The Fast and Slow of the M1

Today was a driving day as we travelled from York back to our point of origin, London. While for the first hours, the traffic moved at a fairly brisk pace, as we drove closer to the M25, the ring road around London, we encountered stop-and-go traffic caused by an accident. (This might be an appropriate point at which to note that for those of us who think gasoline is expensive in the States, we paid about $8.00 per gallon while in Britain.) We finally arrived at our bed and breakfast, The Forest, around 2:30, and we were greeted by our hosts with slices of fresh spice cake with hot tea, which we enjoyed in the "summerhouse," an outdoor room that looked out onto the Tilbury Forest, a government-owned park that could not have been more beautiful. We had thought about taking a walk in the forest after our tea, but the rain began and did not abate for the remainder of the evening. And so we settled into our room and enjoyed beautiful views and the sound of the falling rain as we read and recuperated from our busy trip. The location was nothing short of idyllic.

Our hosts recommended a nearby pub for our dinner, and so about 6:30, we headed to the Royal Oak Inn, a quick drive up the road into the village of Horsham. We knew we were going to like the place when we opened the door to a beautiful black lab sleeping in front of the fireplace. We were the only tourists, but we felt at home among the locals in this homey pub with its low ceilings (Michael bumped his head before remembering to duck when passing between rooms.) and candlelit tables. Michael enjoyed fish cakes with the standard chips and peas, and I indulged in one of the specials, the fisherman's pie, which included several kinds of fish, squid, and shrimp covered with mashed potatoes and cheese. It was wonderful, and the perfect meal for a cold, rainy, and windy night. Had it not been for the green-leafed trees just outside the window, one would have guessed that it was November, not July. Fully satisfied, we returned to our bed and breakfast for a night's sleep before our morning departure. We very much enjoyed our final day in London, though it was more relaxing than adventurous. After so many wonderful adventures during our trip, it was the perfect opportunity to rest and reflect before returning home.

England's Second City

It was a pleasant feeling to awake and know that we did not have to get into the car today. Instead, we took the leisurely riverside walk from our bed and breakfast into York for more touring. Because of the immense amounts of rain in England this summer, the River Ouse has overflowed its banks, making it a bit more of a precarious trip to the city center than we had anticipated. Once at the walls of the city, we walked atop them for a mile skirting the western side of the city on our way to the Castle Museum. The museum houses not art or archaelogical treasures, but items of everyday life from roughly the seventeenth century to the present. Though organized in a somewhat haphazard fashion, the collection contained interesting tidbits realting to furniture, appliances, cleaning, bathing, cooking, fashion, and even warfare. Often, the letters or diaries of the items' original owners were placed alongside the exhibits to add more of a human context to the collection. I found the displays of "family rooms" throughout the centuries to be quite interesting, and these displays helped me to imagine characters from English novels in their "natural" habitats. Another unique part of the museum was the recreated Victorian street, which was a cobblestone lane filled with shops, wagons, carriages, and even homes. Some of the museum staff were actually in costume to lend a more authentic feel to the gaslit street. It was a bit "Disneyesque," but I enjoyed it noentheless. Though these displays might seem trivial when ompared to some of the masterpieces and relics we have seen on our travels through England, this museum is more of a tribute to everyday life, and we could see why it was highly recommended in our guide books.

After lunch and more exploratrion of the city, including the beautiful Holy Trinity Church with its uneven floor and quirky post-Reformation styled interior that included pew boxes, we made our way to the National Railway Museum. Located in a former roundhouse and workshop of the National Rail Service, the museum houses many trains, old and new, including the beautiful teal, steam -powered Mallard, which in the 1930s set a speed record of 126 miles per hour. We also saw a demonstration of the roundhouse's turntable in use and the interiors of British passneger trains from different eras. The highlight of the museum for me was viewing the various interiors of the royal trains, the "palaces on wheels" that have transported monarchs through the UK since Queen Victoria's time. With their sycamore, mahogany and pweter paneled walls, the living rooms were sumptuous, and the bathrooms were larger than the ones we have in our home.

