England vacation 2018

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  Monday - Tuesday, Sep. 10-11, 2018   Tired and lost

The beginning of this trip is very much like the start of last year’s trip. Go to O’Hare, go down and up to get to Concourse C, have dinner, and fly. Last year I went to the Billy Goat Pub, which was disappointing, so this year I went to the Berghof Cafe. The bratwurst was good, but pricey.

The flight was on United, same as last year, but this year they had a much better assortment of movies. I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Men in Black, some other movie, and the new version of Jumanji, That was different from the original. Not better, not worse, though neither was a great movie. Different. The bratty, self-centered, spoiled bimbo turned into Jack Black. The nerd turned into The Rock. This could have been awful, but the actors played both sides of their roles, and reasonably well. The ending was, of course, going to be cutesy, and no one was disappointed.

I had to watch movies the whole way because it was too early to sleep. My normal bedtime is between midnight and one. I couldn’t get to sleep over the Atlantic, it was too early. By 1 am, we were in a holding pattern over London. I got off the plane at a little after two, got through passport control after three, and got to the car rental office about four AM, body time.

Europcar may have cheated me on the car rental. They said I had to provide an £18,000 insurance cover for damage to the car, and against theft. We worked up a compromise, but I still think I lost. [I didn’t. The final charge to my credit card was the same as the price when I reserved the car. Which actually means that I got the full insurance coverage for free. Which means I won. Hurray for me!]

Anyway, I now have a Hyundai i10, a reasonable hatchback. The hatch is small, and I can’t lay the suitcase down flat. But the car has reasonable speed and shifts well.

I got to the hotel at eleven, five am to my body, and found I couldn’t check in until three. So I went to my site for today, Hughendon, Benjamin Disraeli’s country house. It’s a nice red brick building, with most of the rooms as they were in his time. A lot of the furnishings were sold after his death, but some have been reclaimed. There were two tours of the place, but I managed to miss both of them. It didn’t really matter, since you could wander as you wished.

They had a second hand bookstore in the cafe and shop area. Most of the books were fairly ordinary books about World War II, with a smattering of fiction thrown in. But they also had a bin of CDs of jazz music, and I found four interesting ones. Four CDs for two pounds, good bargain.

On my way back to the car park, a longish walk, I sat down on a bench by the ticket office for a rest. The nice lady asked if I would like a ride up to the lot, and had a guy with a minibus give me a lift. Very friendly of them.

I got checked into the hotel at 2:30, or 8:30 am to me. I had been up for almost 24 hours. I took a nap for about four hours and decided to get some dinner. I wanted to search for local restaurants online, but couldn’t get connected. Even when I finally got a connection, I couldn’t go anywhere. So I used the GPS to find me a restaurant. Or not. It took me to one, but there were only ordinary houses there. I finally found my way to the town center, and found a nice pub there. I got sausage and mash, and a nice stout, with an interesting taste to it.

This is short because I didn’t do a lot today, and because I'm still tired.

Day 2   Wednesday, Sep. 12, 2018   Shades of Ireland

The day started out cool and cloudy, but it got sunny and almost warm by afternoon. It started out slow, too, because someone was blocking the driveway. My hotel and the one next door shared a big parking lot in back, and a common driveway. Someone was parked in the drive, and there was no way to get past. I would have complained, but there was no one in the car, I didn’t know who owned the car, and I didn’t know which hotel he was in. So I had to wait, and wait.

But this was a day for blocking roads. I was going up a street in Ludlow and a woman was talking to her friend. The friend was standing safely on the side of the road, but the driver hadn’t bothered to pull off the road herself. A panel van squeezed by her, coming my way. I squeezed past her, and so did the panel van behind me. I think he may have said something to her, because she moved after he got past her.

And let’s not forget later on in Ludlow, going up the two way street that was only one lane wide, with another panel van behind me. I go up a hill and start to make a left turn, and there’s a car coming my way. This really is a one lane road. There is no room to squeeze over to the side and hope. The left turn was the way the road ran – it just turned left, with a building on one side and a wall running up into it. The other car managed to jam itself into the corner of the building and the wall. I was able to squeeze into the slight opening behind that car and get through. I don’t know what happened to the car and the van.

The road construction in front of my hotel in Ludlow is nothing.

But that was all later. To begin the day I went to Lichfield to see the cathedral. It’s a big red stone structure, somewhat dirty from smoke and soot. The entire front is covered in statuary. Over the three doors is a long parade of English kings, starting with William the Conqueror. You can date the cathedral by looking at the lineup. It ends with Richard II, and they had to finish up the line with some Anglo-Saxon kings and bishops.

The outside of the main door is the original, but the inside has been replaced. Must be layered, I guess. Over the main door, inside, is the balcony for the boys choir. I‘ve seen balconies like this but not in this location.

There’s some very nice vaulting in the nave, and a beautiful arched triforium, with vaulted clerestory above it. There was some rather nice stained glass, and some of the pictures may have come out OK.

Not too many funeral monuments, but one is highly unusual. The tomb is of a man who was a descendant of a bishop, and he served as the overseer of sermons. That is, apparently, a thing. This was not so unusual, lots of minor officials get tombs in cathedrals. But his feet were resting on, not a dog, which is common, or a swan, which I’ve seen, but a dragon. And his feet were not crushing the dragon, like St. George. The dragon was curled up like a dog, in the usual dog’s pose.

The main guide at the cathedral did not know what it meant, and some of the other staff there had never noticed it. A guide in another church suggested that it might be Welsh dragon, since we’re near Wales, but I think that’s a long shot. [And the man, and his family, had no connection to Wales. I can’t find an answer online, either.]

There are a few small bits of surviving medieval painting, mainly a nice pediment in the chapter house. There is also a tomb for two young sisters who died in some unmentioned tragedy, lying on a couch holding each other. Everyone takes pictures of the tomb, and we know their names, and their parents’ names, but not the tragedy. [I originally wrote that even Wikipedia did not know the story, but I was wrong. The older sister had her nightgown catch fire and she died from the burns. The next year the younger sister became ill and died.]

And there are the interrupted tombs. I saw what looked like the feet of a funerary figure in box in the wall. But I couldn’t be sure. Later, I saw a similar thing. The head of the figure in a box on the right, the feet in another box on the left and the middle covered by someone else’s memorial. Very odd.

And the outdoor tomb. In an alcove on the side of the cathedral is a tomb, with the normal figure, totally outdoors.

That was all for Lichfield. I had to get on to Ludlow, because Ludlow has a castle. I didn’t want to pay tolls, so I got stuck on secondary roads. The trip started out fine as just the Shropshire Grand Prix course, a rather mild course, with banked turns I didn’t have to slow down to navigate, and very few hills to cause problems. But then the course shrank. The lanes got narrower, and there were more blind corners. There were no curbs for me to run into, which I liked. But I was still not safe.

In Ireland, in 2008, I had run into a sharp curb and bent the wheel of the car. I eventually managed to find a magic leprechaun to fix the wheel, and he made it look like new. T

his time I had to make do with a small block that sat next to a drain, or something. I didn’t see it when I hit it. And although I had to pass the scene twice more, I still can’t tell what it was exactly. Anyway, the wheel was bent even worse than the one in Ireland. It was so bad that the mechanic here said it couldn’t be fixed. Of course, he wasn’t a magic leprechaun, but even a magic leprechaun might have had trouble with this one.

So I need a new wheel, and the mechanic didn’t have one. He could order one from the Hyundai dealer in Shrewsbury, bu they don’t have one in stock, and it would take time to get it. So, he arranged for Hyundai in Shrewsbury to order the wheel, and I will collect it and have it replaced when I am in Shrewsbury on Friday. And that’s the only good news – I was actually going to be in Shrewsbury on Friday anyway.

I thought I had killed today’s schedule with all the time I spent changing the tire to the itty-bitty replacement, and finding a mechanic, and all. But I got to Ludlow with plenty of time to see the castle. It’s rather nice, with a lot of bits still surviving. There are parts of passageways, including a small entry space between the outer door of a building and the inside. Lots of fireplaces, some very large. A good deal of the private residence has survived.

There’s a large round chapel in the inner bailey. It reminded me of the Temple church in London, but I didn’t see any mention of Templars here. It was designed with the same model in mind, the Templars church in Jerusalem. And for once, William Marshal had nothing to do with it.

There are lots of little passages, linking up big rooms, or little rooms. Many small rooms have a short passage leading to a smaller room next to them, or above them, which were watch posts. Other castles have some traces of these things, but not as much as Ludlow does.

[Somehow, I accidentally deleted a paragraph or two here about St. Lawrence Church. It’s a nice parish church, with tall arches along the nave, with slender columns. There is no triforium, but some nice simple clerestory windows. The ceiling is wooden, with decorative bosses here and there. There’s a very nice east window, and a large reredos behind the altar with lots of statues on it. There’s a beautiful tomb in the sanctuary to Sir Robert Townsend and his wife.]

The rear of the church has medieval stained glass in all of its windows. The choir has nicely carved misericords, all different. And there’s a sixteenth century copy of the Ten Commandments. They are written as a single paragraph, un-numbered.

I went to my hotel and the owner is very friendly. He told me about a really good restaurant in town. It is so good that all the tables were reserved when I got there. He told me of another good restaurant, but Tom-Tom said it was 25 miles away, and that was too far. But I found a nice place on my own. I ordered steak and kidney pie, which may have had some kidney in it, but I wouldn’t want to have to swear to it under oath.

But the town is very nice, with lots of medieval and Tudor buildings. Many of them have plaques telling their history and age. Interestingly, most of them are inns or pubs. But it’s a nice town to walk around in.

