Monday 2/7/05

The reality began to set in that my week in England was drawing to a close. I missed people back home, but was not ready to leave England yet, and not just because of S's cooking and M's coffees... though it was mostly the company that I knew I'd miss. Driving around singing Elvis and John Denver songs with people is a strangely bonding experience.

For my last day, M and I went back to the market and I found a cute little black sweater for 5 pounds! ($10 US!) and looked for a CD for a certain someone... and M indulged me in my favorite thing: a double-cheeseburger (for breakfast). It's possible he was mainly sharing the guilt, as he had one too, but still sweet of him to remember I like those.

Then we drove out to a gorgeous view:


and had lunch in a converted horse-barn. Each booth had formerly been a horse's stall, and there were plackards over the tables with the horse's name, so the server knew where to bring our food. I had a steak and mushroom pie and after a week of fantastic food, I have this to say about the myth of bad english cooking: "bollocks!!!" I gained 5 lbs in a damn week! The food is phenomenal, just keep to the pubs.

We then headed out to a secluded little village called Tissington. This place is off the main highways and actually has a gate to the town, so you feel like you're driving into a private estate. The lord of the manor still lives in the great house there:


and the town is famous for it's wells. Wells were a big deal before water came in little plastic bottles, I understand. There are a lot of little wells in Tissington, and they have a festival in the spring and decorate them and someone comes and blesses them. Here's one the day we were there:


and here's what they look like, decorated, which they were not, while we were there (the images are made with flower petals):


We went into the chapel at Tissington and the strangest thing happened. In every church we were in that week, I'd taken pictures of the altars. This time, I stood at about mid-aisle and took my customary shot, and when I looked at the picture, the entire picture came out black except a cross on the alter that I hadn't even noticed.

I walked up and took a close picture with the flash on, and this is what it looked like just looking at it:


And this is a detail of the black picture. That whole alcove went black, including the stained glass window of Jesus... and the glare from the flash looks like a little glowing knight's head. I didn't mess with this second picture at ALL, except to enlarge it. That was when I saw the knight's face:


What the hell?!
The same thing happened in S's picture, and I would love to know if it also looks like there's a little knight's head in her pic, too. I didn't see that til I was editing pics this morning, and I couldn't believe my eyes.


We drove back home on a very foggy night through villages and hillsides that will meld in my mind into indistinguishable archetypical villages and hillsides, that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Sunday 2/6/05

Sunday we had a traditional, homecooked roast dinner. S. tried to keep up with the rumors about "american food portions", and we all barely survived. Here is what she made:
roast pork with brown onion gravy
Charlotte potatoes
mashed potatoes with greens (an Irish dish)
broccoli
carrots
parsnips
roasted onions
Yorkshire pudding

and a homemade apple/berry pie for dessert with freshly made custard.
And every single thing was absolutely delicious. It was one of the best meals I've ever had in my life.

The rest of the day was a great laid-back rest and we took full advantage. We watched movies and moaned about how full we were. What better way to spend a Sunday?

Saturday 2/5/05

As we walked out to get on the road to Stonehenge, this was the view from the front porch.. I am fairly certain they arranged for this:


Stonehenge was incredible... Even if it's a bit touristy, it was really cool to get to see it with my own eyes







These birds posed for us, then left, then came back and posed again:



Next stop was the prehistoric mound called Silsbury Hill (by the Salisbury Plain)... They have never found any bodies in it, so it's not a burial mound, and they can't guess what it was for, originally It's impressively large, if frustratingly mysterious...




And then we went to Avebury stone circle, which is astoundingly huge... the town is actually built among it. Imagine looking out your living room window and seeing standing stones out there... amazing.


We also had a drink in a pub with a thatched roof. In the us, we do 'quaint' for effect. In england, it comes standard. Anyway, Avebury is very scattered, has a lot of missing stones that are now replaced by markers, and there are buildings among the stones, but this is from the part of it that is fenced off:


Here's a map I found, to give you some idea of the scope of this structure. Each of the small rings in the middle is probably 30' across:


Stonehenge is all behind fences and you're not allowed to walk into it or touch it, but these other stone circles are open and you can walk right into them. They're completely amazing (I keep using that word), thinking how long they've been around and the amount of work that went into making them. It had to take something very compelling to get prehistoric people to transport stones that weigh upwards of 5 tons each, up those hills and arrange them.