Upon leaving the Railway Museum, we were ready for a break, and we walked back into the heart of York to the Royal Oak pub. The rain poured outside as we sat on our padded bench, and after relaxing for a time and seeing the meals enjoyed by other patrons, we decided to order dinner. Michael had the very British beef and Yorkshire pudding, which seemed an appropriate meal given the city, and I decided to go British as well with my "bangers and mash," which is sausages with mashed potatoes. Well, I must say that I was not completely authentic in my choice as I did choose the vegatarian sausage, but I was glad that I did as it was really delicious. Both meals came with plenty of vegetables, and we certianly ate our fill. I must say, Michael and I have really enjoyed the pubs in England. With their padded benches and chairs, they are usually quite comfortable, not at all stuffy or rushed, and the food has been unpretentious and surprisingly good. The less commercialized establishments filled with locals have been consistently good choices, and the menus have been more varied than I would have expected. We will hope for more of the same in Crawley, just south of London, where we will spend the night before catching our return flight home form Gatwick.

In Bronte Country

Unfortunately, the rain was falling with determination as we ventured out, but we forged back into the moors nonetheless. After a brief hike to the Bronte Falls and a last look at the countryside in what was appropriately cool, foggy, and wet weather, we ducked into the warmth of the Bronte Parsonage. Though the Austen’s home in Chawton was well done, this presentation of the Brontes’ home and life were outstanding. Almost all of the furniture in the house was owned and used by the Brontes, which made the experience seem more authentic. The highlights of the home were as follows:

1. The dining room houses the table where the three sisters did much of their writing late into the night, and also read aloud to each other excerpts of their work to solicit feedback. The green couch on which Emily died is also there.

2. Charlotte’s old room held many treasures, including a dress, boots (tiny feet), and a shawl belonging to Charlotte, a copy of the New Testament filled with the doodling of a young Charlotte, her spectacles, and one of her very detailed drawings. Many materials drawn on by Elizabeth Gaskell in her biography of Charlotte (including the original handwritten manuscript of the biography) were also there. This was the room that provided Charlotte with her last views of this world.

3. The Exhibition Room housed Charlotte ’s trunk from when she traveled to Brussels as a young woman, her funeral veil from when her three siblings – Anne, Branwell, and Emily – all died within a year of each other, her writing desk, and a lock of her auburn hair. A cupboard painted with the heads of the twelve apostles is also part of the exhibition. Charlotte mentioned this cupboard in Jane Eyre when Jane is tending to Mr. Mason while awaiting Rochester ’s return.

Though a bit out of the way and thus beyond the reach of many visitors to England , Haworth is most definitely a trip worth making. While one can vicariously experience life on the moors through photographs or paintings (or the writings of the Brontes), neither art nor literature can do justice to their rugged yet pastoral beauty, something that can be fully appreciated only by direct experience. Heathcliff’s stormy and tempestuous personality are as if an extension of the land from whence he comes, the personified embodiment of the environment of the north moors. Though Charlotte traveled farther and more frequently than Jane Austen, I was also able to sense how the former might have felt the confining tedium of daily life pressing in upon her, and the restrictive confines of life in a small, isolated community. Even now, and certainly in the Brontes’ time, Haworth seems cut off from the rest of the world. But the Bronte home was not without its comforts, and though they experienced much hardship and death there, I can see how it would have been a peaceful and sometimes even happy life.

Below is one of the photos that we took during our morning hike:

After purchasing several items for classroom use, Michael and I visited the church to see the resting place of the entire family (except Anne, who was buried in Scarborough ). The church was dark and solemn, and we were its lone visitors. Heavy rain poured down on us as we returned to the car, cold, wet, and (at least in Catherine’s case) none too pleased with the overcast skies. In the car and with the heat on full, we headed for York , land of cathedrals and pudding.

We arrived in York in the early afternoon, and after stopping by the Bloomsbury Bed and Breakfast to deposit our luggage and park the car, we walked straight into the ancient walls of England ’s “Second City.” The name “York” traces its etymological origins to the Vikings, and York , probably more than any other city in England , has a strong Scandinavian heritage. Our first stop was Yorkminster Cathedral, the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps . We explored this massive cathedral on our own for a few minutes, but then made the regrettable mistake of going on a free guided tour, which, I might add, was worth every penny of it. Our guide was Mr. Hodgeson, an elderly gentleman who spent almost as much time trying to remember what he wanted to tell us as the did telling us. This was alternately endearing and frustrating, but as the tour progressed, the scales began to tip heavily towards the latter. Giving away his age, he shared a vivid memory that he had of a fire in the cathedral in the 1930’s. The width of the nave gives to it a lightness and brightness that most other cathedrals from this time period. Also contributing to this, no doubt, were the windows as the cathedral is home to more medieval stained glass than the rest of the cathedrals in England combined. One window is made of over 100,000 pieces of glass, mostly in muted and somber grays and whites, and another was over the size of a tennis court. As with most windows in cathedrals, these were not mere decorations, but conveyed various stories and allegories, and here our guide proved to be somewhat instructive. The amount of preserved glass in the cathedral is all the more impressive when one considers that during the Great War and World War II all of it was removed by locals and stored away so as to avoid it being damaged by German air raids. After the tour, we visited the Chapter House, an octagonal room whose walls are mostly glass, and with no center support for its towering roof, a feat that seems almost architecturally impossible.