This hotel has wi-fi that actually works. So you get this chapter, and the missing chapter one. Tomorrow I go off to re-visit Kilpeck, the church I saw last year with all the stone carving. I hope to see the inside this year. Then on to Stokesay for another castle. Of course, what did you expect?

Day 3  Thursday, Sep. 13, 2018    Almost a Day Off

I woke up this morning and looked out the window of my room and saw the most delightful landscape. My room was in the back, and faced the valley, and hills, and it was just beautiful. The host was very friendly last night, and his wife was just as nice this morning.

Breakfast was a traditional British breakfast. Almost. I told them to leave off the baked beans and the tomato. I still got 2 scrambled eggs, 2 sausages, 2 pieces of bacon, some fried potatoes, 2 slices of black pudding, some mushrooms, and some toast. Cold cereal was also available, just in case that wasn’t enough.

Eating all that took a while, and I left a little later than I had planned. I didn’t need to worry. I went to Kilpeck first. This was a church with beautiful stone carvings on the outside that I had seen last year. It was closed up last year, so I couldn’t see the inside. I figured the inside must be as nice as the outside, so I went back today.

I needn’t have bothered. There was some nice carving on the arch at the front of the nave, and some carved vaulting, but not as much or as nice as on the outside. But I met some people there and chatted with them about churches.

Back north to see Stokesay Castle, following the same route I had taken south a couple of hours earlier. I was trying to drive slowly so as not to put too much strain on the replacement tire. I was going to feel embarrassed about holding up traffic, but I fell in behind a slow truck. He was going my way for miles and miles, so I let him take the blame for being slow.

And then everybody slowed down. I don’t know what had happened, but the traffic was crawling for a long time. We inched forward, stopped, inched some more, stopped. After about nine minutes (Tom-Tom’s estimate of time to arrival increased by that much), I had crept up to the turnoff for Stokesay Castle and left the crawl. When I left the castle, there was no line of cars.

Stokesay Castle is unusual. It’s medieval, and castle-looking, but it’s not really a castle proper. A rich wool merchant from Ludlow, with royal friends, was given an estate in the 1280s. The estate already had a tower on it, maybe more. He added a very nice stone dwelling, and another tower, and a curtain wall. In the 17^th century the current owner added a fake gatehouse in wood, half-timbered style.

It sounds like an odd collection, but it’s nice to look at. And a great deal of the wood in the place is original. The stairs to the second floor room in the great hall are the original steps, each carved from a whole tree trunk. Over the centuries, there has been some modification, but not much, and the people who restored stuff did it according to the original designs.

There’s a nice Solar Room, with large windows to the east and west. The room dates back to the 1280s, but the interior is now covered in lovely carved wood paneling. There’s a great block of wood carving over the fireplace, large and detailed. It was originally painted (they found traces of pigment) but it’s now plain. But they have an artist’s reconstruction of what it looked like – marvelous.

So I left the castle and went to my hotel. I got out of my car and went in, and found that check-in started at 3. My watch said it was 1:30. So I went looking for a store. I had lost my reading glasses. I don’t know when or where, but they’re gone. My backup pair has a bad left earpiece and doesn’t like to stay in place. So I wandered off looking for a place to buy glasses. I found one, and bought a nice pair, the only pair they had with my adjustment.

I went back to the hotel, and my watch said it was two o’clock, so I read for a while. Then the watch said it was 2:10, and more than ten minutes had passed. So I checked my phone, and the watch was way off. So I went in and got my room.

Then I wanted to go online, and I had seen the password downstairs, and put it in, and nothing. So I went down to see if I had remembered the password correctly. It started with a capital, and I had used lower cased. The landlady came up to me then and said the wi-fi only worked downstairs. So I went up to get my laptop, but tried out the proper password, just in case. And it does work upstairs too.

So today had very little sightseeing, though a fair amount of driving. Almost like a day off.

I just came back from dinner. I had gammon and eggs, with fries and peas. Gammon in American is ham steak. I had a dark amber beer, ale probably, called Bob. Not bad. And some nice chocolate ice cream for dessert.

Tomorrow I’m off for Shrewsbury to get the wheel replaced, oh, and do some sightseeing, too.

Day 4   Friday, Sep. 14, 2018    So, what else went wrong?

The schedule was simple. A quick drive up to Shrewsbury to visit the Abbey, then a quick drive up to Chester for the Cathedral, Roman amphitheater, and other stuff. Of course, the schedule was made before I broke the wheel on the car.

So the real schedule was: a quick drive up to Shrewsbury to visit the Hyundai dealer and get my wheel fixed. After that, whatever sightseeing might be possible. The dealer had the new wheel. But there was no appointment to have the wheels switched. The earliest they could do was 4 pm. They had another tire in case mine was bad, and it was, damaged inside. I could have taken the wheel and tried to find some other garage to do the switch, and hope that they would have a tire, just in case.

Two or three hours trying to find a garage, and waiting for the work to be done. Or six hours, knowing the work would be done. So I went to the Abbey, and it was nice. They are very fond of St. Winefride there, a Welsh saint they adopted several hundred years ago. The abbey was founded by Robert de Montgomery, first Earl of Shropshire, and a close personal friend of the Conqueror. It used to be a third longer, but it was reduced during the Reformation. It is still rather nice, with huge Norman pillars and some nice glass.

They had one thing that I had not seen, or at any rate noticed, before – funeral monuments that had been installed elsewhere, and had been moved here. If a church is closed, or badly damaged, the tombs get moved somewhere else. They had at least three of these wandering tombs, including the speaker of the Commons under Elizabeth I.

Well, that didn’t take too long, so I went for a walk through Shrewsbury, and it’s a very nice town. Lots of old buildings all over the place. The hotel where Henry VII stayed before Bosworth Field. Whole rows of medieval houses in several places. And a nice store where I found a nice thank-you gift for Dolores.

And a castle! Shrewsbury Castle does have a wall, not very high, and a motte, with a pretty, little guard tower on top, and a nice Great Hall. The Hall is taken over by the museum of the Shropshire Regiment, telling their history from the middle of the 18^th century. Uniforms, muskets and rifles, medals, all sorts of stuff. The regiment had mixed success in America. They captured Fort Ticonderoga, but were captured themselves with Burgoyne at Saratoga. Later, they burned Washington in the War of 1812, but were then sent to help at New Orleans against Andrew Jackson.

Eventually I had wasted enough time to go back to the car dealer. There was some confusion about what I wanted, but once that was straightened out, everything went fine. So, finally, a bit after 4:30, I set off for Chester. The problem was, the cathedral in Chester closed at 6, and it would take at least an hour to get there. That’s assuming the traffic was good, which was not a valid assumption.

I got into Chester too late for the cathedral, but thought I could at least see some of the other sights which did not close. That meant finding a place to park. I had thought that I had set my GPS to find the nearest car park to the cathedral, but apparently not. I kept driving around, not finding a parking lot, and then decided to forget about it. I may try to squeeze stuff in tomorrow, maybe.

Off to the hotel, which was easy to find. And it had a gas station next door, which was good because I was running low on gas. I unpacked, and found that I had also run low on toiletries. I had left my kit at the last hotel. I could get by without some items, but I needed contact lens solution and a case, and I wanted a toothbrush and paste.

The landlord here said, “No problem. Go to the roundabout, turn and go on down a ways and you’ll find a Sainsbury’s. They’ll have everything you need.” I might have turned wrong, or maybe I didn’t go far enough down the motorway, but I didn’t find Sainsbury’s. I pulled off and asked Tom-Tom to find me a shopping center. Off I go again. And the place is closed for the night. I’m in Chester, driving around trying to find a store. I stopped again and Tom-Tom said there was a Tesco only 120 feet away. I couldn’t see it, and kept driving blindly. I finally stumbled on it, parked illegally, and got my stuff.

Back at the hotel, I went in the back door to my room. It actually has a second door that opens to the parking lot. (So did my first hotel.) I got in and found that the deadbolt latch doesn’t latch. Well, there probably aren’t that many thieves about.

I had to go in by the back door because the hotel was doing a hog roast tonight, and the joint was jumping. There was live music in one room. The landlord said I needn’t worry about the noise from the music, my room was far enough away I wouldn’t hear anything. Hell, you couldn’t hear it in the next room. The pork was good. They took a large hamburger bun, slathered it with a chunky applesauce, and piled on the pork. I washed it down with a local ale called Honey Trap.

Lots of things went wrong, or at least not right. But I did get the wheel fixed. It wasn’t cheap, but the rental company would have charged my more.

Day 5    Saturday, Sep. 15, 2018    I chose Chester

I sent the last episode out before it was really, truly complete. Among the things in my lost toiletry kit was my spare of contacts – and that is how much worse it can get. I emailed the landlord at that hotel, and maybe he didn’t just throw the kit out. I asked him to mail me the lenses, if he can find them. [Updated much later, no he didn’t.]

Anyway, I had planned to visit Chester yesterday, and Manchester and Leeds today. What with the tire business, Chester didn’t get done. So, I want to see the Royal Armouries at Leeds and can’t do that and two cathedrals in one day. Chester or Manchester? A careful inspection of Google maps satellite view showed me a parking garage practically across the street from Manchester cathedral. I had already been by a parking garage near Chester cathedral. But Chester cathedral was close to the old medieval Rows, a double decker shopping area from Tudor times. Chester won out.

And it was great. Coming out of the parking garage I see a nice old half-timbered building, no, two of them. And there’s more down the street, and still more. And the Rows buildings are so cool. And there are some more old buildings! And there was the sign in the Rows: “It is an offence to drink alcohol on the Rows if warned not to do so.” So, if you haven’t been warned, it’s OK? I finally had to force myself to stop and head off to the cathedral.

Like a lot of other old buildings in this part of England, it’s all in red sandstone. It looks bulky inside, like a Norman cathedral, but they tore down the Norman cathedral to build this one in 1260. The columns are massive, and the upper galleries aren’t very interesting. There’s no triforium, but the clerestory are large arched windows. But it is spacious, and has a very nice carved wooden rood screen. The bosses in the ceiling where the arches of the vaulting join are all gilded.

The north aisle is lined with a set of very large mosaic pictures of Old Testament figures. The south aisle is lined with horrible modern stained glass offered for the cathedral’s latest centenary. The choir is very nice, with lots of carved wood decoration, and a bishop’s seat for three. There is some very nice stained glass, especially at the east end. It also has a consistory court room, where trials about religious matters were tried. I’ve never seen one before.

On to Leeds, on motorways almost all the way. It’s a good thing I got the wheel replaced, because the little donut wheel can’t be driven at high speed. There’s a parking garage right by the Royal Armouries, so that was very convenient. The museum is odd, in that the entire ground floor is the reception area, the shop (of course), and a large area for special exhibits, which weren’t happening today. All the collections are upstairs, or on the staircase.

The staircase is in the Tower of Steel, a very large spiral staircase with displays of weapons on the wall as you go up, and also on the inside of the hollow tower, all the way up. You can stand at the bottom and look up at the rank after rank of weapons of all sorts, climbing up to the top of the tower. They have mirrors set up at the bottom so you can see it all without straining your neck.

The Royal Armouries has a ton of weapons and armor, of all sorts, from all places and time periods. Unfortunately, they don’t have a good chronological flow to the exhibits. Time periods change back and forth randomly. All the items are good, even great, but it’s hard to get a sense of development of this from that.

But the collection is worth seeing. They have a set of Parthian scale horse armor that is beautiful. I’ve seen grenade launchers before, but they have a flintlock musket that uses the butt end as a grenade launcher. And there’s a set of chain “underpants”, a wide chain thing shaped almost like a swim suit. A tab of mail goes under the groin and hooks to the other side, giving complete protection.

In the Waterloo section (right next to the Agincourt section) they have a copy of the painting of the “Charge of the Scots Greys” at Waterloo. Next to it is a video about Waterloo, and the lead-in to the video is a video of a re-enactment of the charge. It’s really neat to see the two side by side. [My photograph of the two has a rather blurred image of the video, but you can get the idea.]

There are lots of helmets with bizarre crests, including one that looks like a severed head. A twelve shot revolver, just like in the westerns. They had a gun meant to be worn strapped behind your back, so that if someone attacked you from behind, you could pull a string and shoot him. Several itty-bitty revolvers shooting itty-bitty bullets, easily carried in your pocket or purse for self-defense.

I went to the range and shot the crossbow. I did terribly, but the plastic fletchings are all messed up. William Tell would have had trouble hitting anything with these.

I had planned on a four hour visit, but I left after about three hours. I was getting bored. Sorry, Tim, but you are the inspector general for arms and armor, I’m just the inspector general for forts and fortifications. I like looking at weapons all right, but at some point all automatics based on the Army 1911 all look alike, and I get tired of seeing another dozen of them. One glaive, one halberd, one bill, and a million pikes. The armor collection was nice, but I’ve seen better in Vienna. It was worth the trip, but I was a little disappointed.

Off to find my hotel. Tom-Tom took me right there, then forgot to say which side of the street it was on. I looked left and then right. It was on the right, and I was already past the driveway, with cars behind me. I drove to where I could turn around and went back, but I must have missed a turn. So I had to start out all over, but now I knew which side of the street to look on.

Dinner tonight was a half chicken with chips, and a nice ale. Lots of ales, all over the place, and very few stouts. Fewer if you don’t count Guinness. And an alarming number of places that have American beers, even light beers, on tap.

Day 6    Sunday, Sep. 16, 2018    I meet another Marty

Today I went to Fountains Abbey, a nice old ruin. We saw it with Laurelin and Ithriliel long ago and it’s still the same. The ticket seller gave me a map and said there were two routes. The short one was quite steep, but the long one wasn’t. Ha! The steep part came after the routes had rejoined. The steep part was pretty steep, but it wasn’t too long, and there were two benches.

A very large part of the abbey church is still there, mostly intact. It’s almost too big to fall apart. And there are remains of the rest of the abbey buildings. Some are partly intact, some are just foundations. The abbey was huge, with lots of buildings, and covering a very large area. There were several families visiting today, and the smallest kids were having a lot of fun clambering over the stones. One woman sat her small daughter on a window sill then ran around to the other side to pull her down.

It was very nice, but I realized that there wasn’t that much to see. There were no traces of medieval painting, no statuary, no funeral monuments. It was a very nice, empty, cathedral-like church. Not even any vaulting overhead, because there was no roof. (Yes, Dolores, I still go to places without roofs.)

So then I took the Yorkshire Grand Prix course to Ripon. This course is very nice, with lots of turns, including in towns, but no hills. The only really narrow road was the one to Fountains Abbey, one lane for two directions of traffic. Fortunately, I didn’t meet anyone coming or going.

The cathedral at Ripon is supposed to have one of the nicest Early English style facades. Maybe. It is somewhat plain, but with lots of windows. The inside is immense. A very wide nave, and two wide aisles. The ceiling is high and wooden, with wooden vaulting. There is no triforium, but the clerestory windows are once again large.

The aisles have stone vaulting, which is nice, but they also had the Great Northern Art Show, which was not nice. The aisles were completely lined with paintings of all sorts, completely obscuring the monuments normally found on the walls.

The transept was very nice, with some nice stained glass in the windows. There was a gorgeous rood screen, with eight large statues below, and twenty-four smaller figures above. The only three kings shown were Athelstan, Henry II, and James I. You can make what you want of that. The choir has some excellent carved wooden decoration over the seats.

On my way back to my car, I met some people with dogs. I had seen a dog like this earlier today, but thought it was a cross between a dalmatian and a setter, or something. So I asked the people what they were, and they said the dogs were Munsterlanders, a hunting dog. They said that in the USA, you have to have a hunting license to own one, which I doubt. Wikipedia doesn’t mention that. [Apparently, the breeders’ association wants to ensure that they are used as hunting dogs, and maybe strongly recommends that only hunters buy them.]

Back to the Grand Prix course and Richmond.

I had been to Richmond Castle before, too, but I had forgotten that it was right in town. In fact, the town market place is in the place of, and shape of, the outer bailey of the castle.

In the market place is a building called the Market Hall, and it is actually a market hall. Inside are lots of tables set up for small merchants, just like at a SCA event or a sci-fi convention.

The Great Keep of the castle is immense, and you can climb all the way to the top. Which I did, as inspector general of forts and fortifications. And I discovered a flaw, too. Up at the top of the stairs, just before the roof walk, was a loop-hole. What was wrong was that this loop-hole was aimed at the roof walk, not the outside. The only possible target would have been another defender’s knees.

The ground floor was the original gate into the castle, and then they moved the gate and put a very large pillar to hold up the next floor. [I wrote this because I saw a sign at the castle that said it. But online all the information is that the current gate is the only gate. Considering the appearance, I have to go with the revised story.]

The next floor up is a large room, with another large pillar in the middle. The stairs start here and go straight up inside the wall. The next floor is the great hall, without any pillars, because there are no more floors above

The stairs keep going up anyway, because how else are you going to get to the top of the tower? It was a bit of a climb, but I managed without any trouble. I put this down to my entirely skipping getting into shape for this trip. In fact, I was feeling so good after coming down to the first floor up that I checked out another small stair in the corner.

There was a sign saying “Mind Your Head” where the stairs turned. So I ducked a little. It wasn’t enough. Another sign immediately after said the same thing, so I ducked more. Still not enough. That was one seriously short staircase. And it came out on the ground floor.

The Yorkshire Grand Prix course had been fun, but now it was time for the County Durham Grand Prix course. It was almost as twisty, and it had some hills, just for more fun. And to keep you alert.

Tom-Tom took me to my hotel, and said, “Turn left and there you are” and I couldn’t see any place to turn left into. There was a sort of frontage lane between the road and the houses, and that seemed to be where I was supposed to go. I finally figured it out. The hotel was the first house on the street, and I kept not seeing it.

I asked the landlord if they would be serving food tonight. Lots of pubs do a big Sunday lunch, with roasts and the works, and nothing in the evening. That was his practice, too, but he told me of some good places not too far away. I checked them out online, and there were 4 or 5 restaurants all in a row. So I went there. I wanted to go to Crinnion’s for the mixed grill, but every table had a “reserved” sign on it, and no patrons.

So I went to the Greek restaurant for lamb chops. They were good, but not great, and the beer was Mythas, a weak Greek beer. The guy at the next table asked me what I had, and I told him, but he had trouble understanding my American accent. He leaves. I finish eating, and I leave. I get back to my inn and there’s this same guy, talking to my landlord.

His name is Paul, and he says he’s a Cockney from London. His accent didn’t sound Cockney to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with him about it. I wanted another beer to wash out the taste of the Greek beer, so I got one and spent the next hour or so talking with these two guys. Paul is a real character, just like Marty. He told us how he had once worked for Voice of America in Africa, with a guy who came in with a parrot on his shoulder, and a monkey under his arm.

The leaves are just beginning to change here. Of course, it’s getting later in the month, and I’m going further north all the time. Tomorrow I hit the northernmost point with Alnwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle.

Day 7    Monday, Sep. 17, 2018    You can’t see where I went today

My hotel last night was in Durham, so it was easy to get an early start at the cathedral. The first thing I saw after parking my car was a church. Well, it looked like a church, but the sign said “gift shop”. But I turned the corner, and it was a church, except for that corner of it, I guess.

Durham is a very friendly town. So friendly that they have a team of “pointers” who will tell you how to get to places you want to see or visit. And the town has a Market Hall like Richmond, only it’s bigger. More people, more booths, more permanent looking. The only place that isn’t friendly is the cathedral.

There’s a sign right in the doorway of the cathedral – No cameras, no digital cameras, no smartphones. No photography at all. They say they don’t want photographers invading the privacy of the worshipers. Poppycock! It’s just plain rude.

It is a beautiful cathedral, and I wish I could show you some pictures of it. But no. Big plain columns that support the roof alternate with shorter columns that support arches in the sides of the nave. These columns are spiral cut, or spotted, each pair, north and south, are different. It’s a very nice effect, but I can’t show you.

There was some nice, old-looking stained glass, and a still functioning shrine to St. Cuthbert. In case you’ve forgotten your history of Anglo-Saxon religion, Cuthbert was a monk at Lindisfarne, and then bishop. So he counts as a pretty big thing around here. There was a lot of other nice things here, too, but I normally use the pictures that I took to remind me of what I saw.

So that was probably the shortest visit to a cathedral, working or ruined, that I have ever had. I spent about fifteen minutes in the place. It’s worth seeing but not if I can’t photograph it. My memory is not so good that I can get by without a reminder or two of what I’ve seen. Especially when I’ve seen so many churches and cathedrals and they all have the same features. It’s the differences in how they do those features that make them interesting, and which require photographic memory aides.

So then I go to Alnwick Castle, which has some nice parts. There are several tower blocks sticking up here and there, and the main keep is of an unusual style, like they added on a whole lot of extra buildings behind the original medieval keep. The towers and walls are very nice and impressive. Then I went into the “State apartments” and, guess what, No Photography!

I’ve been to lots of cathedrals and churches, and I can’t think of one, except for Westminster Abbey, that didn’t allow photography. Some charged a fee, but they allowed it. I’ve been to a lot of castles, and I can’t think of one that did not allow photography inside, at least for a fee. There wasn’t even a pretense of privacy about this. And you can’t damage steel armor by taking pictures of it. They want tourists to visit, but they don’t want to do anything to make tourists feel welcome.

So, it was nice inside. I guess. My aide-memoires are missing.

I kept on going north, so far north that I passed a house flying a Scottish flag. I was on the Northumbrian Grand Prix circuit now. It’s just as twisty as the Yorkshire one, maybe more so. There were some hills but not as part of the course, thank god. But the lanes were narrow, which made it more challenging.

Finally I get to Bamburgh Castle. The last two miles are beautiful, with marvelous views of the castle every inch of the way, and no places to pull over and take a picture. I complained about this to the man watching the car park, and he told me where to get some nice pictures of the castle. I went there later, and he was right.

Bamburgh dates back to the 6^th century, and was originally British, not Anglo-Saxon. The name has changed over the centuries. An early king named it after his wife Bebba, and her name, with modifications and mispronunciations has stayed with the castle ever since. In one long hallway, they list all the different variations on the name.

The castle is still inhabited by the family, and I think I saw one of the kids coming home from school as I left. This means that it is well kept up, and impressive. And despite being family occupied, photography is allowed! Hurray!

The rooms are set up to show one aspect or another of the castle’s life and history. Each room has a sign which tells what the display represents, and also what other uses the room had over the centuries. The armor museum used to be the medieval chapel, for instance. In one room they decided to open up a small side room for a display. Opening the door exposed the line on the floor where they had stopped cleaning the old varnish off. The floor is wonderfully clean and light up to the line of the door, and then the black varnished surface appears.

The King’s Hall is big and beautiful. The ceiling is high and wooden with pieces descending from the rafters. At one end a separate side room acts as a dais. The billiard room has a table that is bigger, and in better shape, than the one I couldn’t photograph at Alnwick. A lot of really nice furnishings, too. There’s a chest whose top is carved with vines, and in the center, a pelican in its piety.

There are two pieces of tapestry copied from the Bayeux Tapestry by local women. The sign offers two explanations for the pieces, with two different dates, both in the 20h century. Shown with them are two drawings of battle scenes. There is no sign for them, and both have quotes from Virgil and some German text. The battle seems to have been post-1500, but I can’t tell how much after.

The armory is full of nice toys. Lots of pole arms of all sorts, swords, muskets, pistols, 2 crossbows, oh, just ever so many neat things. There was some armor, but not a lot.

Below stairs, on the way out, I passed through the scullery. There is a long line of sinks for washing up, as you might expect. But the first three, smallish, sinks have no drains. So, how did they empty those sinks? They’re cast iron with a porcelain coating, and they are all part of one connected section, fastened to the wall.

Finally on to my hotel, the Purdy Lodge. It looks sort of like an American style motel, stretched out along the highway. But the room is big, and has a chair and a desk. I think this is only the third place I’ve been this trip that had both.

Dinner was a venison burger, which sounded better than it was. It wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t a good venison taste to it. I sampled a couple of local beers on tap, and turned them both down. Then I saw a few bottles of another local brand from the Alnwick brewery. I had passed their store in Alnwick, and wanted to try some if I got a chance. I wanted to try the stout, but the bar didn’t have any, so I went with the brown ale. It was OK, but not great.

Tomorrow is Whitby Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey and then stopping in York. I spend two nights in York, with a whole day of Yorking planned for Wednesday.

Day 8   Tuesday, Sep. 18, 2018    Beer, Beer, Beer, and a couple of abbeys

I left Bamburgh this morning and went south through Northumberlamd, Durham, and Yorkshire to get to Whitby Abbey. It was cool, then warm, then back and forth. The only thing that didn’t change was the wind, blowing a regular gale.

Whitby is a nice ruined abbey, and Dolores would appreciate it’s rooflessness. Just about all that survives is the abbey church. There isn’t even much trace of where any other buildings may have been. Half of the church remains. The entrance is still there, then a large gap with only a bit of the north wall of the nave. From the crossing to the back of the church, a lot survives. From the crossing to the entrance only some stubs showing where the columns were.

It’s an impressively long church, with a mixture of multicolored stones. There’s only one stretch of vaulting left, but it’s nice. All of the lower arches are gothic, as are the topmost, but the middle row of arches are all romanesque or norman. Odd.

Now for the gripe. The parking lot is on the far side of the abbey from the entrance, which makes for a long walk around. There is room for a parking lot near the entrance, but that’s not where it is. And there are two ticket booths, one at the edge of the site, and one at the visitor center. I bought my ticket at the first booth, not knowing there was another one. I went to the visitor center to look for a map that didn’t come with an expensive guidebook. No such thing. Then I tried to find how to get to the abbey. I could see it, but there wasn’t any apparent way to get there. Back into the visitor center, where the ticket woman said, just go up these stairs, down the hall above, and you’re there. OK, but why not put up a sign saying that? They want to make sure everyone buys a ticket, and would rather be asked the same basic question by everyone

To offset the gripe, halfway along the walk from the parking lot is a microbrew pub, serving a very nice porter, Jet Black. Unfortunately, they don’t export it.

So, back on the road on the way to Rievaulx Abbey. I was no longer on the Grand Prix course, but on the mountain course. Two rather sharp turns, but otherwise fairly straight. Just up and down, and up and down, over and over all day.

I will get my gripe about Rievaulx out of the way first, because it was first, and because the abbey is very nice. The parking lot is a pay lot, and you have to put £5 in coins into the ticket dispenser. Who has £5 in coins on them? And the sign says, you will get your money back if you buy a ticket and visit the abbey. What the hell? I only had £2 in coins, so I put that in. It wasn’t enough, but the machine was not going to give it back, either. I went in, and the ticket guy gave me a slip to put in my car to show I had paid, and another visitor, who had change, finished up my payment, and then came inside and gave me back my £2.

Now for the good stuff. In the last few days I’ve seen abbeys at Fountains, Whitby and now Rievaulx, and this is the best of them. They are all large, but Rievaulx is the best preserved. The refectory looks like another church, it is so large. Most of the buildings are just foundations now, but there are still traces of odd things. One room has a small stair going down, making a right turn, and going up into the room behind it. I don’t know why, either.

The aisles are gone, but the whole nave is there. And in very good condition, too. The abbot’s house is only hinted at. The abbot was supposed to sleep in the dormitory with the other monks (they were Cistercian and very strict) but he was sick when he got old. So they let him have a house of his own. The door, the stairs down from the door inside, and part of the outside stairs are all that remain.

So then I went to York, and found myself back on the Grand Prix course again. But it wasn’t any fun because I was stuck behind a driver who thought 30 mph in a 60 zone was fine. And since it was a Grand Prix course, there was no place to pass him. Oh, well.

In York I found my hotel right away, and a parking place almost in front of it. But I couldn’t stop to pull into the spot on the first pass. Or the second. Or the third. I finally parked illegally and walked back to the hotel. And the landlords were out. They left a note for me, asking me to call them when I arrived.

When I first arrived in England, my phone said it could only do emergency calls. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t care, because who was I going to call? But now I had to make a call, and couldn’t. I could use wi-fi to call, and the hotel’s hub showed up on my list. I tried to guess the password, but failed. It turns out these people have a highly secure password, one that I would never have guessed.

So I decided to just wait for them to return. In the meantime, I moved the car to a legal spot across the street. It was very tight, but I got in without smashing anything. And I played guess the password and ring the doorbell. Finally the door opened, and a couple appeared. Unfortunately, they were other guests. Fortunately, the man offered to call the landlords and let them know I had arrived. I was allowed to go in and wait.

The landlords were very nice and apologized for not being there. They had emailed me twice asking when I was going to arrive, and I had replied both times. And both times my replies had bounced back as “undeliverable”. If they had gone through, it would still have been bad, because I misguessed my arrival time.

The landlords said that where I was parking was not really legal either. Instead, I should move to their side of the street, half a block up. They had a temporary permit I could use, but only for that half block. Another tight fit, but still no damage.

Dinner was a few blocks away at the Royal Oak. It was American Southern Tray: southern fried chicken (tender, tasty chicken, but tasting nothing like the south), corn bread (wheat), half an ear of corn on the cob (real, and good), and some fries. It was all right, but not twice. The beer was someone’s Best Bitter. I haven’t has English bitter since we went to England with Laurelin and Ithriliel. I remember it being very nice tasting, but this was just a decent beer. But they also had a stout, which I hadn’t noticed at first. So I had a half pint of that, and it was very good.

No driving tomorrow. The landlord says there is no parking any closer to the cathedral than where I am now. I want to see the cathedral, the city walls (and I passed a way up to them on my way to dinner), and the Viking Center. The Viking Center is a longish walk from the cathedral, but not too long. And I have all day for all of this, which means I can take breaks as I need them.

Day 9    Wednesday, Sep. 19, 2018    A very nice day.

I mentioned yesterday that my phone wasn’t working. I have now figured out why. MetroPCS, my service provider, uses the T-Mobile network, so I assumed that it would work in Europe. But apparently their contract with T-Mobile is only for North America. The help file said to check whether my network choice is set for MetroPCS or T-Mobile, but that choice doesn’t show up here.

I am looking at buying a cheap, pay-as-you-go phone for use in Europe. I passed a place called Carphone Warehouse today, and should have gone in. It’s closed now, but I can go in the morning. I can get one, maybe, at a store around the corner from me, but they won’t have trained staff to ask hard questions of. I need to know if the phone will work all over Europe, and how long the minutes I buy will last if I don’t use them right away.

It was a very nice day, today. The sun was shining for most of the day. It did rain, but only when I was in the cathedral, so no harm. York is not quite as full of old buildings as some towns, but it has its fair share. The pub I ate dinner in last night dates to the 16^th century.

My first stop today was the Jorvik Viking Center, not because I was so hot to see Vikings, but because it was the furthest from my hotel. I wanted to get the longest walk out of the way right away. And the walk wasn’t actually all that long. There was a long-ish line waiting to get in, with a guy dressed in chain and carrying a sword keeping the line organized.

The entrance is rather nice. The floor is heavy duty glass or plexiglass laid on top of part of the archaeological dig. So you can see actual foundation timbers and bits of wattle walls. Then comes the ride through the animatronic village. The figures don’t look bad, but their motion is limited and sometimes seems off. It was a reasonably accurate depiction of Viking era York.

Then came the museum part, which had some nice exhibits. There is a Viking age sock, the only one ever found in England – somewhere in Scandinavia someone is wondering where his other sock got off to. I even took a picture for Winifred of the sign showing how to knit the sock. They also had several shoes. And I got into an argument with a woman representing a wealthy Viking woman, because she had no keys on her belt. They also had a picture of a guy supposedly name Skallagrim, who had a full head of hair. Imposters!

After Jorvik, I wandered about the area. One street over was the Shambles market, a street market in two or three squares. But not in the Shambles itself, that’s too narrow for a market. It is pretty much like I remember from almost 40 years ago, a narrow street full of small shops and lots of people. There have been changes, of course. At one end of the street are three Harry Potter themed stores.

Down another street I passed The Cat Gallery, which offers “Quality Gifts for Cat Lovers” including special fudge to thank your cat sitter. Sorry Dolores, you aren’t getting any. I’ve already got your present, and I think you will prefer it to fudge.

And I turned a corner, and there is the Minster, as they call their cathedral. It is big, wide, tall. It is so big that I couldn’t find a good spot to stand to get the entire facade in one picture. It is very impressive outside. And then you go inside.

The nave is tall, with very nice vaulting overhead, and golden bosses where the groins meet. The aisles are marked off by tall arches, topped with a five-arched triforium for each main arch, and a five paneled clerestory to match. The aisles are not lined with memorials, but with a very nice blind arcade of delicate gothic arches.

In the north transept are the Five Sisters, five stained glass lancet windows 53 feet tall. There are no pictures, just varying patterns of gray. It’s very striking. At the top of the south transept is a rose window. And there’s a very large and beautiful window over the entrance. Even the chapter house has a lot of very nice stained glass.

The best is at the east end of the cathedral, the Great East Window, the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world. It is big, it is beautiful, it is impressive. It is 77 feet tall and 32 feet wide, built in the early 15^th century. The man who created it was paid £66, which was a lot of money back then.

There are some very nice altar pieces, as well. One is a large depiction of the crucifixion, with a full cast of Romans and others. Another is in three panels, but not a triptych. It shows the birth of Christ in the center, with the Magi on the left, and others on the right. It is a very nice cathedral.

They are doing a lot of work on the cathedral. The main organ is out for two years. Some corners have been turned into workrooms. The rood screen is completely hidden behind a wall while they work on it. Outside I saw a craftsman working on a stone block. I took a picture, but didn’t get the exposure right, and the block looks blank. Before I could adjust the camera, he was done and gone.

And outside they have a statue of the Roman emperor Constantine, sitting in a chair and playing with a sword. I thought this rather odd, even if he did legitimize Christianity. But a sign points out that near this spot he was proclaimed emperor. So that’s all right, I guess.

The last item on my list was to walk the city walls. I decided not to walk all the way around. It’s about 2 miles, which is possible, but the walls stand in four sections, with long gaps. There was a staircase up to the walls near my hotel, so I went up there. And then down again because it was a short section. I had to go up again at the gatehouse there. That section went along to the front of the minster, and had some very nice views.

On the first section, I looked down through a crenelation and saw a weird thing. It looks like a stone igloo. It is in the back of a bar’s beer garden, but what it is, I don’t know. Further along are some traces of the Roman walls.

On the other side of the gate tower, the rampart walk gives nice views of the cathedral every so often. There are a lot of trees in the way at times. There were some small towers, and a couple of larger ones. These were nice because I could take pictures of the outside of the walls. I wound up back by the front of the cathedral, checked my map and decided that the street level walk back to the hotel would be shorter.

I rested for a while and then went out to dinner. I had found two good restaurants across the street from each other. Both had good choices, but one had duck breast. With au gratin potatoes, and a tangy cherry sauce (with the tangy cherries), the duck was marvelous. The beer was a French beer (it was a French restaurant), and only so-so. The chocolate mousse for dessert was also very good.

Tomorrow is Beverley, for the minster, and a church; Gainsborough for the Old Hall; and Lincoln for the cathedral.

Day 10   Thursday, Sep. 20, 2018   Sunny and dry, rain, damp.

The heading says it all for today’s weather. It was sunny and nice in the morning when I went to Beverley for the two churches, and phone. On the way to Gainsborough it started to rain, sometimes hard, and didn’t stop until I was on the way to Lincoln. Tonight it was just threatening to rain.

The minster at Beverley is quite nice. The facade is covered in statues, big and small. The nave is tall, with a blind triforium, the space between the main arches and the clerestory windows is just a blind arcade. The small arches of a triforium are there, but there’s a solid wall behind them.

One section of the north aisle is lined with small arches topped with figures of musicians. There’s a similar thing at St. Mary’s church, also in Beverley. I was told there that Beverley was a big center for church music in the middle ages, so they honored their musicians in stone.

The wooden rood screen is nicely carved. Some churches have wooden screens, some have stone. And most of them are beautiful. This one is simple, almost restrained. Some are almost solid walls, but this one is like a portico, with a wall hidden behind it.

Minsters, in the old days, were something like monasteries and cathedrals in that they had a staff of monks or canons. So this one had a chapter house, where the monks/canons would meet every day to discuss official matters. In the 13^th century they raised the height of the bell tower, which became unstable and crashed. A large part of the minster was destroyed, including the chapter house. Everything else was rebuilt, but not that. However, the stairs going up to it survived, and are still there. And they are very nice, shaped like a Venetian bridge, with a lovely arcade over it.

There is a lot of nice stained glass in the minster, much of it in dark blues, and some dark reds. I didn’t even have to use the “backlight” setting on my camera to get good pictures. I’m not sure that the details are clear, but the colors are good.

Then I went to St. Mary’s church, about a half mile away. It’s only a parish church, but it’s big, too. It has a beautiful blue ceiling, with big beams holding up the roof. There is no triforium, and the clerestory windows are large.

The choir has misericords that are decorated on the bottom with figures. Many choirs have this style of misericord, I can’t identify what all the figures represent, but the carving is very good. There’s a lot more good stained glass here, too.

Then I went to Gainsborough, and it started to rain. It was still raining when I got there, and that was a problem. I had picked a nice big parking lot near the Old Hall as my GPS destination. But I couldn’t see the Hall, and didn’t want to walk around in the rain searching for it. So I asked Tom-Tom to use its own locator for the Hall as a tourist site. It wasn’t far off, and I managed to find street parking right there.

The Old Hall is a large medieval manor house, the first one I’ve seen in town, instead of way out in the country. The Great Hall is impressively large, with a high ceiling. The ceiling is note-worthy because it doesn’t have any straight beams holding it up. The roof supports are made from curved oak tree trunks, making it almost vaulted. These are still the original beams, too. But there is a bucket in the middle of the floor – there must be a leak in the shingles.