Friday 2/4/05

What is it about the whatevery-9 years that bug me so much? 19, 29... depressing birthdays. This year, the spell was broken. I woke up in a bit of a funk, dressed, dragged myself to where S was at the computer and announced "I'm old and I'm fat!" She said, "yes, but you're in England." She had a point.

She had also bought me a heap of presents!! And a gorgeous birthday cake (the kind with marzipan icing that looks too pretty to eat). And sang a beautifully truncated rendition of "Happy Birthday" to me. heh Miss Hard-As-Nails sitting there singing like my little english mum. You can't be blue with that going on.

We went to Arbor Low on Friday, which is a stone circle at the top of a hill. Its stones are all laid flat. It's been there since around 2500 BC.

The first stop though, was a small chapel on the way, where Thomas Hobbs is buried. We had the good luck to arrive just after a funeral had ended and the only people left were two elderly caretakers. (I swear, I am not making this up.) Had we been there 5 minutes later, we'd have been locked out of the church. As it was, they had us in and we got a tour of the place.


These are from Friday's trip to Arbor Low, which is on a hilltop above a farm. The wind was cold as eskimo hell. The view was spectacular though, and we had the place to ourselves for most of the time we were up there.


This is the center stone:


Here's a tiny part of the view. S thought that the hill on the horizon is "Gib Hill"... you know, where they'd hang people. Cheery, eh?


The farm it's above is a working place, with cows and all. We took this pic as a shout-out to a friend of ours... the cow is acting as stand-in for her. I'm on the right, looking like I'm smiling, but actually my face is frozen in a grimace.:

Thursday 2/3/05

Thursday, we went to a farmer's market that has been in operation for 1000 years, literally, and S. and I combined forces to break a pair of earrings. After that, we were not allowed to handle anything that cost over 5 pounds. We had chocolates and Guinness for breakfast, sampled a zoo's worth of sausages at the french market (boar, duck, stag, ostrich...) and bought some french breads and cheeses for the evening. We had our Guinness in a pub that has been in operation over 200 years, in a building that was put up in the 1200's. Boggles the mind, what a fine history of alcoholism we were part of!

We took pics representational of ourselves, in the form of boots, this will do for me:

And here are M and S (M is the Star Wars boots... how he loved them!):


We also went yesterday to a town called Eyam that is over 400 years old. despite being remote, they had an outbreak of the plague in the 1660's and shut the doors of the town. Of the population of around 350, they lost well over 200 people. Sad story, but S bought the coolest lamp in a shop there!

A street in Eyam...


the church and churchyard...


inside the chapel...


this cross is from the 8th century...


and these grave markers are equally ancient...


My friends' house is so comfortable i'm ready to move in. she has a fireplace in the livingroom and a huge garden in the back... lucky bitch.
We had dinner last night at a place called 'The Gate'... wonderful atmosphere, amazing views and great food. We all came home in comas from the dumplings and all. This is the view of the entrance...

Day One - Arrival

Wednesday, Feb 2.
The flight over was just about as great as a full day of travelling can be. I flew from LA to Vegas, then straight on to Manchester. The second leg was 9 hours, 40 min, but the airline I flew with, bmi (British Midlands International) treated coach travellers like royalty, so it was all very comfortable. I had the added great luck to have a row to myself. Score!

Matt and Sharon picked me up at the Manchester airport and the next few hours are a surreal blur of Sharon driving with one hand holding a cigarette out the window with the other, and her quaint little english way of calling all the other drivers who caught her attention "twat". It would be hours before I understood another word she said. Ok, not really... I caught words here and there.

We stopped at a pub for lunch and had fish and chips by a fire. I had been awake for about 24 hours, so my memory is a little foggy. We next went to a little town called Castleton, where I was accosted by a junkshop-owner. He accosts everyone who comes in - it's sort of a running patter he does in his little store. He offered Sharon and I full body cavity searches while wearing gloves that appeared to be designed for wear during heavy labor in the arctic.

Castleton:


Then we took a drive through the Peak District (national forest), which is where much of /The Princess Bride/ was filmed. We saw "The Cliffs of Insanity" and the hill that they tumbled down while saying "as youuu wiiiiiish", among other sites. MUCH of it looked exactly like this: