a zoomed-in photo. Wow! They are much nicer than I had thought. And there is a large, gorgeous one-handed 24 hour clock.
The palace is divided into several areas, to show what it was like under different rulers. I was only interested in the Tudor area, since it would have shown the palace as it was originally. Cardinal Wolsey is hardly mentioned, everything is Henry VIII. Still I assume “Henry’s” great hall was the same as the Cardinal’s.
And it is a great hall. The ceiling is probably 20 feet tall, or more. The first 12 feet of the wall is covered with tapestries. Above those are large 4 paneled windows. Then comes the ceiling. Big, marvelous carved oak beams holding up a carved ceiling that would grace any cathedral.
There are stained glass windows on both ends of the hall, and the side windows are also stained glass. I don’t know the age of the glass. One end incorporates the image of Henry from one of his portraits, with his arms akimbo. His wives, represented by their arms, flank him. So I think this is a modern window,
There is another room next to the great hall, and almost as big, called the watching room. I don’t know what they were watching. There are a few rooms in which photography is forbidden, including the small room in which Henry and Katherine Parr were married, which is just a small room. You can’t take pictures looking down into the chapel, which is a shame. And you can’t take pictures of Henry’s crown, which is a replica. The real one was destroyed by Cromwell in 1649, but a painting survived of Charles I, standing next to the crown, so it was possible to re-create it.
Then there’s the room that I agonized over. It’s in another no-photo zone, a gallery of the queen’s art. But it’s not actually in the gallery. So was it OK to take pictures there or not. I didn’t want to get the bum’s rush, but I wanted some photos of that room. It is one of the few that shows what the palace was like in Wolsey’s day. Very nice paneling, a beautiful ceiling, and a small alcove about twice the size of a phone booth. I finally decided to try my luck, and the sky did not fall. And most of the pictures come out pretty well.
I had dinner at a nearby pub. I got my Guinness first, at the bar, and got part of a conversation one guy was having with another. He says “Is that English football or European football?” “I’m American, what’s the difference?”, I asked. He replied “It doesn’t look like any football I know”. I guess his team wasn’t doing well.
I had chicken and mushroom pie, and it was very tasty. This was a nice place, and the staff spoke English, which is not the case in all the restaurants around here. I’ve had waiters in foreign countries who spoke better English than some of the waiters I’ve had here. I think all the foreigners who want to be waiters, and speak good English get jobs at home, to serve the tourists. And those whose English isn’t so good get the boot, and wind up here.
Anyway, I am done with London now, and will hit the road tomorrow. I’m picking up the car at London City Airport, and there’s only one subway which goes there, and no buses. But one is all I need.
Day 9 Friday, Sep. 15. Bang! Well, that didn’t take long.
I picked up the car today, and, going into the parking lot of my first stop, I managed to put a small dent and some scratches into the fender. I’d say that I got all the trouble out of the way early on, but I added some more scratches later on, and was considerably worried several times on roundabouts.
The car is a Fiat 500, in a pale green color. It’s small, which is fine, though the trunk only just holds my suitcase. The seat isn’t very comfortable, and the steering wheel is too far from me. If I move the seat up, my feet will be cramped by the pedals. It didn’t seem to have much pep, but then I found that the hand brake was on.
My first stop was at Ightham Mote, a moated Tudor manor house. They have two parking lots, and I couldn’t see any reason to park in the farther of them. But the gate going into the near one is very narrow, and watching the driver side fender I forgot to watch the passenger side one. Ooops. The exit is wide enough for a truck, but it’s one-way.
The manor house is a marvel. It’s been remodeled and restored several times over the centuries, but a lot of the original structure is still there. The painted ceiling in the chapel has faded, but not completely. The carved panels and wainscoting are beautiful. Individual rooms are sometimes too modern, but that’s just an effect of being lived in for centuries.
After lunch at Ightham Mote, I headed to Rochester to see the castle and the cathedral. It was very efficient – they are across the street from one another. The parking lot is in the old moat. I went to the castle first, and the signs led me the long way in. Coming out, I took the shorter route.
The castle is huge, square and impressive. King John besieged it in 1215, and brought down one of the corner towers. Even with that damage, the defenders held out for a week more. All the other towers are square, but when they rebuilt this one , they made it round. All the wooden floors are gone, all that’s left is stone. The original stone stairs leading up to the entry are still there, but broken badly enough they put a modern staircase on top of them.
The interior was very large, and several stories tall, even if we can’t tell what was on any floor. On the upper floors, there are passages through the walls, and the inside stairs all seem to be original. Although there are some parts that are badly broken, but they’re not for walking on.
Rochester Cathedral is large, with some very nice stonework. The inside is Romanesque (Norman, as they call it here) not Gothic, though all the windows seem to be Gothic. And there is a beautiful Gothic door in the back, with an even more beautiful stone door frame.
I was in a hurry to get to Canterbury before evening. Some of the things I wanted to see could be seen late, but the Cathedral was a day time visit. I knew in advance that I couldn’t park by the hotel, so I asked Tom-Tom to take me to the nearest parking lot. And it did, but the lot wasn’t really open to the public. So I asked it to take me to the hotel. And it tried, but took me up a street that was suddenly blocked off. Lots of central Canterbury is a pedestrian zone, something that Tom-Tom apparently didn’t know. So I parked the car in some business lot, and went looking for the hotel, to get checked in, and for a map, to find a place to park.
The hotel was easy to find – I had had the sense to choose a hotel right across the street from the Cathedral. Find one, find the other. Maps were harder to come by. Souvenir shops didn’t stock them, but one shop keeper pointed me toward the Information Office. It was already after 5 PM, and I thought it would be closed, but it was worth a try. I made a wrong turn, but I finally found it – in the Beaney, the library and cultural center (named for its founder). And it was still open. The guy there showed me the various parking lots, and gave me his opinion as to which were less crowded, and cheaper.
I went back to the car, and tried to navigate to a parking lot. I got onto another dead-ended street, and had to do some fancy backing up to get out of it. Then I hit the right street, and a parking lot. It’s apparently OK to park overnight, as long as you pay for the morning as well. I didn’t have anywhere near enough change to do that, but it took plastic.
So I grabbed my suitcase and hauled it back to the hotel. The hotel is wonderful on the outside. It dates back to 1503, and the rooms are named, not numbered. I have a desk and a chair, but they are on opposite sides of the bed, and there is no way to bring them together. The bathroom is modern, and not quite as small as the last one. And it is noisy. There seems to be a pump under the toilet tank, and it runs when other people are running water, as well as for me. Oh, well, it’s only one night.
I was too late for the Cathedral, but I walked around town before dinner. There are a lot of beautiful old buildings in Canterbury, most of them in very good condition. I wanted to see the Weavers Houses, which date to 1500. They are fabulous Tudor half-timbered buildings, now used as restaurants. I wanted to dine in one of them, but they didn’t have a table available.
I went to dinner at a place near the hotel. I had lamb chops that were over-cooked but not burned, and still very tasty. I had the darkest amber ale they had, and it was very bland. I think I’m going to have to ask for porters or stouts, or just stick with Guinness.
Day 10 Saturday, Sep. 16. Traffic jam on a Saturday afternoon, and just for me.
I didn’t get to see Canterbury Cathedral yesterday, and seeing it was the point of coming to Canterbury. So this morning I resisted dawdling, got down to breakfast when it opened, and was at the cathedral at 5 minutes to 9 AM. But the gate didn’t open until 9, and they weren’t going to make an exception for me.
When they opened the gate, I was the first one to the ticket window, and something happened that has happened several times this trip. The guy selling tickets asked what he could do for me. Sometimes they ask why I am there. I would think it would be pretty obvious that I was there to see the sight, and that I wanted a ticket.
But he sold me a ticket, and I had to pay, because there were two cathedral constables standing nearby. And a large part of the exterior, and some of the interior is covered in scaffolding. In the interior, they have nets masking the vaulted ceiling in the aisles to keep loose stones from braining anyone. But it is a very gauzy net, and I got some nice shots of the ceiling through it. The nave has a wooden ceiling for the same reason – must be more risk there. But ₤11.50 with a senior discount was a bit steep, even for a famous cathedral. Of course, Westminster is ₤20, but it was on the London Pass.
And it is a beautiful cathedral. There are lots of ornate funerary monuments, but, oddly, none to Thomas a Becket. There had been a major shrine to him during the middle ages, but Henry VIII ordered it destroyed, and that even Becket’s bones should be destroyed. All that’s left now is a candle burning where the shrine used to be, and a sign telling why the candle is there. And that actually makes you think more about him than a marble figure would.
The Black Prince is buried there, but his grave is also shrouded in scaffolding for repair. Henry IV and his wife are also here, the only king buried in Canterbury. Many of the other ornate monuments belong to Archbishops of Canterbury, though they don’t all get the fancy treatment. There is a list of organists of the cathedral, going back six or seven hundred years. Surprisingly, there aren’t all that many names on the list. It must be a pretty healthful occupation.
There’s a lot of really nice stained glass, although it’s not always easy to tell the old glass from the new, if the new glass is designed like the old. There are a few medieval looking windows dedicated to someone who died within the last century. But if they looked old, and didn’t have a recent dedication, I took a photo. The backlit setting on my camera lets me take some very nice pictures of stained glass.
Next stop was Dover, to see Dover Castle. I hadn’t planned on seeing Canterbury cathedral today, so even with an early start at the cathedral, I was running late. Dover Castle includes more than just the castle. There’s a Roman lighthouse, a Saxon church, defenses built to protect England from Napoleon and from Hitler. It covers a huge amount of space, but I only wanted to see the castle.
The Roman lighthouse was one of a pair. Ships approaching the harbor entrance would set their course exactly between the lighthouses, and so find the proper channel. And who says travel isn’t educational?
The castle is enormous. There’s a large curtain wall with big square towers, and a huge keep in the middle. There’s no moat, and I don’t think it ever had one, but there is a drawbridge before entering the bailey. The stone stairs going up from the entrance to the keep are not the original ones, because you can see the stubs of the original stairs about a foot above the current stairs. And several steps have been replaced with wooden steps. I think there used to be stone steps here, but I can’t be sure. And I don’t know why they switched to wood.
Many of the rooms have been fitted out with replicas of medieval furniture and clothing and stuff, just to make it look lived in. There are fake sides of beef in the cellars, and a chest of “scrolls and documents” in the room next to the king’s bedroom. They even had a real fire in the fireplace in the queen’s bedroom. These identifications are probable for the tourist trade, since I don’t think English kings and queens visited all that often.
I went up to the top of Rochester castle yesterday, 200 stairs, they said, just short of the Tower of London’s 204. They don’t tell you how many stairs there are to climb at Dover. It’s probably as many straight up, but there are several side staircases to go up and then back down to the main way up. The stairs are all spiral staircases, but wide enough for people to go up and down at the same time without getting in each other’s way.
After Dover, I headed off to Chichester Cathedral, a drive of about 2 and a half hours. But today, a Saturday, they had a traffic jam which must have added half an hour to my trip. And it was all just for me, because as soon as I got into the exit lane on the freeway, the freeway started moving fast again. And my exit lane crawed.
But it didn’t last forever, and I finally got to Chichester, and found a place to park on the street half a block from the cathedral. There’s a large military looking tower outside the cathedral; that’s the bell tower. The cathedral is big, with a tall spire rising out of the center, above the crossing. They have a display inside describing how the spire collapsed in 1861. Amazingly, no one was killed.
The style is Romanesque below inside, and Gothic above and outside. Experts can use this to date the cathedral, but I’d have to look it up. I took some more pictures of stained glass here, though there were more recent windows. They have a nice rood screen which had been torn down during the Reformation, and restored by the Earl of Arundel a few centuries later.
There are a par of 12th century stone carvings, one of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead, and one of Christ entering Bethany. They were found by accident in the 19th century while doing some repair work. The sign says they were originally painted and adorned with jewels.
There’s the tomb of the 3rd Earl of Arundel (not the one who restored the rood screen) and his wife. He has the normal knightly pose, but she is half turned toward him and is holding his hand. Very unusual.
My next stop was Portsmouth. I had assumed that I couldn’t see anything today, so everything here is planned for tomorrow. Despite having to see Canterbury Cathedral today, and the delay on the road, I still got here by 4;30 or so.
The Abbey Lodge is a real B&B. I have a nice bedroom, about the same size as my last two, but with a real desk and a chair, so I can type this in comfort. The bath is shared. In fact, the shower is next door, but the toilet is up one flight. There is a sink in the room, at least.
The landlord pointed me toward a street with lots of restaurants. I went the wrong way, went back and found a street with lots of Indian restaurants, some Turkish, one Thai, one Bangladeshi, and some bars. The bars might have been OK, but some didn’t seem to serve food. One advertised its family friendly restaurant with a “door in the rear” that I couldn’t find. One had a nice menu, but when I went in I regretted getting hearing aids. It was disco night, or something, and the noise was deafening.
I finally decided to kill two birds with one stone. I stopped at a Tesco and picked up lunch stuff for the next few days, and a bottle of beer for tonight. Then I went to a take-out place and got some Texas fried chicken. It’s not as good as Kentucky fried, but it’s all right.
Tomorrow is the Victory, the Mary Rose, and the Naval Museum, followed by a trip to the Isle of Wight to see Carisbrooke Castle. It’ll be busy, but it should be fun.
Day 11 Sunday, Sep. 17, 2017. Something I’ve never done before.
I was up early this morning. I wanted to get a quick start on the day, because I had a lot planned. I wanted to see the HMS Victory, and the Mary Rose, and the Naval Museum, then go to the Isle of Wight to see Carisbrooke castle.
I got to the Portsmouth Naval Yard early, too early in fact. It was 9:45, and they didn’t open until 10. So I took some pictures of the HMS Warrior, England’s first ironclad, built in 1860. Its style is still the traditional sailing ship design, and it still had masts and sails. But it’s historical. I also got some nice pictures of a pair of swans swimming in the harbor, preening their feathers. See, Dolores, I do think of you.
The Naval Yard has the neatest scam going. It costs ₤18 to see any part of their collection: the Victory, the Mary Rose, the museum, or any other thing. So, two costs ₤36. The price for a year-long pass is ₤35. So almost everyone buys the annual pass, because they want to see at least two things. And they still charge for guidebooks.
I got off easy - the Senior price is only ₤31.50. But I got to see two marvelous old ships. The Victory didn’t look right – the hull is usually shown as alternating bands of black and yellow. But it was black and light butterscotch. But the ship is being restored (again), and they have decided to give it back the Traflagar colors of black and yellow.
The ship is in very good shape, considering it’s 250 years old. The paint, even if it’s the wrong color, is clean and sharp, with no peeling or marks. The decks are well-scrubbed, all ship-shape and Bristol fashion.
The ship looks too small to be so powerful. It’s almost the same length as Old Ironsides, but it has more gun decks, and guns make all the difference. Nelson’s dining room is just outside his day cabin, a large room at the stern. He even had his own private latrine. Also just outside the day cabin is his bed, all enclosed in curtains. He doesn’t seem to have been very tall, which is an advantage on those old ships.
You start out at the top and work your way down, deck by deck. Lots of cannons, of course, but they also have some tables set up between the guns to show how the sailors ate. And there’s the kitchen, small and compact for feeding so many sailors. Lots of stowed hammocks, and some flat bottomed hammocks for sick or injured sailors.
The tour ends, in proper museum fashion, at the gift shop way down at the bottom of the ship.
Then I went next door to the Mary Rose, which you can’t clamber around, but you can see pretty well. There are three separate viewing levels, so you can get different angles. The only problem is that every so often they would do a sound and light show. They would shine videos onto the hull, to show what people were doing at various parts of the ship. But to do this, they turned down the lights, making it hard to photograph anything until the show was over and the lights came back up.
There’s an amazing amount of things recovered from the wreck, much of it in good condition. I was surprised at how well the longbows survived. The Mary Rose had several breech loader guns. They weren’t as powerful as the muzzle loaders, but they could be loaded and fired faster, because they had two breeches, one to load, and one to fire.
It is hard to describe the ship, because it is really just a skeleton of a ship. One side is gone, and most of the superstructure. But everything in the displays is original, not replicas. Although they did add some extra plastic bones to complete an archer’s skeleton.
I had wanted to see the Naval Museum next, but I didn’t have time if I wanted to get to Carisbrooke Castle. And it’s a good thing I left when I did. I pulled into the ferry parking lot at 5 minutes to 3 PM. The next ferry was at 3, and I couldn’t get my car across until much later if I missed this one. Fortunately, I was able to get my ticket and get on board in time.
I’ve never been on a ferry before, and it was interesting. Everyone has to leave their cars and trucks and go up to the upper decks. Then you sit around and wait for the leisurely trip to be over. A guy unloads the ferry by picking a line of cars and starting them off the ship, then another and so on. All very orderly.
Carisbrooke is a 20 minute drive into the island, and I had to be back for the 5:30 ferry, so time was tight. The ticket guy at the castle suggested I should start with the museum, since it would close soon. Actually, I could have skipped the museum, there wasn’t that much of interest in it. But I took lots of pictures of the buildings and walls. There is a nice curtain wall with a gatehouse, but most of the inside is a collection of late medieval buildings. The castle part is a shell keep on a real motte.
You don’t see many mottes anywhere, and this one is almost invisible, hidden under some large trees. But it’s there, and quite large. You don’t see many shell keeps, either, and the combination is rare nowadays. Though they used to be the standard arrangement. It was a whirl-wind visit, but I’m glad I went.
Going back was exciting, too. I neglected to make the ferry dock a favorite when I landed. Fortunately, I picked the right one out of Tom-Tom’s choices. Unfortunately, Tom-Tom sent me to the head of the line, and not the back. I got worried about making the trip when I saw how long the line was. It was seven minutes to departure and a zillion cars were ahead of me. Somehow, I got on, and landed safely in Southampton.
I found my hotel without any problem, and it’s nice. The whole neighborhood is guest houses and B&Bs and mini-hotels. You have to go a couple of blocks, though, to find a restaurant. I tried an Italian place for want of anything else. I didn’t really want pasta, but it’s better than some things. But this place had a special – pork loin with apples. Yum, yum.
This is the largest hotel room I’ve had, though I don’t get full use of it. I wanted a double bed, and got it. But I also got a single bed, and it crowds the room a bit. The bathroom is ensuite, and seems OK. And the wi-fi works well.
Tomorrow is church day. Winchester, Salisbury, and Wimbourne, plus a walk around Southampton before I leave. Lots of driving, but churches don’t take that long to see.
Day 12 Monday, Sep 18. Two and a half cathedrals, no castles.
I have a cold, and I am miserable. Not so miserable that I can’t go sightseeing, but still miserable. The cold came on yesterday, with my nose running like a faucet. I kept really warm last night, and got some nasal spray and cough syrup today. They have helped. It will also help that tonight’s hotel has an electric space heater, and it’s working.
I was going to view the old town of Southampton this morning, but the trip to the pharmacy was more important. So was the trip to find some strong tape. Yesterday I managed to destroy the passenger side mirror on the car. (At this point, a little more damage is no big thing.) But I needed that mirror to tell me if cars were on my left. Usually there wouldn’t be any, but I was sometimes not in the leftmost lane. The mirror was cracked, but not in pieces, but it wouldn’t stay in place. So I got some tape and taped it onto the holder. It’s not perfect, but it works.
So this killed my walk around Southampton. I left for Winchester to see the cathedral. I found a public parking lot near the cathedral that didn’t charge too much, which is unusual. They have a nice display outside the cathedral of stones marking out the outline of the original cathedral.
The cathedral is very large, with a broad front that has a huge stained glass window. This window was destroyed by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. After the restoration of Charles II, the window was rebuilt from all the shards of glass they had swept up from the floor. Unfortunately, no one seems to have known what the picture was supposed to be. So they just put all the shards up any old way, so it looks like Marc Chagall designed it.
But there is some beautiful vaulting, and a few nice real stained glass windows. There are three monuments to Jane Austen. Her grave marker, a bronze plaque in her honor near her grave, and a small statuette of her writing at a desk. Originally there was just the grave. Then an American came by, asking where Jane Austen was buried. It suddenly occurred to the Dean of the Cathedral that he had a secular “saint” which could bring in as many pilgrims as a real saint.
The screen is nice and ornately Gothic. There’s a nice side chapel with 12th or 13th century painting on the walls and ceiling. The floor tiles are the original 13th century ones, and in pretty good shape. St. Swithun is buried here. He used to be the patron, but the Reformation killed that.
They have a monument to William Walker, a diver, who single-handedly saved the cathedral. Back in the early 20th century, the southeast corner of the cathedral started to sink. When the cathedral was built 1000 years ago, the ground there was marshy, so they put down wooden foundations. Well, of course, they eventually decayed. Walker put on his diving gear and went into the marshy water with sacks of cement which provided good support. It took 4 or 5 years, and the only help he had was an assistant to keep him supplied with air.
Then I went to Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest spire in England. It’s another broad-faced cathedral, and the facade is covered in statues. There’s also a very large and beautiful cloister. The vaulting is nice, but not fancy. But the arches of the nave, the triforium, and the clerestory are all fantastic.
They have what they claim is the oldest working clock, in operation since 1386. It has two large weights suspended from the ceiling. The ropes are wound around two large cylinders, and there is what appears to be a very large key to wind it.
The original rood-screen has been moved into a side chapel, and it is very nice. There are the usual collection of funeral memorials and tombs. One of interest is Edward Seymour, nephew of Jane Seymour. He was born in 1539. His wife was a sister of Lady Jane Grey, who ruled briefly in 1553. So he must have been a lot younger than his wife. In any case, she out-ranked him, and is depicted in a higher position on the tomb.
Then I went to Wimbourne to see the minster. I thought I could get a few minutes in before they closed at 5, but they fooled me – they closed at 4. I got several nice pictures of the outside anyway. It’s nice looking, with two big square towers.
Then a long drive to my hotel for tonight. The bath is shared again, but this time shower and toilet are adjacent. The owner pointed me to a pub in town for dinner, and it was a good choice. I had lamb’s livers with bits of ham. It was very good.
There is some bad news. I lost my reading glasses the other day – I don’t know how or where. But I had a spare pair. Today, after leaving all the stores that might have replaced them, I broke them. I have managed to hold them together with the tape I bought for the mirror, and they may last until I can find a real pair tomorrow.
Day 13 Tuesday, Sep 19. Tom-Tom takes over, and it’s awful.
I had a fair amount of driving today, and Tom-Tom made it a pain. It took me by narrow, winding roads, with oncoming traffic. I kept getting bounced off the left side curb because I was trying to avoid traffic on the right. One road was only one lane, by any measure, but it was a two-way road. Fortunately, no one came toward me there.
Twice, in towns, no less, there were places so tight there were signs telling you to yield to oncoming traffic. At the end of the day, going from Wells to Bristol, Tom-Tom sent me up a road that was no more than a lane and a half, with lots of oncoming traffic that was only too willing to give me the half lane. Tom-Tom said this road would go on for 11 miles. I said, give me a new route.
The new route had trucks, and buses, and wider lanes, which made up for the trucks and buses. This part of southwest England has the narrowest roads I’ve seen since Ireland, and they are all winding and lined with hedges, so you can’t see anything. It’s actually scary.
My cold is getting better. It helped that I had an electric heater last night. I cranked it way up, and then turned it down to keep from roasting under the comforter. And today was sunny and a little warmer, which also helped.
My first stop was at a church called Ottery St. Mary. It’s near the river Otter, and all the towns near there are Ottery something. I found this church in Michelin, and had never heard of it before. I can’t imagine why. It may be the most beautiful church I have ever seen.
It sits in a large, well-populated churchyard. It’s rather plain outside, with two big square towers. Then you go inside, and you go WOW!!!. The ribs of the vaulting in the nave are painted in red and blue, with gold stars, and painted bosses. The church dates to 1342, but in 1520 they added a north aisle. From the outside, it looks like the church has two fronts. The vaulting in the north aisle is different, and more beautiful than I’ve seen before. It’s like watching frozen fireworks, spraying out in huge numbers. You’ll have to see the pictures.
I forgot to tell you yesterday how friendly the staff were at Winchester Cathedral. Everyone of them said good morning, even it you were just passing by. If you had a question, they gave very full answers. I thought they were very polite and helpful. Ottery St. Mary has a guide who outdid them. She saw me taking pictures and showed me all the really good stuff.
Tuesday is coffee klatch day, and they had two tables put together to make a large square table, and coffee and treats. The guide invited me to join them, but I begged off.
They have padded seat cushions on the pews, all embroidered with different patterns. Some of the pew ends are carved, again, all differently. Several of the capitals are decorated with heads, very well done. The guide said Exeter had similar capitals, but Ottery St. Mary had better ones. Home town favoritism, I think Exeter wins this fight.
Medieval clocks are a big thing in southeastern England. After Salisbury’s clock yesterday, I found clocks in all three churches I visited today. Ottery St. Mary’s is from the 14th century and has the works in sight on top of a wooden enclosure that supports the clock. The clock gives the day of the month, and the hour.
For Peter Wimsey fans, there is a plaque recording the ringing of a significant peal of change ringing, with the names of the ringers. And the bells are rung from the main floor of the church.
Then I went to Exeter, where the cathedral has a massive front, a large rose window rises over a crowd of saints’ statues. They are trying to raise money for repairs by selling Lego bricks to build a model of the cathedral in Legos.
The vaulting in the side aisles is nice, but after Otter St. Mary, it seems ordinary. The nave vaulting is almost as good. But they do have nicely decorated and painted bosses at the joints of the ribs, including one showing the murder of Thomas a Becket. There is no central tower or spire, so Exeter has the longest stretch of vaulted ceiling in the world.
All of the capitals are painted, and most are interesting, with scenes or weird headdresses. They are nicer than Ottery St. Mary has, but Ottery St. Mary is still good.
There is a large memorial to men of the Queen’s Royal Lancers who served in India. It lists there losses – 47 killed in action or dead from their wounds; 69 dead from the effects of climate. The memorial was put up in 1860, so the men were probably still in wool, and not khaki.
The musician’ gallery is decorated with painted statues of musicians.
The clock is 15th century, and shows the day and the hour, and the phase of the moon. And a later addition on top gives the minutes. It is still working and accurate. Next to it is the original works, which were saved when they were replaced. Some clockmakers worked on them and got them going, though they don’t show the right time. Below the clock is a door for access to the works, and in the bottom of the door is a hole. The hole is to let the cat get in and hunt for rats and mice.
There are plenty of funerary memorials, including a nice painted one to a whole bunch of Carews, two above and one below. There are two bishops in matching tombs, one is painted and the other is covered in graffiti, names and odd marks carved all over his effigy. And there’s the two adjoining arched tombs to the Doderidges. The husband was someone important at court, and has a nice painted effigy in a standard style. His wife is also painted, but she is laying on her side, holding a skull, looking out at the visitors. The nicest looking memorial is to Hugh Courtenay, second earl of Devon, and his wife. She has her feet resting on weeping swans. It’s beautiful, but the person I talked to said the tomb had been moved in the 19th century, and this was probably a reconstruction.
There’s an interesting plaque commemorating a service for Major General Elphinstone, who was lost at sea by accident. Queen Victoria ordered a service in his honor, and attended it, accompanied by the Empress of Germany, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Connaught, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince & Princess Christian, Princess Louise, and the Prince and Princess of Battenberg. Basically, all the royal family. I guess they liked the guy.
There was no place to park at Exeter Cathedral, but I found a spot in a tiny lot a couple of blocks away. I had to pay, and had no change at all. No one would make change for me, because they couldn’t open their registers at will. So I went to a small grocery, and asked for the cheapest thing they had. The girl sold me a lollipop for 20 pence and I had change.
There was no place left to park at Wells, either. I couldn’t quite get backed into one spot, passed by another as maybe too small (someone behind me took it), and I was about to leave when a saw a space at the end of the line, right up against the gate. It was just big enough for me to park in, and I did. And it was free.
Wells is another cathedral with a massive facade. And much of the collegiate buildings are still there, surrounding the cathedral. It still has a large cloister, with nice vaulting, and glass in the arches. The interior is classic Gothic, with large columns, a smallish triforium, and a tall clerestory.
Their big pride and joy is the scissors arch. There’s a regular arch going up about halfway to the ceiling. On top of that is another arch, upside down, then joined to a final arch in the ceiling vaulting. The effect is to look like a pair of scissors, sort of. This separates the nave from the choir, and another two similar arches separate the transepts from the crossing. [These were not original, but were added to support the weight of the tower.]
There are a lot of nice tracery gothic structures in the cathedral. All of them are beautiful, and very delicate. It’s very nice stone work. They have some interesting capitals, as well, including a guy prying his mouth open with his finger, and another guy picking up his foot to look at it.
On the way back to my car, I heard and saw a flock of birds, pigeons, I think, swirling around the side of the cathedral. I saw them going in among the statues there, and managed to get a couple of pictures of one sitting on some king’s head. From the look of the king’s right shoulder, the pigeon is a frequent visitor. [I also saw a cat, darting back into a gateway, the first cat I’ve seen in England.]
I’ve already described the hideous drive to Bristol, so I’ll skip to the end. My hotel is called Hillcroft Accomodation. It’s not a regular hotel – there’s no reception, no check in. There are are about 8 rooms in a line, with glass fronts and sliding glass doors. Your name is on your door, and the door is unlocked. The key is inside, along with information you might need, including phone numbers. It’s all very modern. It sits back from the road at the end of a drive. It looks like someone had a piece of property he wanted to develop, but had no road access, other than the drive. So he put some rooms together and rents them out.
It’s comfortable, but the continental breakfast seems to be a couple of bottles of juice, a couple of rolls, and a pair of fruit bars, one of which is poisonous. And instant coffee.
I looked online for restaurants nearby and found one 4 dangerous miles away that had pan-fried duck breast. Very nice, and an excellent bitter beer – Badger Best Bitter.
Last night I ate at the nearby pub. There was a middle-aged guy and his wife, and he was talking a lot and having a good, but sober, time. I noticed his wife had a key with a tag like the one for my room. I came down to breakfast this morning, and there they were. He was talking again, to another guest. He said he had just sold his house, and was looking to buy another one, somewhere. This is his 19th move in 21 years. He buys houses cheap, fixes them up, and sells them at a good profit. He says he may be getting too old to do this anymore, and he’ll have to settle down for good, if he can just find a place he likes.
I bought a pair of glasses today. The pharmacy didn’t carry them, but the clerk directed me across the street to the hardware store. And then, getting in the car later, I found the pair I had lost earlier. They were down the side of the seat, next to the door. So now I’ve got two good pairs.
One final thought. In one of the cathedrals today, I saw a sign in several foreign languages which appealed to the foreigners to donate money to the cathedral. The specific reason was that, unlike totally secular France or Germany which pay for the churches, England does not provide financial support for the churches. And this is odd, because it is the Church of England, and the Queen is head of the kingdom and the church. Why doesn’t the state church support its own churches, when the secular countries do?
Day 14 Wednesday, Sep 20. Bath Time!
Bristol is a commercial town, and always has been. You don’t see lots of signs of kings, dukes, earls or that sort. But there are lots of signs of merchants, after all, they built the town. And they built well. I visited 5 churches today, all with deserved notices in the Michelin guide.
I started with Bristol Cathedral, which is not as large and imposing as Exeter or Wells, but is still very nice. The vaulting in the nave is very nice, with different vaulting in the aisles, which I’ve noticed elsewhere, too. The Lady Chapel was slightly different in style, but also very nice.
The Lady Chapel had a large tomb for a knight and his wife, but I couldn’t get close enough to read the names. But it looked rather fine. [The internet tells me it is the tomb of Lady Margaret Mortimer and her son Maurice, 4th Baron Berkeley.]
There was what I take to be an inadvertent joke on one grave marker – it belonged to Mrs. Elizabeth someone who died in February of some year. The stone had been truncated so that all that showed was Mrs. Elizabe February. The cloisters here also had stained glass in the arches.
Then I went almost across the street to the Lord Mayor’s Chapel. I had to look it up, but the lord mayor is an ordinary mayor who’s gotten a promotion from the monarch to be lord mayor. The chapel notes one man who was the last mayor of Bristol in 1898, and the first lord mayor in 1899, thanks to Queen Victoria. And the lord mayor and his wife actually have their own special seats down front.
The chapel is really a small church, and used to be part of a monastery. The present entrance is an addition, because the monks came in another way. It’s narrow, with a small side aisle. The ceiling is wood with gold designs in it. There is a clock above the entrance with two dials - one to tell the time, and one numbered 1 to 60, so the preacher could time his sermon.
Then I went to St. Stephen’s church, hidden away down a side street, it is small, with a flat ceiling, studded with gold bosses. There’s a nice funerary memorial of a knight and his wife. He’s flat on his back, but she is leaning on one elbow, looking at him. There’s another one from 1331 of a merchant and his wife, and she has the weirdest thing on her head. It’s either a very strange hat, or an even stranger hair style. It looks like a 3 sided square framing her face.
After that was St. John the Baptist, also called St. John on the wall. It, and four or five other churches were actually built on the city gates.. It is even smaller than the Lord Mayor’s Chapel, with just a nave and a plain gabled roof. Again, the principal benefactors were merchants.
The fifth church was St. Mary Redcliff, which is a big church with a tall spire. The outside is beautiful with arches and tracery and little spires. Inside, the vaulting in the nave is a marvelous net of ribs and bosses. There’s no triforium, but the clerestory is very tall, and lets in a lot of light.
The pews are enclosed, with small doors on the ends, and radiators behind every third one. The vaulting in the side aisles is different, but still beautiful. They have a pair of funeral monuments to one man. There is a nice large, painted one of him and his wife, looking the prosperous merchant that he was. But she died first and was buried in the tomb, and he decided to become a priest. So he has another memorial for his actual tomb, dressed as a priest.
Other churches have fancy clocks, this one has a water pendulum. It’s a cross-shaped frame, the ends of the arms of the cross holding the two ends of a semi-circular metal track. In the center of the cross is a pivot for a long pipe, and a small tap that drops water into a slot in the pipe. The water flows down the pipe and is deposited in the track, where it drains into a pump to send it back up. The water sometimes comes out of one end of the pipe, sometimes the other. It seems to depend on how far up one end goes on the back-swing. If it goes up just a little too high, the other arm of the pipe gets the water. Really neat.
Now it was time to go to Bath. Fortunately, the two things I wanted to see there were right next to each other, the Roman baths, and the Abbey. I started with the baths.
The main bath on display is the social one, the ones for actual bathing are on either side of it. There is also the spring which provides the water, and a drain for the overflow. The Romans built a reservoir to keep the baths filled from the spring, but had to release some of the water into the river. The water is green, even in the spring, while the water running through the drain is rust colored from iron.
There was a temple of Minerva at the baths, and archaeologists found lots of stuff. They don’t mention any nice prayers, only curses or calls for help against people who have hurt them. People would write these things on scraps of metal and throw them into the water. One is the only text surviving of British Celtic language. It’s written in the Latin alphabet, but it can’t be translated.
Bath Abbey is also very nice. It’s very Gothic, with tall clerestory windows, and a fantastic vaulted ceiling, with sprays of ribs covering the ceiling. The aisles are even better, with tracery and pointed bosses.
There’s another casual funerary memorial, of some nobleman and his wife. She is on her back, looking up at him, and he is leaning on his elbow, looking at her.
I had one more church I wanted to see, St. Lawrence in Bradford on Avon. It was close to the Castle Inn, where I would be sleeping. It was open until 6 PM, and I should get there before 5:30. But I hadn’t counted on the traffic. I was on a narrow, but two lane, road that suddenly stopped cold. Some cars would come our way, then stop coming. Then we would move a little bit and stop. This continued for at least 20 minutes, maybe more. I couldn’t turn around, and I wasn’t sure it would help. I assumed there was one of those road work things where you take turns going along one lane. But it seemed we were getting the short end of the turns. When I finally got to the end, I saw it was traffic lights, and an odd intersection. I think the two cross roads each had a light, so we had to wait through two lights, and they could each send cars up our way. Once past the lights, it was clear sailing.
I got to the church with minutes to spare, though I don’t think it would have mattered. There were several men in the church rearranging things, and more coming in to help. They didn’t mind my being there, and I stayed out of their way.
The church is supposed to be late Saxon, and the outside is sort of Saxon. But the inside looks more early Norman. The ceiling is wood, with a fret of beams tied by carved bosses. Two of the columns look like a bundle of small columns bound with a long strap with text on it.
The hotel was easy to find, but it was on the wrong side of the traffic pattern, so I went past and turned around. Coming back it was easy to slip into the second to last parking place. Then I looked at the building, and the picture on the confirmation from Hotels.com, and they didn’t match. I got out of the car to ask someone if this was the right place, when I saw the street name, and it matched.
It’s a pub with four rooms to let, and the barman is the receptionist. He was very friendly and made a reservation for me for dinner. The room is large, maybe the largest I’ve had so far. I have a good sized desk, and a real arm chair for the desk, and a stuffed arm chair for lounging in. It also has the biggest shower I’ve had yet.
I had a duck cassoulet for dinner with bits of sausage and gammon, large white beans, and a slice of sourdough toast. It was very tasty, and the beer was also good. It was Jurassic bitter, almost as good as last night’s.
Day 15 Thursday, Sep 21. First really rainy day I’ve had.
I’ve been inside cathedrals and churches a lot lately, and the weather has been nice. Sunny and dry, and reasonably warm by the afternoon. Today I was outside most of the day, and it rained, until I started going inside again. It wasn’t a downpour, just a steady rain, sometimes very light, never hard, but it rarely stopped.
The first stop was Lacock, a small village almost entirely owned by the National Trust. It is the ultimate medieval village, with almost no modern buildings, and few modernized ones. There are basically four streets (with some extensions) and on a rainy Thursday in late September those streets were all busy with tourists.
The village (which is named in Domesday) used to belong to an abbey, and at the Dissolution under Henry VIII the abbey and its lands was sold. Eventually it passed into the Talbot family, the last of whom gave it to the National Trust. The village has appeared in a couple of Harry Potter movies and Downton Abbey, and was an early center for the development of photography.
Some of the buildings are left over from the abbey, including the medieval tithe barn. The village church looks nice from the outside, but it’s not too interesting inside. The town hall has a sign over the door saying it is licensed to have music and dancing. It’s just a great little town.
So is Castle Combe, which I think Winifred told me about. It’s mostly one street, full of nice old stone buildings. I had to park on the road halfway up the hill on the way out of town. I wasn’t alone. Again, wet, midweek, and at least 6 other tourists just while I was there.
One of the houses has a date on it – 1573. It looks rather nice, too. A lot of the houses are the medieval equivalent of row houses, all run together and built alike. But now they are quaint. There’s a church tucked in behind some of the houses, but I didn’t go in. It was raining hard enough now that I just wanted to get my photos and get out of the rain. I got a picture of a gutter with a leak, pouring water onto the sidewalk.
Avebury has a big manor house and grounds, with a museum, and a big entrance fee. There is parking on the estate, which is where Tom-Tom took me. But the only formal lot I could see was for staff and handicapped people. But I found a spot nearby that didn’t say I couldn’t park there, so I parked. It was a short walk to my first target.
When Winifred and I went to England in 1981 with Laurelin and Ithriliel, we went to Avebury for the stone circle and found a church, by chance, I think. It is St. James, and Michelin doesn’t know about it, and no one wants to talk about it. But it is one of the few churches in England that still has a rood loft.
A rood loft is a gallery above the rood screen, which was set between the parishoners and the choir and sanctuary. Elizabeth I ordered all the rood screens and lofts destroyed, but the people of Avebury hid their rood loft by covering it over with plaster. In 1811, while doing some work on the church, they rediscovered the rood loft. So they restored it, and rebuilt the rood screen into the bargain.
The church dates back to Saxon times, and has a nice Saxon baptismal font. It’s not a big church; the nave is short, and so are the two side aisles. But the rood screen and loft make this a wonderful church to visit. I came back just to see it again, and it is just as great as I remembered.
There were three women in the church while I was there, ooohing and aaahing over the font. They were impressed when I told them how old it was. They didn’t realize it was only the second best thing in the church. So I told them the story of the rood screen and loft, and they were even more amazed.
Of course, the real reason people come to Avebury is the stone ring. Stonehenge has bigger stones, but Avebury covers more territory, and you can still walk right up to the stones and touch them if you want. I didn’t walk the entire circuit – it’s a kilometer around, not too far, but it was still raining. But I did walk along one section. Looking at Google maps just now, there are some big gaps, so I didn’t miss a whole lot.
I had a lot planned for today, but the sight-seeing went faster than I expected. So I got to St. Mary’s church in Fairford earlier than I calculated. Which is good, because St. Mary’s has some beautiful stained glass depicting stories from the Bible. It starts with Adam and Eve, but quickly goes into the life of Christ. I got pictures of all those, but skipped the various saints and apostles. The clerestory windows are also stained glass, which is unusual, with saints on one side, and persecutors of Christians on the other. And above the saints are small glass insets of angels, and over the persecutors are small glass insets of devils. The glass is all 15th century and the most complete set of medieval glass in England.
The church also does change ringing, with the bell pulls suspended over the crossing, and the ropes go up into the central bell tower. Even the door into the church is nice. There’s a great big, ten foot tall door, with a smaller six foot door set into the middle of it, so you don’t have to open the big one.
I still wasn’t finished for the day. I went to Cirencester last. I thought Tom-Tom was mispronouncing the name, but Wikipedia just told me there are two ways to pronounce it. One way, which Tom-Tom used, is to say every syllable: Sy-ren-ces-ter. The other way is simpler: sistar. There was also sisitar, as in this limerick from Punch (thank you Wikipedia):
There was a young lady of
Cirencester
Whose fiancé went down to virencester
By the
great Western line,
Which he swore was divine,
And he
couldn't have been much explirencester.
I didn’t go for the elocution lesson, but to see the Church of St. John the Baptist, one of the biggest parish churches you’ll ever see. It has a massive tower in front, and a large south porch that would be a decent sized church by itself. [It’s actually the remains of a former priory.] The tower is braced by two buttresses that are sort of curved and blend into the fronts of the two aisles.
The columns of the nave are slender and tall, making for high arches. The Trinity Chapel is large, as large as two or three normal chapels. While the ceiling over the nave is wood, some of the aisles and chapels have a beautiful fan vaulting. It’s quite nice.
My hotel tonight is the Mason Arms, my second night in a row in a village pub. They’re great, the people who run them are very friendly, you don’t have to go anywhere to get dinner because it’s downstairs, and the buildings are properly old. My room is decent sized, the bathroom was carved out of one corner, rather skimpily, but it’s enough.
Dinner was gammon and fried eggs. I had a discussion with the landlady about the difference between gammon, ham, and bacon. We decided that bacon is bacon, ham is boiled ham, and gammon is baked ham. That’s a distinction we don’t make, other than to say boiled or baked ham. I wanted a local beer, but it wasn’t coming up or something, so I had to settle for a Guinness. Life is hard.
Tomorrow I give up all this religious stuff and go back to looking at castles.
Day 16 Friday, Sep 22. One castle, lots of waiting.
Today started off nice and sunny and warm, and ended up cool and rainy. The good news is that I was outside for the good weather. The bad news is that I couldn’t have been outside more.
I began the day by going to Berkeley castle. I parked on the road just outside the entrance and walked up the drive. The castle was there, right through the inner gate, and just past the sign that said “No public beyond this point.” So I walked back down the drive to see if I had misread the sign down below. On the way, I met a woman with an armload of stuff. Assuming she worked there, I asked if the castle was open to tourists. She said, “Not today, it’s only open Sunday through Wednesday.” And, you know, when I checked the guidebook, it said the same thing. Drat.
So I went to my second castle of the day – Chepstow. Winifred and I saw this with Laurelin and Ithrileil in 1981. I remembered some of it very well, and other parts totally wrong. It’s a big, long castle stretched out along a river. It dates back to about 1070, and William the Conquerer may have added to its defenses. William Marshall definitely added to it – there’s hardly a castle anywhere in the British Isles he didn’t have a hand in.
There’s a lower bailey with a big gatehouse, and a large tower that was used as a residence, and another large block of residential buildings. The middle bailey leads up to the great keep, which is the earliest stone part of the castle. Beyond the keep is the upper bailey and the barbican to guard the rear of the castle.
There’s a nice two seat garderobe sited over the river, to flush away everything. There are several living areas, and a kitchen area, and an early great hall. The residences kept changing over the centuries, with new buildings going up and then being torn down. One living section added by William Marshall’s sons was later partly torn down to make an opening for a walk all the way around the walls. The broken bits weren’t even smoothed over.
The cellar is large, with a big window overlooking the river. The lords of the castle got a sizeable share of the local beer as their taxes, and it went into the cellar, hauled up from boats in the river. The original doors to the castle are on display – they’ve been replaced by an exact copy. The doors are large, of course, with a small one-man door set into one of them. They are done with a nice fret work pattern. Tree ring dating puts them no later than 1190, making them the oldest castle doors in Europe.
The keep is impressive. It is maybe 100 feet long and 30 feet wide inside. Because the wooden floors have long ago disappeared, it looks like a Hollywood great hall, with an enormously high ceiling. But there were really three floors there, and you can see the large holes for the beams that held up the main floor of the hall. The back wall has four blind arches that had plastered decoration in them, and some of it still remains.
You can (and I did) climb over almost all of the barbican, and get some good views of the rest of the castle and the countryside. You can also go up into Marten’s tower, near the gatehouse. Marten was one of the men who signed Charles I’s death warrant, so Charles II locked him up here. On one floor there are two large slit windows, with window seats. There is some nice window decoration even high up in the tower.
You can climb all the way to the top of the tower. Interestingly, the spiral stairs had to be repaired for the last three or four steps. The replacements are not stone, which is normal, but steel. And they are done as metal copies of the stone pieces. A metal step coming off a metal tube that takes the place of the stone piece making the column for the stairs.
I was done at Chepstow about 1:30. Next was supposed to be driving to Pembroke, so I could see Pembroke castle (guess who built it) tomorrow. But the time I hadn’t spent at Berkeley meant I was ahead of schedule. I might be able to get Pembroke castle in today. It’s a 2 ½ hour drive, and the castle closes at 5 PM, so it was going to be tight.
Tight didn’t have a chance. I had hardly set out when I had my first traffic jam – at 2 PM. I spent 20 minutes crawling along, three lanes wide and no one going anywhere. Then the traffic disappeared and we could drive again. By now I realized I could not get to Pembroke in time to see the castle, and changed my destination to the hotel.
That, of course, did nothing to relieve the traffic. Every so often we’d come to a thudding halt, and start crawling again. And then it would clear again, always with no indication of why this was happening. I pulled off to get a break. I needed to take a leak, and get gas, and stretch my legs. The seats of this car are not all that comfortable, and my leg was starting to get numb.
The road wasn’t any better when I got back on it, but eventually I got to my hotel. Sort of. Tom-Tom said “You’ve reached your destination.” But it didn’t say which side of the road, or give me enough warning for me to look for it. I thought I saw a drive on one side of the road, but not soon enough to pull into it. I had to drive down the road a bit to turn around and come back into the drive. I immediately saw it was the wrong drive, but noticed the right one across the street.
I had the same problem going out to dinner at Carew Inn. Tom-Tom told me I was there when there was no building there. No side of the road, no nothing. I had written the Google directions down, and turned up a side road, hoping it was the one Google told me about. It wasn’t, but it led me to a view of Carew castle. I knew the inn was near the castle, and the castle was on the other side of a river. Therefore the inn should also be across the river. And it was. Tom-Tom had dropped me off well past the inn, and on the wrong side of the river.
The hotel is like an old rambling ranch house. The landlord doesn’t live there, but has programmed his number into the phone in the lobby. Any problems – call and he’s 2 minutes away. He’s a nice friendly guy, and provides a folding chair for me to type on, and a luggage rack for my suitcase. This is the first hotel that provided that. There’s a space heater in the room that I can plug in, and may. It’s chilly here right now, but he thinks you needn’t turn on the heat if it’s not all that cold.
He gave me a list of local restaurants, and his recommendation. I checked their menus online, and picked the Carew Inn because it had lamb cutlets. They were 3 lamb chops, a little overcooked, but not too much, in redcurrant, orange and mint sauce. The orange overpowered the mint, without making the lamb any better. Still, it was good.
I get to sleep in tomorrow because Pembroke castle doesn’t open until 10 AM, and it’s very near here. After the castle, I get to drive for hours back east. Yuck.
Day 17 Saturday, Sep 23. A nice castle, and a church and a half.
My host was complaining about the weather this morning. It was raining, and he said that was wrong, it should be sunny and warm in September, like Indian summer. His words. It was raining, but by late morning the sky cleared and it was warm and sunny after all.
He also complained about Hotels.com and its ilk. He needed to use them to get new guests, but they charged him 17.5% of every booking, one day or a month. He wanted to get more return business, like the other couple who were there, since they could just call him up and make a reservation directly. He said the thing for people like me to do is to use Hotels.com to see if there are rooms available, then call the hotel directly. Obviously, Marriot and Hilton don’t care about the commission, but remember this if you’re looking at a small local hotel.
And it turns out he used to play rugby, so we had a nice talk about that, along with the other couple. I’ve had lots of nice chats with people here lately. Today I talked with a woman who was encouraging kids to jump off the top of a castle, a foreign guy who wanted to spend the rest of his life looking at the countryside spread out before him, and with a guy who once spent two hours in a bus station in Chicago. He insisted that Durham Cathedral was the best cathedral in England, and wanted to see the Mappa Mundi to see if it really showed the coast of North America.
But before that was Pembroke castle. It is huge, with a thick curtain wall wide enough for internal passages, and lots of towers. It’s basically a curtain wall castle with a really big bailey. Part of the bailey has been paved over and painted with an enormous map of Wales
I went in through the gatehouse, and saw two signs about exhibitions upstairs. Two doors, two stairs, two signs, but I assumed that there was only one display upstairs. No. That would be too simple. Every tower has multiple floors, and each floor has at least one room, and there are passages connecting rooms and towers, and I never knew where I was or what I should see next. Twice I found myself going into a room (two different rooms) that I had already seen, just not from that passage. So I saw a lot of the castle, but not all of it. And I don’t know how much I didn’t see.
It doesn’t matter, what I did see was very good. Many of the tower rooms had window seats and fireplaces. One such room, maybe 12 feet across, had a small side room attached to it. Maybe the bedroom for the person who used the room with the fireplace as his day room. Lots of garderobes, all with slabs of stone covering the holes, which is odd, because the small rooms were all closed off with grills, so why not show them properly.
In one room there’s a memorial to the Pembroke Yeomanry, which is the only regiment in the British Army to hold a battle honor won on the mainland of Britain. Some French troops, mostly convicts, tried to invade England in 1797. They weren’t very good, and the local yeomanry came out and accepted their surrender without a fight.
The castle leaks, and they had several large buckets placed here and there to catch the water dripping from invisible cracks overhead. The rain stopped while I was there, but the spiral stairs in most of the towers were wet already, so I had to be careful. The steps were somewhat narrow, but mostly not steep. I didn’t go up to the top of the great keep, since the inside was hollow, and there wouldn’t have been anything to see on the way up.
I did go down to the cave under the castle, which was once used by cavemen. A girl with the family who followed me down counted and said there were 105 steps – it was a long way down. The cave was fortified to some degree – parts of the defenses are missing now. The family had a small dachshund with them. The father said he had carried it down – which is impressive, considering that I needed to hold onto the rail all the way down. The dog walked up – I have a picture of him, but it’s not too good. He wouldn’t hold still for his portrait.
There are dioramas with mannequin figures in some of the rooms. One interesting one shows some of Charles I’s supporters fighting Parliamentarians – one is stabbing his opponent with a sword, and the sword is actually shown sticking into the guy’s shirt. Realism!
One reason I didn’t go up the great keep was that it was being used by the local Brownies to raise money by rappelling (or abseiling, as they called it) down from the top. Some of the people were older, teens or adults, but there were a lot of young kids going down, and then running around to climb back up for another go. I stopped to watch one teen coming down. Her scoutmaster and friends were giving her encouragement, which she needed. She was plainly uncertain about what she was doing. At one point both of her feet left the rock surface, and I thought that would give her the confidence to go on, since it proved she wasn’t going to fall. But she was still skittish. She made it down safely, of course, and everyone cheered.
There were at least four swans in the river, and on the bank, one of them grey. I got several pictures of them, so Dolores should be happy.
The folks who made the signs for the castle were more honest than a lot of such people. They admitted that dungeons were not common in medieval times. But their castle did have a cellar that was used once for a dungeon, and gave the details.
I left Pembroke for the long drive to England (and, yes, it matters). There was a lot less traffic today, even on the same roads I was on yesterday. But I shifted off north at some point, and started driving through some really beautiful country. [It was Brecon Beacons National Park.] The vistas were fantastic, the browns and reds and greens were amazing. I finally found a place to pull off and take some pictures, but I had already passed the best scenery. What I had was still great. There were already two people there admiring the view, a foreign guy with decent English, and his wife. My foreign acquaintance, named Rolf, was just overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, and didn’t want to leave. He may still be there tonight.
I was going to Kilpeck, a tiny town with a tiny church that no one has heard of. But it has some of the best medieval stone carving in England. The church was closed when I got there about 3:30 PM, but I still got plenty of pictures. The eaves of the church are lined with small carvings like grotesques, all different. And then there’s the doorway. The pillars are all carved with knot work figures – the style reminds me of some Viking age art, but it’s too late to be that. On top is a round fan with more intricate carving. I wish I could have seen what’s inside.
I also saw something really unusual there. A Robin Reliant. Just standing there in the parking lot. For those of you who don’t watch Top Gear, the Reliant is a British car from the 50’s or 60’s that only had three wheels.
My last stop of the day was Hereford Cathedral, another immense church. It used to be even bigger, but some time in the middle ages the west front collapsed. When it was rebuilt, they cut out one bay from the nave. The nave actually looks a little short and distorted because of that. The vaulting in the aisles is fairly ordinary, but the ceiling in the nave is painted with intricate pattern and emblems.
One of the beauties of a proper cathedral is the choir. Most of a cathedral is stone, but the choir is always wood. The seats and their backs are usually carved , and are a wonder to look at. But you don’t always have a chance to see the choir. Some are closed off, and some are in use for a service. But Hereford has a row of five choir seats set at the back of the cathedral, not for use, but for display. And they have them with the misericords up. Those are little half-seats that let the monks in the choir rest without fully sitting down (misericord means mercy). The underside is usually carved with an animal or some fanciful figure.
The columns of the cathedral are thick and not too tall, but they support a triforium and tall clerestory windows, so the ceiling is pretty high. Those tall ceilings make it hard to keep the church warm, but this is one of the few churches that tried to take care of heating the place. There are several large radiator type things scattered around the cathedral, and in the south transept is a medieval fireplace.
There are two effigies of dead bishops here with long beards. I’ve occasionally seen a Tudor or Stuart bishop with a nice trimmed beard, but most bishops are clean shaven. There is a very nice funerary memorial of a Tudor knight and his wife, all painted. I just checked Google, and it’s the tomb of Alexander Denton and his wife Ann, and I missed the most important thing about it. She died in childbirth at age 18, and the swaddled baby is next to her. I didn’t see it, and didn’t even get it in my pictures by accident.
The guy who wanted to see the Mappa Mundi (map of the world) was disappointed because the exhibit was closed by the time he got to it, and wasn’t particularly consoled by the gift shop’s copy of it. It’s the biggest such map, but there’s no trace of North America on it. Don’t know where this guy got his information.
My hotel is another shared bath one, but the bath is large and the toilet is next to it. And they also provide a bathrobe. I’ve got a big desk and a chair, and a sink in the room, which will make cleaning my contacts easier.
I went out to a place called the Cosy Club for dinner. They asked if I had reservations, which I didn’t, but I was early enough and alone, so they found me a table. I had roasted chicken breast, stuffed with mozzarella and wrapped in bacon. Excellent. My beer was a Dark Side stout, OK, but not great. Still it was better than some of the other beers I’ve had. One or two places earlier on had Sam Adams, and a few more had Goose Island IPA. But I don’t want an American beer, even a good one, when I can experiment with British beers.
Day 18 Sunday, Sep 24. I forgot it’s Sunday, and there are all these churches…
I had three churches lined up for today, and I had the day marked on my itinerary as Sunday, but it somehow didn’t gel that Sunday was not a good day for church tourism. I got to Gloucester Cathedral just in time for the 11 AM service, and I really didn’t have an hour or more to wait for it to end. So I took lots of pictures of the outside, which is quite impressive. There’s a very large tower, and all the accoutrements of a cathedral church.
Before getting to the cathedral proper, I passed a line of arches, which is all that’s left of the infirmary wing of the abbey. On the end arch is a plaque commemorating the man who wrote the National Anthem of the USA – John Stafford Smith. Well, the music part, somebody else added the words.
A lot of the cathedral is masked by scaffolding, and more is fenced off by construction areas. But what is visible is very nice with lots of statues and gothic spires. There are some very large windows at the west end. Too bad it’s Sunday. And even if I had thought about it, I couldn’t have reworked my route. If nothing else, I have too many churches and cathedrals on my list.
I thought briefly of going to Berkeley castle, since it was open on Sunday. But it’s too far south, and it would take too long to go there and come back. So I went on to Tewkesbury Abbey, and lucked out – by the time I got there, they had just finished the last morning service.
There are some nice old buildings in Tewkesbury, including a row of almshouses in very good shape. There is another row of buildings that look exactly like the almshouses, but they are part of a museum to some local bigwig. One has a sign in the window: “I was once a pub. This building was The Aurora, closed in 1917 by order of the Justices.” Man, when they close a pub, they don’t fool around.
The abbey has nice fan vaulting coming out of big sturdy columns. It looks like the space between the ribs in the vaulting is filled with brick. There are some famous people remembered here. Hugh Despenser has a very elaborate tomb, showing him and his wife. She has one of those weird things on her head, and it is definitely a headdress.
I’m not sure if she’s in the tomb, because she survived him, and married Sir Guy de Brien, who is buried across the aisle, with a similar tomb. There is also a marker for the Despenser who got killed along with Edward II, although he’s buried elsewhere.
The ceiling over the sanctuary is especially fine, with extra nice vaulting and painting. The choir has its own rather unusual vaulting and a red center. There are some beautiful tiles in the floor of the choir, and just outside the choir is a sample of the original tiles they found and used to make the current ones.
There is also a very simple, restrained memorial to the nations who fought on England’s side in the First World War, although I’m not sure if Japan and Italy are included. But the commonwealth countries are there, along with large flags for France and the United States. The flags are rather dusty, and someone should really throw them in the wash, but it’s a gesture I haven’t seen in a lot of cathedrals.
By the time I got to Worcester cathedral, all services were over for the day. And it’s a nice cathedral, too, looking kind of stocky outside, with no graceful windows opening up the walls. But inside it seems very different. The columns are composed of thin columns bound together, which support a nice triforium and small clerestory windows. And then the vaulting just soars up above it all. The vaulting isn’t fancy, but the arches it makes are tall, and make you look up and up.
There’s a very elaborate baptismal font, with a tall elaborately decorated spire. There’s a nice funerary monument to a knight and his wife, very nicely painted. In a side chapel is a massive wooden triptych intricately carved. I didn’t think I could get a picture of it, as the room was very dark, but it came out quite well. And there’s an unusual funerary figure in the back of the church, a lady sitting on a thing like a chaise longue.
And there is the tomb of Prince Arthur, Henry VII’s eldest son, who died on his honeymoon (it was several months long), leaving his younger brother Henry to be heir. This is a big, elaborate, gothic structure. It was supposed to be even more elaborate, but then Henry married his sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, and the project was felt to be indelicate.
On to Stratford, where my landlord was willing to leave my key under the doormat, but I arrived before he had to leave. The room is on the ground floor, which is a nice change – I’ve been toting my suitcase up a lot of stairs lately. The room is en-suite, which means it has its own bath facilities. And it does, just not in a way you would expect. The shower is in one corner, the toilet is in another corner, and the sink is in a third corner. Weird, but more convenient than the shared bath.
Stratford is interesting. I cut down one street to get to some of the historic stuff, and there’s the Guildhall Chapel. The guildhall used to run a school, and Shakespeare went there. It’s next door to the chapel, and next to it is a line of almshouses.
Shakespeare retired to a house called the New Place (clever name, huh), which is no longer there. But the foundations are still there and venerated, and the house next door, which he gave to his daughter, is still there. There are lots of Elizabethan looking buildings in town, and some probably are real. It’s hard to tell when it is so easy to fake a half-timbered facade. But some do have projecting upper floors, and that’s a good sign. And one building is dated 1490.
I looked at a lot of menus, some very good, some very expensive (like Lamb’s Restaurant on Sheep Street). Then I settled on one with duck breast and duck leg confit. When it came, I didn’t recognize the three little breaded balls. They tasted good, so I asked the waitress what they were – they were the duck leg confits. They were good, and the duck breast was cooked just right. There were only two beers on tap, according to the menu, Peroni and Hooky. When I left, I noticed they also had Guinness on tap. I tried the Hooky, and it was a pretty good amber ale.
I wanted to see more of Stratford, but my feet are dead. I walked more yesterday without feeling so worn out. But today, with less walking, I was just crawling. Well, there’s just two more days of sightseeing, although tomorrow is both Warwick and Oxford. But Tuesday is going to be light, and might take a bit of Oxford.
Day 19 Monday, Sep. 25. Unexpected beauty in a plain church.
I miscalculated my timetable for today. Four hours in Warwick and four hours in Oxford equals four hours of sightseeing. It doesn’t matter. I can move part of Oxford to tomorrow, which does have some time available.
Laurelin, Ithriliel, Winifred, and I saw Warwick Castle briefly in 1981. Briefly, because we got there just before closing. There were just the four of us, and maybe one or two other couples, and we got a very personal, if short, tour from the guide. We didn’t get to see much, but it was still enjoyable.
Nowadays, Warwick Castle is Medieval Disneyland. It caters to your little Knights and Princesses. It has mannequin displays in a great number of the rooms, with voices – not describing the room or anything, but just talking, as if you were eavesdropping on these people. There is music blaring outside that can be heard all over the bailey, and even on top of the motte.
I had thought the old robber barons had all been eliminated, but this one is still in business. I paid ₤10 to park my car for all day. I was willing to pay for all day because I was going to visit the town, too. But ₤10 seemed an awful lot. It was, too, because the other parking lot for the castle only cost ₤6. And the senior discount meant I only had to pay ₤24 to get in. At least the toilets were free.
The castle is impressive, especially from outside the walls. The towers are tall and the walls are complete – it looks capable of withstanding anything. The gatehouse has an inner portcullis, as well as an outer one, and lots of murder holes. Two women were following me in through the gatehouse, and one of them commented on the murder holes. Seems like everyone’s talking about them these days.
I went into the main hall, which is the only part I saw last time. And it was a mistake. I saw all the rooms I didn’t see before, all set up with mannequins as a weekend with the earl and his wife, circa 1900. All too cutesy, and uninteresting.
There were some good bits – a gambeson in a tudor style for a breastplate, a couple of short blunderbusses that were so badly lit I couldn’t get a picture of them, Queen Elizabeth I’s handkerchief and saddle, a secret door partly hidden by a painting, and the Kenilworth buffet - a very large buffet carved with scenes from Walter Scott’s novel Kenilworth. I can’t tell if the library has the original collection of books – it looks too variegated in bindings. And it has an inexpensive copy of Huckleberry Finn.
I found out later that the symbol of Warwick – a bear and a tree stump or staff – goes back to Saxon times, and was adopted by the first Norman earl. So, in the library is a stuffed bear, standing up and holding a box labeled “Letter Box”.
One of the bedrooms has what is made to took like a linen closet. But the floor is patched as though some plumbing had been removed. I think it was an old garderobe that had been upgraded to a modern toilet before being removed entirely.
There is a picture in one room of an older man being dressed in plate armor by an assistant. The picture looks too old, but the guy in the armor looks like the guide we had in 1981, who told us he sometimes put on the old armor for mock fights.
They have a “Birds of Prey” exhibition just outside the walls, and I looked through the gate there as the handler was flying a large bald eagle. He had a microphone and you could hear him all over, too.
The motte is rather tall, but once you get to the top, all you have is a great view of the countryside. There is a section of wall and a couple of small towers, but no way to get into the towers. Not even for non-tourists. There used to be, because there are rooms in the towers, and doors onto a walkway.
Overall, I was disappointed in Warwick Castle. They’ve made it too commercial and simplistic. But there are peafowl on the grounds. I saw at least four, two outside the walls, and two more in the bailey. And, yes, they were different, because the two outside had no special tails, being maybe peahens. And the two inside had clipped tails, maybe making them peacocks.
So then I went into Warwick town to see St. Mary’s church. It has a nice big tower, and some nice, if ordinary, other features. But it owes a lot to the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. Thomas Beauchamp, who commanded at Crecy, and his wife are holding hands on their memorial. One of his descendants built a big chapel alongside the church, and it is incredibly beautiful. The decoration is all high gothic, with vaulting and tracery. There are three principal tombs. One is of Richard Beauchamp, who ordered the chapel built, and was custodian of Rouen castle while Joan of Arc was a “guest”. One is of Ambrose Dudley, brother to Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s favorite.
And the third is Robert Dudley himself, and his wife Lettice. This is a magnificent tomb, with vividly painted effigies, and a tall monument rising above them. Everything is painted, and very ornate. I asked if Elizabeth had paid for the tomb, but the guide thought Robert covered the cost himself.
I also saw Lord Leycester’s hospital, which was not medical. It was originally the home of the Warwick guilds in the 14th and 15th centuries, but Robert Dudley acquired them and endowed them as a home for retired servicemen and their wives. And it still is to this day. It’s a nice row of medieval houses, just as they used to be.
Going to Oxford, I misread Tom-Tom’s map and got into the wrong lane. I was stopped at a light, and saw my mistake before the light changed, but I couldn’t change lanes. So I added half an hour to my trip to Oxford. I’ve got parking behind the guest house, and a bus stop across the street. A 24 hour bus pass is cheaper than two round trips, so I bought one. I will have to move my car tomorrow morning, but I may be able to find a car park near a bus stop.
I walked around Oxford this evening a bit. It’s a regular town, and a college town, and a medieval college town. You see all these ordinary storefronts, and then there’s this 15th century building stuck in between the others. I took pictures until the light failed. Then I took the bus home to put some presents away (you’ll find out later). I walked to the restaurant I wanted to eat at tonight, just a block and a half from the hotel. And it was closed. So I walked back to the bus stop and took the bus into town. I found a nice pub in a building they said dated to the 13th century – actually I think they just said some building had been there then.
I had a mixed grill and a very nice porter, the first porter I’ve seen, I think. I got there later than I wanted to have dinner. And it took me a while to realize I had to order my food at the bar – I don’t mind doing that, but it’s never clear whether I should or not.
Tomorrow is more Oxford, then St. Albans. I had another old manor house stuck in between them, but I may drop it if time gets tight. Though there is some extra time tomorrow.
Day 20 Tuesday, Sep. 26. All good things must come to an end.
I couldn’t leave my car in the hotel car park all day, so I had to move it. I looked up some possible parking lots, and chose one that was convenient to the center of the city. I forgot to check if any buses went near it. At least one does, but I didn’t find out until after I had walked into town.
I walked a lot yesterday and today, and my feet were OK - a little tired, but a brief rest put them right. I don’t know why they were so sore the other day. When I left the parking lot, I didn’t really know where I was, but I had a general idea of the direction to head for. It was right, and I soon found a small convenience store that sold pocket sized maps. Now I knew where I was and how to get places.
Oxford colleges are like Italian palaces in a way. They both present a bland outward appearance to the world, while hiding their glories inside. I passed by several well-known colleges, and was mostly unimpressed with their outer faces. Their gates were often attractive, and one had two nice oriel windows, but the rest was just plain wall, with ordinary windows. Then I went into one, and found the real beauty.
The colleges are open to visitors (read, tourists) at times, but most were not open today. One that was open was Balliol College, founded in 1263, making it one of the oldest of the colleges. Aside from a very elaborate front on Broad Street (19th century), its outer walls are the same bland facade. Even inside the students’ rooms are plain from the quadrangle. And a lot of the buildings are not 700 years old, or anywhere close.
But the Master’s house has a very nice gothic oriel window, which is in period. And two other buildings in the front quadrangle are medieval – the old library, and the new library. The chapel is very nice, but 19th century, and so is the even nicer Hall. But they don’t look 19th century, and the Hall looks very medieval.
But if the colleges hide their glory, the town does not. There are a lot of 15th and 16th century buildings, and a Saxon church tower that looks antediluvian. I had a nice time wandering around Oxford. I didn’t see anyone wearing academic gowns, but the stores sell them. Full length for graduates and scholars, waist length for students. And I found a bus that took me back to within a few blocks of my car park.
After Oxford, I decided to try the manor house at Mapledurham. Bad idea. The last few miles were on an extremely narrow road. I didn’t meet anyone as I was going in, but I had to deal with two cars when I came out – one of whom thought he owned the middle of the road. I caught a few glimpses of the house on my approach – it’s brick and has a lot of outbuildings. But they wanted ₤8 for seniors, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time there. So I headed off to St, Albans.
I’ve been in England for three weeks now, and today I saw only my second cat. I saw one in Wells as I was starting to drive away. He came out of a gateway, freaked out and ran back in. I had trouble getting my camera out, so I only got a picture of his back end. Today I got a couple of pictures of a nice black and gold tiger-striped cat prowling around the parking lot in St. Albans.
The cathedral in St. Albans is unusual. There is very little decoration inside – almost none in the nave. But the nave is still very interesting. The south side of the nave is all gothic arches, triforium, and clerestory, all standard, and attractive. The north side of the nave is like that, too, except for the half closest to the sanctuary. That is round arched Norman style, with smaller round arched windows above them.
When the cathedral was built, it was all done in the Norman style, and then they added an extension onto the nave in the new gothic style. Then two Norman columns on the south side collapsed, and the damage was repaired by making all that side gothic. The remaining Norman columns are more square, and have traces of medieval painting of religious scenes.
St. Alban is England’s first saint, dating back to Roman times. He has always been honored here. The Saxons had an abbey dedicated to him. The Normans tore it down and built their own in its place. The current shrine is probably 13th or 14th century. Next to it is the only surviving English watching loft, a stone and wood loft from which the monks and the villagers could watch the shrine.
St. Alban was a convert who refused to tell the Romans where his priest was. That priest, St. Amphibalus, also has a shrine here. Which is only fair, since if Alban hadn’t been so loyal, Amphibalus would have been the first English saint.
I left St. Albans to go to the airport to turn in the car. I needed to top off the gas tank, so when I got close to the airport, I asked Tom-Tom to find me a gas station. It gave me a list, and I picked the nearest one. It wasn’t until I was miles away that I realized I had asked for the nearest gas station to where I was, not to where I was going.
I went off on a wild chase through the boonies. I was afraid I was going to be stuck in traffic, because I passed two guys on the road, driving sulkies, with the traffic backing up behind them. Fortunately, Tom-Tom took me back to the motorway by a shorter route.
The return of the car was relatively painless, considering the damage. The bus to transfer people to the terminals gave me a free ride to the hotel. And I have just one ₤5 note to cover the bus to the terminal tomorrow morning.
I leave at 10:30 AM, and get in at 1:30 PM tomorrow. It will be nice to see all of you again. It will also be nice to see my cats again, I feel as if I’m going through cat-withdrawal. I think in future I will have to cut back my planning. Seven hour days are harder to do now, especially if I do a lot of driving. Some of the places that I planned to walk around in the evening got shorted because I was too tired to walk around,
But it was a good vacation, and I had a lot of fun. The beer was generally OK, but only sometimes really good. That may just be a matter of not asking for the right beer when I ordered. But the food was consistently good, and the breakfasts were usually fine. Some of the continental breakfasts were skimpy, but the full English breakfast was offered often enough, and it was good.
Oh, yeah. The sightseeing was really good, too. And that was the whole purpose of the trip, after all. Good museums in London, wonderful churches and cathedrals, and some very nice castles. A good trip.