All the rooms are set up as life-sized dioramas. Tables have dishes, or food, or documents on them. There are lots of fake haunches of meat, imitation breads, and plaster cheeses. They also have dressed up mannequins to add a “human” presence.

There’s a very nice garde-robe in one passageway. The tourists are contributing to the cost of upkeep by tossing small coins at the hole. The pit under the garde-robe has been exposed to show what it looked like, and you can see quite a lot of change down there. A sign points out that every so often, the owners had to get the pits cleaned out by a gong farmer. What a job!

On to Lincoln! And an end to the rain. The cathedral is wide and tall, so much so that I had trouble finding a place where I could take a picture of the whole facade. The sky was still very overcast when I went in, and some of the pictures have a bluish cast to them, even though the stones are white or tan.

Every bay in the nave has a big arch, topped by two small arches for the triforium (each subdivided into three tinier arches), and three tall lancet windows for the clerestory. Very attracive.

The rood screen here is a massive stone structure, with light columns, and tracery, and patterns carved into the wall. There was a guy sitting on the seats at the bottom of the screen, but I took my picture anyway. After going around the back of the church, I noticed that he had left, so I took another picture.

The cathedral has monuments to Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, and of Katherine Swynford, wife of John of Gaunt. Again, there is a lot of beautiful stained glass, much of it dark.

Day 11    Friday, Sep. 21, 2018    Four churches and a funeral – isn’t that a movie?

It has gotten chillier lately, even though I am working my way south. It may have something to do with today being the first day of autumn. It was cool but sunny this morning, and windy, and the wind never died down. I wore my flat cap because it was cool out, but the wind kept trying to blow it away. If I wore the cap, it messed up my hair. If I didn’t wear the cap, the wind messed up my hair. It rained for a while, mostly while I was on the road, and then turned sunny again later in the afternoon.

My first stop today was Southwell, which I have since learned is pronounced Suthik. [Update: the BBC took a survey in Southwell about how to pronounce the name. Their choices were “South-well” or “Suh-thull”. No “Suthik”. Both choices were used.] I don’t know, either. The minster there is rather plain on the outside, with two big square towers up front and a larger square tower over the crossing. There’s a large stained glass window in the west front. It’s modern, but very nice looking.

The front half of the nave is in a older style, with big Norman arches on the floor, for the triforium, and the clerestory windows. The ceiling is wood, with massive curved timbers holding up the roof. But the rood screen is very much gothic, with carved heads built into the vaulting. And the rest of the minster is all gothic, high pointed arches, vaulted ceilings, arched clerestory, but no triforium.

There is a beautiful tomb for one of the archbishops of York. Many of them lived at least part time in the area, and six were buried here at one time. Only this one is left, and it is gorgeous. The main part of his body is done in a marble veined with red, but the top of the figure is the same marble without the red veining. It’s fabulous.

There’s a chapter house, and it is very nice, too. Many of the seats have the name of the church or office of the person who sits there. And the ceiling is beautifully vaulted, with multiple bosses.

There is also a large section of Roman painting, a piece of plaster from a Roman bath nearby. It’s maybe four feet wide and six feet tall, not intact, but you can make out some of the design.

On to Leicester for the cathedral. I had picked a car park as my destination here. I would need one, and this one was close to the cathedral. You had to have a ticket to display on your dashboard, but the first two hours were free. Very nice of them. And on my way out of town later, I saw a sign for a long term parking lot that was totally free. On the other hand, when I moved my car to see the second church, I parked in a lot where more than two hours was £9. Ouch!

I could see the steeple of the cathedral from the parking lot, so I knew I was close to it. But as I walked in its general direction, I couldn’t see it any more. I stopped in at a BBC broadcasting office and information booth. There were lots of flyers about stuff going on in Leicester, but no maps. So I walked a little bit further, and there was the steeple, but the church it was on was too small to be a cathedral. Well, no. The sign in front said it was.

Leicester is a good sized city today, and the Earls of Leicester are all over the medieval map. But Leicester only became a formal city in the 1920s. There was a bishop here in 807, but the Vikings chased him off, and that was the end of the bishopric until the 20^th century. When they decided to make Leicester a bishopric they had to find a cathedral for it. It would have been too expensive to build a new one from scratch, so they looked to promote a parish church. And the main consideration was, did your church have space enough for the bishop’s throne. The throne is 15 or 20 feet tall. St. Martin’s won, but they have now replaced the old throne with a hideous modern one. It looks like a multicolored Adirondak chair. Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it.

Because it is smaller, the columns are smaller and thinner. The arches almost reach the wooden roof. No triforium or clerestory. But some of the vaulting is painted, and there are carved figures on the corbels for the roof vaults.

They found room for the bishop’s throne, and they made room for Richard III’s tomb. He has a whole large chapel all to himself. The memorial is a large, coffin shaped block of marble or granite, with a cross cut into it, almost two-thirds of the way through. Very plain, with his name on the support base, and his royal arms. They also have a reconstruction of his crown, well, as the sign says “a faithful replica of the sort of medieval crown Richard would have worn.”

Across from the cathedral is the old guildhall, a large medieval building. It’s not much to look at outside, but the inside is nice. Lots of stuff for kids, but some interesting things for adults, too. One sign mentions that “William Wyggeston was the richest man Leicester had ever seen – his tax in 1524 was 22% of the total levy on the whole town.” He founded a hospital to help the poor. Another tidbit – goose brains were a medieval delicacy, though they didn’t give a recipe.

Then I went off to find the church of St. Mary de Castro. It is mentioned in Michelin. It appears on town maps. It has no signs pointing the way to it. I had the map in Michelin, which didn’t bother with such mundane things as street names. I had a picture of a city map, which was modernistic. All I had to do was go down this footpath, which is closed for repairs. Then I go around here, no, around here, no, maybe. I was just about to ask someone when I turned and saw the top of the church peeping out over its graveyard.

The church was nice enough, but not anything special. There were some nice stone carvings, and some decent stained glass, but I don’t really see why it warranted a star in Michelin. Maybe I’ve just seen too many churches this trip.

That may explain my meh reaction to the church in Stamford. It was supposed to have nice medieval stained glass, but most of the glass was 19^th and 20^th century. There was one nice 16^th century window and the tomb of Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth I’s chief minister. Other than that, and one other tomb of a relative of his, nothing.

The town was nice, with a number of plain late medieval buildings. A large hospital built in 1483 by William Brown, a rich merchant. There are several buildings in a row that look 15^th or 16^th century, but very plain. No half-timbered buildings at all.

If I had known more about Stamford, I would not have come. The church was a disappointment, and the old town was nice, but not outstanding. But it was pleasant enough. And I got to cheat the parking police. It was another Pay and Display lot, and the fee was £1.80 for two hours. And I had no change. There were no stores nearby to get change from, either. So I stuck an old ticket from somewhere else on my dash and hoped no one would look too closely. And no one did.

Dinner was great. Duck breast once again, and more duck this time. Served with a rice dish in red, with something else mixed in. I have seen only one pub so far that offered bitter on tap. This pub had four! I tried the local brew, and it was very nice. In fact, it was like my memory of bitter from forty years ago.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Fen churches, so that’ll be a busy day.

Day 12    Saturday, Sep. 22, 2018    Seven churches, minus two

Today was Fenchurch Day, the day I was going to visit a series of seven churches in the Fenlands of East Anglia. Dorothy Sayers wrote a Peter Wimsey mystery set in this area (The Nine Tailors), and it inspired me to come visit. I picked some churches that were mentioned in Michelin, and some others that were nearby. There are actually a whole lot of churches here. There are lots of villages, and every village has a church.

The Fen country of East Anglia is flat. Flat. Flat like North Dakota, or Manitoba. Maybe flatter. It is not quite low enough to be a tidal plain, but it still floods easily. The marshes have been drained centuries ago, and the ground is solid enough. But all of this just makes it flat.

So I set off for Walsoken and its All Saints church. Like many of the churches I saw today, the main body of the church is long, but not very tall, and it has a huge bell tower. The towers look out of scale to the churches, but some of them predate the church building. At Walpole st. Peter’s, the stone tower was attached to a wooden church which was washed away in a flood, and then rebuilt in stone.

The dimensions vary, but these are not cathedrals. Most of them have arched columns separating the nave from the side aisles, and there may be a clerestory or a blind triforium, but not both. Two have rood screens, but not of the usual size or location. Some have stained glass. They all have wooden ceilings.

All Saints has, over the west door, a carved wooden figure like the Nutcracker King, with crown and ermine cape, and on either side of him are paintings of the Solomon’s judgment. There are Norman arches in the nave, and gothic arches elsewhere. There is a lovely baptismal font, eight sided, showing the seven sacraments and the crucifixion.

West Walton St. Mary’s has a bell tower separate from the church, which looks odd. The tower is big and at least 100 feet from the church, which has no other tower. The entrance to the church is flanked by two small tower-like structures, but they are merely decorative. Inside, on a notice board, is a drawing of an artist’s reconstruction of the church as it appeared in 1290. It looks nothing like the existing church. The roof is much higher, there are side chapels making the church wider, and it has two tall but skinny towers attached to the front.

The church has a low (relatively) ceiling, and the gothic arches of the nave are wide. And between the points of the arches are round paintings. Some are rather worn, and hard to interpret, but one shows an animal, maybe a dog or a horse. There are lots of nice big windows, but no stained glass.