The evening’s other activities included a tour of the city and a later dinner at a French bistro. The tour focused on the city’s walls, which date back to the Romans and then later were built on top of by medieval inhabitants. The Roman walls are visible only in small parts of the city, the medieval additions are almost entirely intact, and in fact, are the most extensive and complete set of medieval walls remaining in England. Our guide explained how the soil levels have risen throughout the centuries, and it is amazing to think how the ground level has been raised simply from the detritus of daily living. In a secluded part of the Museum Gardens , we also saw the remains of St. Mary’s Abbey. Though not as old as St. Augustine ’s Abbey in Canterbury , this one was better preserved, still including a number of standing walls. The walk along the top of the walls afforded us good views of the Minster and of the city, and we also were able to have a look inside the towers along the walls. We tried to imagine the sentries at their posts (within shouting distance of the next post) and the archers firing through the specially designed openings in the walls. The walls certainly add to the character of York , and I am glad that the city has decided to go to the trouble and expense of maintaining them instead of destroying them as many other cities have done.

Our tour also took us into the streets of the city, including a charming, narrow street called “The Shambles,” which used to house the city’s butchers, who would display their meat on the still-remaining hooks and board called “shammels.” A unique location among the shops and tea rooms of this street is the shrine of Saint Margaret, who was pressed to death during the reign of Elizabeth I for refusing to give up her Catholic faith. The shrine is located in the saint’s former home, which was located on this street because of her husband’s occupation as a butcher. We also saw the oldest homes in York , which date back to 1480. Upon the completion of the tour, we ate a very late dinner at a French-style café before making a late return to our lodgings. With nine rooms, it was the largest in which we stayed during our trip.

From the Midlands to the Moors

After a breakfast that included fresh berries, cherries, a wonderful "Linda McCartney" vegetarian sausages, we started the day's touring in Stratford at the Shakespeare exhibition and Shakespeare's birthplace. Anxious to see Shakespeare's original home, I was tempted to rush through the exhibition, but there were a few interesting pieces in the exhibition. One was the original register that records both the birth and death of the famous playwright. It also displayed informative family trees and and maps of Stratford as it would have been during Shakespeare's time. After passing through the exhibition, we passed through a garden before entering the home. In one of the first rooms that we entered, we walked on the oldest stone floors in the house, and the guide said it is likely that the Shakespeare's walked on those very floors. The father's workroom (He was a glover.) and the girls' bedroom were interesting, but even more noteworthy was Shakespeare's birthroom. The bed had a cradle and a pullout trundle for the smaller children, who, according to the guide, were not allowed to move out of their parents' room until they were able to prove that they could light and put out their own candles. The boys would also have to be able to climb the ladder to the attic room where they slept. The museum was careful to point out that it has welcomed many famous visitors over the years. Thomas Carlyle etched his name in the window, while John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both signed the register. Other well-known guests have included John Keats and Thomas Hardy.

Our next stops were at Hall's Croft, Nash's House, and the New Place. Hall's Croft was the home built Shakespeare's oldest and apparently favorite daughter, Susanna, and her husband John Hall, a prominent physician. It is a beautiful timber frame house with impressive furniture from that period. We spoke with a guide about why Susanna and not Shakespeare's other daughter, Judith, seemed to be the favorite. She told us that Judith married a "n'er do well" and perhaps may not have been very intelligent. (She always signed documents with a cross instead of her name, indicating that she may have been illiterate.) We also learned that Shakespeare's knowledge of medical practices likely came from his association with his son-in-law. The New Place, which is really more of a garden with the outlines of a former house, marks the location of Shakespeare's last home in Stratford. It was a very large home, built after he had become a successful playwright. This was the home at the time of his death, but unfortunately, it was torn down by a later owner who was enraged by the number of adoring admirers coming to see the home in the centuries after Shakespeare's death. Nash's Place is the home of Shakespeare's granddaughter (Susanna's daughter, Elizabeth). She was Shakespeare's last surviving descendant. The highlight of this home was seeing Shakespeare's publications throughout the centuries, from the originally published quartos, to the First Folio, to the 1986 definitive (or so says the exhibition) version of the bard's works. I was able to view of copy of Keats' annotated copy of the complete works, in which I read a handwritten poem by Keats, composed after reading King Lear. Of course, he expressed his admiration of the playwright in beautiful and flowery language.

Our final Shakespeare-related stops were just outside of Stratford at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, the family home of Shakespeare's wife, and Mary Arden's House, the home of Shakespeare's mother. Both properties were lovely, though the Hathaway Cottage had a stunning garden. The Arden Home is really a farm, and we enjoyed seeing longhorn cattle, donkeys, pigs, and birds there. We were even able to see an exhibition by the falconer.
From the Arden homestead, we hopped onto the A46and headed for the M1, the major north-south motorway in England, for out trip to Haworth. Lasting approximately three hours, it was our longest trip yet, and there were plenty of other cars and semi-trucks alongside of us. We skirted the cities of Leicester, Sheffield, and Nottingham, and we drove through portions of Sherwood Forest. This part of the country certainly has a more industrial feel to it. As we drove away from the main motorway and into Haworth, however, the landscape changed, and the sloping hills crossed with walled enclosures and dotted with goats dominated our views.

Once at our bed and breakfast, which was located on a beautiful hilltop street in the heart of the tiny town, we chatted with the owners, Philomena and David, before setting out for a short hike on the moors. We used a footpath to cross a field beside the Bronte Parsonage before taking a trail further up the hill for an expansive view of the valley below us. The scenery was phenomenal - the best of the trip so far, I think. The weather had finally turned sunny, and though a breeze was blowing, we were not chilly. On our return to the village, we enjoyed dinner at The White Lion, a restaurant/pub recommended by Philomena. It sits just across the street from The Black Bull, where Branwell Bronte used to drink on a too-regular basis. With its timbered roof, dark red velvet upholstery , and dark wood furniture, it was everything a comfortable pub should be, but with really good food. It was a lovely end to a great day.

Note: I am now a day behind with my posting, so this is actaully a hurried (And probably error-filled) post about yesterday's adventures. We are now in York, and I'll be back as soon as possible with more updates.

In Fashionable Bath

After another hearty breakfast only slightly smaller than the one Michael described in the last post, we drove to Bath, passing through several beautiful villages along the way. Our sightseeing began with a two-hour tour that was given by an older Bath native, who clearly loves his city. He led us through most of the major parts of town, and we were introduced to the details of the city's architecture as well as the persons who were instrumental in its eighteenth-century revival and buildings. The highlights of the tour were seeing the additional baths that we had not already seen yesterday when we visited the Roman baths, the Crescent, and the Circus, the latter two being the primary places for walking while displaying oneself and one's clothing as Austen describes in her novels. Of course, the guide also did a great job in pointing our the many locations in the city that are mentioned by Austen in her works, which I appreciated.

At the conclusion of the tour, Michael and I thanked the guide before going our separate ways; Michael went to find an internet cafe to post the previous entry (He also graciously authored the post last night as I needed a break.) while I visited the Jane Austen Centre on my own. Because I had already visited her home in Chawton, there were very few new Austen artifacts to see here, but the fifteen-minute introductory talk helped me to review some key information about her family, and it also added to my minimal knowledge about her life in Bath. And this was the real value of the Centre; it showed the addresses and pictures of all of her homes in Bath and focused on the details of her time there, which she ultimately did not enjoy. Perhaps because of her unhappiness, she was not productive while living here, though the city did seem to provide her with plenty of raw material for her novels. This reminded me of the great gift that Austen had to create so many varied characters and situations when she had seen so little of the world herself. In that respect, I suppose she was a bit like Dickinson, and coming here to visit her small part of the world has helped me to realize that.

Incidentally, the Jane Austen Centre had a great gift shop where I was able to buy several items to be enjoyed by both my students and me. I purchased a unique map of Bath from Austen's time, and I also found a small hardcover book called Austen's England with great pictures of houses and towns with which she is connected. Many are of places we have visited on the trip; others are places we did not get to, like Steventon, her birthplace (the house no longer stands). I also found a copy of one of her earliest works that she wrote as a teenager. I have read excerpts from her early works, but I have never seen a complete text of any of them. Another Austen tidbit I have heard from several Austen experts while in England: The new movie, Finding Jane, is "rubbish." Some have said that while it tells a good story, the story is so far from the truth as to render the movie worthless as a biographical piece. We'll have to see how it does in the American theaters.

While as a city, Bath was not a favorite of either Michael's or mine, having recently read Northanger Abbey and being a huge fan of Persuasion, I enjoyed immensely seeing the Assembly Rooms and the Pump Room as well as the Georgian streets and buildings of the city. Because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it has strict (Michael called them "draconian.") building codes so that its buildings remain architecturally consistent, and it is not at all difficult to imagine Austen's characters making their way though the crowded Pump Room, dancing in the Assembly Rooms, or strolling down Milsom Street during a day of shopping. The town is so very conscious of itself and its appearance that it is easy to see how it would inspire Austen's characters to feel the same.

Here is a photo of Bath Abbey, whose bells were vigorously ringing as our tour began at 10:30. The Roman baths are to the right :

From Bath, we pressed on into Warwickshire and to Stratford. While most of the Shakespearian sites were closing for the day as we arrived, we did squeeze in a visit to Holy Trinity Church, Shakespeare's burial place, before checking into the "Hermia" room at our bed and breakfast and having dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in town.

We are glad to have internet access tonight, but we are having difficulty getting consistent wireless access. And we hate to spend too much of the time we could be using to experience England in an internet cafe. As we will be in the tiny town of Haworth tomorrow night, I will likely not be able to post, but I'll try again from York.

Pictures

Here are some pictures from the past couple of days, and we have inserted two additional pics in our last post (Stonehenge and Bath):

Jane Austen's house in Chawton

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Salisbury Cathedral:

Saturday June 30

The day started with a quintessential British institution, one that many Brits are convinced underpinned the rise of their once global empire: the English breakfast. Catherine and I opted for the "vegetarian" version with toast, fruit, yogurt, eggs, vegetable sausage, mushrooms, broiled tomatoes, and the lynch pin of any proper English breakfast, baked beans. Yes, baked beans, the kind that most Americans would eat only with barbecue. Thus fortified and having gained confidence after a day of driving with no life-threatening injuries sustained, we set off to see a very different facet of England and its long history: its pre-historical and Roman heritage. We had high hopes, and the sites did not disappoint.

Few landmarks in the world are as instantly recognizable as our first stop, Stonehenge. Dating back some 5000 years, its precise function still remains shrouded in mystery, though it clearly had some astronomical purpose and was related to the solstices, as well as being an important religious site. Catherine and I arrived ten minutes before opening and hence before the tourists hordes had descended. We did, not, however, manage to evade the rain. Even so, the grandeur of this ancient monument was not diminished. Situated atop a hill affording stunning vistas of the Salisbury plain, our audio tour traced the steps that would have been taken by those approaching the site thousands of years ago, and what might have transpired once they arrived. The sense of awe evoked by such a structure is almost ineffable.





Our tour of pre-historic England continued with a stop at Silbury Hill, about 16 miles from Stonehenge. This man-made earth mound rises to 134 feet, making it the largest burial mound from all of pre-historic Europe. From here it was a fifteen-minute walk (by this time the rain had let up) to West Kennet Long Barrow, a religious site even older than Stonehenge. Catherine and I were able to climb into the tomb, and I am glad to report that she let me back out. (There have been times in the car when she might have decided differently.) Since one has to park on the side of the road and trek several minutes from there to get to West Kennet, this too was uncluttered with tourists. The solitude, grey skies, and chilly breeze provided an apt ambiance. Back in the car and farther up the road was our last visit from this time period, this one to Avebury. This covered hundreds of acres and included as many stones, often surrounded by grazing goats. Despite the large number of stones and its expansive coverage, this did not quite compare to the splendor of Stonehenge or, in our judgment, West Kennet.

From pre-history we travelled to ancient history, specifically to Bath, so named because of its . . . baths. The mineral hot springs (116 degrees F) led the Romans to build a complex of bath houses and temples here around 100 AD. All of this, on the far flung western edge of their territory. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Bath was a magnet for the well-heeled and affluent, and the Georgian architecture (all built in Bath limestone) shows it. We toured the ancient Roman bath house, which felt more like a Roman circus because of the unruly tourists. From there we went to the Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms. As I was in a stupefied daze for most of this, I cannot tell you what precisely was here, but judging from its name and the ubiquity of clothes in the building, I am reasonably confident that it had something to do with the history of fashion, and Catherine has confirmed this for me. Here is a part of Bath as Jane Austen would have seen it.


I am typing this on Sunday morning as Catherine tours the Jane Austen Center here in Bath. Because our laptop is not interfacing with the wireless connections at the various B&B's at which we are staying, these posts will likely become less frequent and more concise. As for the recent events in the UK, Catherine and I are mostly in the backwoods now, and will not be returning to London at all. We hope all is well on the other side of the Atlantic.