Walpole St. Andrew’s is no longer a functioning church, its parishioners having been merged with those of Walpole St. Peter’s. And it is no longer open, either, as the roof is in serious need of repair. This is a shame, because the expert I emailed about these churches said that this was a very good church inside. The outside is the same old big tower and low church design.

Same design for Walpole St. Peter’s, but nicer looking. It has a nicely carved stone porch. And going into the church is the original door, old, unpainted, unvarnished, but wonderfully carved. Opposite it on the north side is another original door. A nice gentleman who told me all about the church said that the doors were older than the porches.

This is one of the churches with a rood screen, and it is very odd, It stretches all the way across the church, instead of just across the front of the sanctuary. And it is at the back of the church, instead of by the sanctuary. The nice gentleman explained that it used to be in the usual place, but sometime in the past the parish moved it to the rear of the church. This effectively makes the back end of the church a lobby for the nave. It’s a very nice but simple screen.

There’s a very nice baptismal font with a steeple over it. The nice gentleman showed me four medieval panel paintings on the fence between the nave and the sanctuary. Each has three saints on it. The nice gentleman also explained why this church and many of the others don’t have much medieval stained glass. He said it was too dark, and the churches took the glass out to bring in more light. Which is a real shame, to lose that old glass like that. They had one window where they reused some of the old glass, but it wasn’t the same.

Terrington St. Clement’s was a bit different. The tall bell tower was next to the church, but not connected to it. And the church was a bit taller than most of the others. It has a nice triple paned clerestory, which is why it is taller. It was locked, but the key was available from the local news agent. I didn’t need to show any ID or give any reason why I wanted to see the church. I got two keys, a large skeleton key for the iron gate to the porch, and a huge key for the door into the church.

It was a beautiful church, with golden bosses in the wooden roof. The tall clerestory windows let in a lot of light, so it didn’t matter that I didn’t know where the light switch was. Don’t laugh. The other day I was in a church at 5 PM and the staff were leaving. The church was still open, but they turned off all the lights when they left, and it made a difference.

This church also has a fabulous baptismal font with a spire that reaches to the ceiling. I saw a font like this in another church, and they had a pulley system to raise the steeple to get access to the font. This one didn’t have anything like that, and I didn’t know how they could use the font. Then I saw the hinges on one side of the steeple. One section swings out, and, voila, a baptismal font!

In the short transept are two large paintings, facing the congregation. Both were texts. One was rather long, and I didn’t figure it out. But the other was the Lord’s Prayer. Just in case you forgot it. The pews were modern, and roomy enough for three or four people. And they had small wheels under them, so they could be moved about easily. Clever.

Then I went to Clenchwarton St. Margaret, and it was locked. So I walked around taking some pictures of the outside. And when I got back to the front, the church was open. This is Saturday and at many of these churches there were people putting out floral decorations for Sunday’s services. While I was walking around, a woman showed up to do that, and she opened the church. And she let me go inside.

I almost missed seeing her and the open door. What made me look her way was a sundial over the door. It has no markings for the hours, I guess they must have been painted on and worn off. This is a smaller church, with no side aisles. This is the second church with a rood screen. It also goes all the way across, and is at the back of the church.

I missed the last church, West Lynn St. Peter’s, because it was locked up. The pastor was also the pastor for Clenchwarton St. Margaret, and the lady there showed me where he lived. But I wasn’t spending much time in these churches, and didn’t want to disturb him for just a short visit.

Then off to find my hotel, the Berney Arms. There was no sign, just the coat of arms. So if you’re not a herald, you don’t know where you are. It’s a nice inn, with friendly staff, as all of them have been. Dinner tonight was lamb rump, which I had never heard of before, but it was very good.

Tomorrow is two castles and a ruined abbey, and rain. Can’t be helped, so I’ll live with it.

Day 13    Sunday, Sep. 23, 2018    Two Castles and an Abbey, well, sort of.

It rained today, as promised. You have to give credit to weathermen who keep their promises, even if you don’t like the result. I had a two hour drive from King’s Lynn to Orford, and it was all rain. It was all twisty roads, too. The Suffolk Grand Prix course is well in the running for the best. No hills, but lots of twists, even in towns, aided today by large puddles of water, strategically placed . The puddles were only a problem if there was oncoming traffic, otherwise I could just shift lanes. But the course wasn’t much of a challenge because I couldn’t get up enough speed to have a problem with all the curves.

Tom-Tom told me that part of my route would be on unpaved roads. I thought that meant the approach to Orford Castle, but it seems to have meant the parking lot only. I was a little disappointed at the castle to begin with. It didn’t look terribly imposing, though it was tall and not damaged.

At the entrance is the usual sign about handicapped access and it says “Some restrictions” right next to the staircase leading up to the entrance. If you are in a wheelchair, you better have some strong friends along to carry you and your wheelchair up a lot of stairs if you want to see this castle.

It doesn’t look all that big from the outside, but there’s a lot inside. There are two official floors, but there are other rooms in between them. The two official floors consist of a large round room with other rooms built into the walls around them. There are garde-robes here and there, including a two seater on the lower floor.

The chapel is easy to recognize by the arches. The other rooms are less identifiable, except as probably living space for the ranking staff. The upper hall has two small rooms, not very deep or wide, called closets on the map. That floor was once the living quarters for one of the later owners, and is now a museum for the castle and town.

It was a nice little castle, built by Henry II. It was much nicer than I thought it would be, in fact. The original curtain wall was taken down centuries ago, but the castle was left as a navigation aid, being close to the sea.

On to Colchester, famed in song and story. Well, I don’t remember the songs or the stories, but famed, anyway. I had picked a good parking lot, but had forgotten where the castle was in relation to the car park. So I walked around, had lunch, and checked a map. Oh, there was the castle, right across the street.

Before going into the castle I passed the war memorial. It was large, with Victory waving a flag on top, a female holding a dove, and a man in medieval plate armor. It also has a large plaque to honor the dead of the First World War. And another smaller one below (smaller only because there wasn’t much space for it) to honor the dead of World War Two. And another still smaller, for the same reason, to honor the dead from terrorism since WWII.

The castle is a big box, with a small tower sort of thing at one end. Inside is a museum to Colchester, from the earliest days onward. It was a prominent city for the Britons before the Romans came, and the Romans assumed it was the capital of all of Britain. They made it so, anyway. There’s a nice display of how Boudicea destroyed the city to get rid of the Romans. And a display of how they rebuilt.

They had a little video about this, and it was odd. First, there were subtitles for all the dialog, and sometimes a guy giving the dialog in sign language. Now, if you were deaf, the sign language might be useful, but if you could see the sign language you could also read the subtitles. Another strange thing was that Boudicea attacked the Romans because they had humiliated her and her daughters.

“Humiliate” is a strange euphemism for “rape”. I realize that children see these exhibits, but we don’t euphemize what celebrities and politicians do, and children read about that in the newspapers. Maybe if we pointed out that some people get really angry about rape, we might be less blasé about it.

Anyway, the castle is a castle, but most of the castle features are hidden behind the museum displays. It’s only two floors, no extra hidden rooms, and mostly just open space. Which is good for the museum, which takes up almost all the space.

There’ some pre-Roman celtic stuff, lots of Roman stuff, including some nice mosaics found nearby. They have a lot of stuff with signs saying “Touch me” so you can handle replicas of things. One is a nice mail shirt. It seems to be four-in-one, but it’s two layers thick. I’m not sure how they did that. But their modern armor maker is good.

One exposed wall of the castle is singled out as being made mostly of Roman tiles set in a herringbone pattern. They recycled the Roman tiles, and then plastered over them.

There is a Roman Sphinx holding a dead man’s head. And a couple of medieval paintings. There is a model of the castle with small windows so you can look inside at the miniature figures within. I tried to get a picture, but couldn’t get it focused right.

My last stop was the abbey ruins in Bury St. Edmunds. They are right next to the cathedral, which is convenient. The great gate into the abbey grounds is almost the only thing still left intact. It is imposing, like a gatehouse to a castle, but inside are all these gothic traceries. Everything else is reduced to low walls and the occasional tall section. But it’s nice to go through because they have made a park and garden out of it.

The hotel is fine, with a table and two chairs, a luxury for me lately. But it’s a necessity, since they don’t serve breakfast downstairs. They give you some rolls and cereals in your room, so the table is your breakfast table.

Dinner was at the Tailgate Inn. There were other good choices, but this is Sunday. Many English pubs do a “carvery” on Sunday afternoon, and then no meal in the evening. The Tailgate was not one of these, so I could get dinner there. The food was OK, but not outstanding. But the ale was very good.

Tomorrow is the cathedral here, Norwich, and Ely, which I learned today is pronounced “Eelee” and not “E-lie”.

Day 14    Monday, Sep. 24, 2018    Three cathedrals – nice, nicer, and wow! And a surprise for dinner

The rain has finally left, and so has the wind. It is cool, but it’s late September and it’s England, so what should I expect? It was sunny all day, and I managed to drive so that the sun was always in my eyes.

I started out in Bury St. Edmunds, or St. Edmundsbury. They do it both ways, and I’m not sure it makes any difference. I saw what little is left of the abbey yesterday, and today was a visit to the cathedral. Unlike the abbey, which has almost disappeared, the cathedral has actually grown in the last few decades.

The cathedral is not very tall, but it is wide. The ceiling is wooden and painted in a multicolored design. There are painted figures where the main support beams meet the stone walls. It’s very nice. The ceiling of the sanctuary is also painted, in a different style than the nave.

The arches are tall, with thin columns since there’s not as much weight to carry down. The tower is over the crossing, and the ceiling of the tower is marvelous. It’s oak, shaped as fan vaulting, and painted. It’s also very new, done in 2010. It was brought to the cathedral in pieces, and assembled and painted in place.

There is a beautiful carved and painted baptismal font, with a spire or steeple hanging over it. It looks very delicate and gothic. One of the nicest of this style that I’ve seen.

There were some men working on the cathedral today, replacing part of the wooden underfloor beneath the tile floor of the nave. There were also some signs indicating that certain parts had been added to the cathedral within the last 10 or 20 years.

On to Norwich cathedral. The facade is almost all glass, filled with a huge window. Not very interesting glass, unfortunately. That’s OK, the stone more than makes up for the glass.

The nave is lined with massive columns with Norman arches, topped with another set of the same. I’m not sure it can be called a triforium, because it’s so big. There are windows below, and windows in this upper gallery, and a clerestory on top of all. Lots of light coming in.

And then there’s the ceiling. Amazing. The white columns turn into tan fan vaulting to make the ceiling, with bosses where the groins meet. And the bosses are figures of all sorts. It is a fantastic ceiling.

There is a very finely carved stone baptismal font. No steeple, but wonderful carving. There is some nice painting, and funeral monuments. The cloisters are rather nice, too.

After the cathedral I wandered through the town. Michelin said it was a nice town, and it is. But I left the guidebook in the car and only saw what I stumbled upon. Still, I went down Elm Hill, advertised on a sign as one of the nicest medieval streets in England. It was last rebuilt in the 16^th century, so it may be. Near the parking garage I used is a small survival. It’s a narrow brick building, with a modern brick support wall on one side to hold it up. But the building is obviously medieval. And it ‘s in the parking lot of some firm.

Next up was Ely cathedral. It is pronounced Eel- lee, because it use to be a major source of eels. Good a reason as any, I suppose. Another big cathedral, huge. I got a picture of it from the highway in a traffic slowdown.

Ely is a very nice town. Not only do they have a beautiful cathedral, not only do they have some nice old buildings, they also have free parking, everywhere. A grocery store offers its huge lot as a free lot as well.

As soon as you come into the cathedral, there’s a chapel to one side, not too deep, but with a high ceiling. And the ceiling is painted with different designs and colors. It’ very nice.

Then you go to the nave. The ceiling of the nave is painted with a dozen scenes, all the way down. It is simply amazing. I thought the other two cathedrals had nice ceilings, but this is the best.

The nave is wonderful, too. Norman arches with a tall triforium, similar to Norwich, and the light coming in makes the walls look blue.

At the crossing is the Octagon Tower. The nave, sanctuary, and the two transepts are joined up by four angled arches with stained glass windows above them. And overhead the tower ceiling is a star shaped design, and the vaulting makes another star around it.

And then there’s the Lady Chapel, the largest one in any church in England. It’s big enough to be a church all by itself. It has the same fan vaulting ceiling as the nave, and the walls are lined with delicate carvings.

A lot of the stained glass looks old, but the sign by the east window says most of it is 19^th and 20^th century work. I still took a lot of pictures of the glass, because they were quite nice.

This was a beautiful cathedral, the best of the day, and none of the others was shabby.

Then I went off to look for my hotel. Tom-Tom said “turn here” and I missed it. No problem, turn around and try again. I saw two turns, but one had a sign for the hotel, so I took that one. Good thing, because the other was just a footpath.

Now I’m driving down a one lane gravel road. I come to a driveway, and start to turn in when I see the name is wrong. A little further down is another driveway, but no name, and I can’t see the house. I brought along pictures of the hotels because of some confusion I had last year. So I go on the end of the road – nothing. I go back and try the unnamed driveway. Bingo! There’s the house in the picture.

It’s a nice enough room, but there’s no chair, and the wi-fi doesn’t quite reach here. I can go out to a lounge and connect, though, which is how I found my restaurant for tonight. The High Flyer (named for a famous race horse) is a big place, with a skeleton crew tonight. The main waiter was running all over the place, carving roasts at the carvery, delivering food and drinks to everyone there. The barmaid was a lot less busy, but she doubled as greeter and took my order.

I had slow roasted lamb shank. The meat literally fell off the bone. Delicious!. The girl said they didn’t have any really dark beers, just light ales, so I had a Guinness. A middle aged woman and a twenty something woman were are the next table. I thought maybe mother and daughter, but the younger one kept referring to her “brother” which she wouldn’t do if the other was her mother. I never said anything to them, nor did they speak to me.

I finished my dinner and asked for the check. The waiter said I didn’t need to pay The two women had paid my bill for me! I can’t imagine why. They had already left, so I couldn’t even thank them. I think the English are trying to beat the Irish as friendliest people in the world.

Day 15    Tuesday, Sep. 25, 2018    End of the trip, and a half day off.

Today was beautiful, warm and sunny all day. The roads were dry, and mostly straight. It was a good day to travel, and I did a lot of that. I started in Ely and then went north a bit to get to Peterborough. I was supposed to end the trip with a church in Bluntisham, but I seem to have forgotten to add it to my GPS list. So I had to skip that one. An email from its pastor said that it was normally locked, so it’s just as well I skipped it. And then a long drive to London and the airport. Most of that was on motorways, although the English motorway system is fragmented. You drive really fast until you come to a roundabout, slow to go around it, then you’re back on the motorway again, driving really fast. Repeat as needed.

Peterborough makes four cathedrals in a row with fantastic ceilings. And their ceiling is original, dating back to 1238 or so. It is made of German oak, and painted in a large variety of lozenge shapes with designs or human figures. The wood is still almost all original, and the painting has been restored, but always to the original plan.

Over the west door is a painting of Old Scarlett, a gravedigger. He lived to be 98, and remarried at 89. He bragged about having buried three ‘queens’ – Katherine of Aragon, Mary Stuart, and his first wife.

The nave is Romanesque, Norman in England, with massive columns holding up a double arched triforium, and a clerestory above that. The walls of the side aisles are lined with a blind arcade, but no big funeral monuments, though there are some plaques. The arcade is interesting because the round arches are woven together like Celtic knotwork.

There is no roodscreen, and this is the second cathedral I’ve seen this trip where the choir was placed in front of the crossing. The ceiling of the transept is also painted, in a similar pattern to the nave. The tower ceiling is a beautiful fan vaulting. The tower had to be rebuilt, because it was too heavy and making a crack in the wall “big enough for a man to go into/” The architect wanted to build the tower even taller, and add a steeple, but he was voted down.

The sanctuary ceiling is also painted, but this time in a totally different style. It is, of course, also amazingly beautiful. Unlike some of these last cathedrals, the sanctuary remains Norman, and not gothic.

There is a large contraption in the ambulatory. It is a clock with no face. The earliest parts seem to date from about 1450, and additions and improvements were made over the centuries, but no one added a face. It strikes a bell every half hour to tell the monks when to pray. It was still in use in 1950. when it was replaced by a more modern clock. But it has been restored and still works.

Katherine of Aragon is buried next to the north side of the sanctuary, and Mary Stuart had been buried on the south side of the sanctuary until her son had her moved to Westminster Abbey. Katherine’s grave is a simple slab on the floor, with her title in golden letters above it: Katherine, Queen of England. The original tomb was destroyed during the Civil War, but her body was not disturbed. The crest on her arms shows a pomegranate, so people still leave pomegranates at her tomb. There were eight today.

A very beautiful cathedral, and a nice way to end the vacation.

I drove down to London, returned the car without any drama. Aside from the bent wheel, it had been an accident free trip. Well, I did brush the side mirror against a warning sign, but I was able to scrub the paint off, so it doesn’t count. Though there were some moments, mainly navigating unfamiliar roundabouts, when I was close to a major crash. But all’s well that ends well, as the man said.

I am staying at the Ibis London Heathrow Hotel. I have to be specific, because there’s another Ibis hotel at the airport, which makes for confusion with the shuttle buses. Check-in was easy, although they still think I have two rooms. There was a computer glitch when I made the reservation in July, and I had to talk to a very nice lady to get it cleared up. She did, and said she’d put her name on the ticket to make sure any questions would be handled by her.

I have only paid for one room, at any rate. The room is standard modern hotel. Big enough, nice enough, decent bathroom. There’s a nice long counter/table to type on. And a chair. The chair looks like a thrift shop reject. It is cheap plastic, with raw edges, and it is not very comfortable. Ibis is a large corporation, and could afford to spend another couple of bucks to give their customers a better chair. Especially at the rates they charge.

Late breaking news: I was just about to go down to dinner when I got an email from Ibis. “The number of bank card left in guarantee during your reservation is not in accordance. By consequence your reservation has been cancelled. We invite you to make a new reservation if you wish to keep your stay.” I guess this means they finally cancelled the second room.

Later: Yes, they had had since July to fix their books, and only cleared it up now. The reception staff are very friendly and helpful, despite having to work on the floor instead of behind a counter or desk. The restaurant looked more like a cafeteria than a hotel restaurant. But the food was good, and so was the service. I had the slow cooked lamb shank again, because it was the best item on the menu. And it was just as good as last night’s one. No, that’s not true. Last night’s one was free.

So, I’m up early to catch my flight. I should be home by late afternoon or early evening tomorrow. It’s been a good vacation. I did get a little tired of churches after a while. I should have put more castles in, I guess. Or at least balanced them out better. But I visited some nice towns, and talked to some nice people.

Two things I missed. No one wanted my photograph. First time that has happened in years. I don’t know whether to be happy, or disappointed. Such is fame. The other thing is cats. I saw only one cat the whole trip. It was a long-haired black and white cat, sitting up alongside the road. I wanted a picture of him, but there was another car behind me, and no place to pull off. One cat, that’s all.