What We Did on Our Summer Vacation: England and Scotland

We were in England, Scotland and Ireland for two weeks in July, managed to drive on the left side of the road, saw many historic sites, very beautiful landscapes, spent too much time in the car, and have a long list of things to go back for in all three countries.

ENGLAND and SCOTLAND

In Search of...

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. These two Oxford dons were two of Kathy's favorite writers. They hung out together, with other Oxford lads, in a pub known informally as "the Bird and Baby." This circle of friends called themselves the Inklings, and when they weren't in their favorite pub for a morning pint, used to read their writings to each other in C.S. Lewis's rooms in Magdelen College, Oxford. So with much effort we located their secret pub hangout -- we drove by it on the main street that goes through the University. It's called "The Eagle and Child," and after sightseeing in the University until an acceptable hour for a pint came, had lunch in the Inklings former hangout. Kathy's first English fish and chips with a pint of the house bitter.



In Search of...
The ancient Celts. They left a lot of rocks behind. Big rocks. "In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing... " from the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.

Drove to Avebury in order to see the stone circle. we knew the circle would be bigger than Stonehenge, but we didn't imagine it would be 14-times bigger. We also didn't know it was part of a complex of prehistoric monuments. On the way to Avebury, we passed Silbury Hill. It covers 5.5 acres and is 130-ft high. Its purpose is unknown, but antler picks were found that date to 2400 B.C. Nearby is the Long Barrow, one of the largest prehistoric grave mounds in Europe.

Two roads intersect at the middle of the Avebury stone circle. Each road has two causeways for crossing the ditch that circles the stone circle. (The ditch is 30-feet deep at its deepest.) The dirt from the ditch was used to make a circular hill surrounding the ditch. A small village lies at the intersection of the two roads. It is completely surrounded by the stone circle, and includes a haunted Inn and a 17th-century Chapel. The chapel is the only Christian church within a prehistoric stone circle.

The stones are not as big as at Stonehenge, but they are big enough to weigh from 10 to 100 tons. It was also interesting to find smaller stone circles inside the larger one. It was nice to be able to touch the stones.

Just outside of the stone circle is a small church that is more than 1000-years old. It has a rood loft that survived the Reformation by being hidden behind plaster.

We drove to Stonehenge, which is more compact than we expected. From some angles, very little light shines through the stones. Note the small figure of a person at the right in the picture of Stonehenge below.

We stayed in Amesbury at a nice Bed and Breakfast. Actually, I think it was just a nice home with a spare bedroom. We had a traditional English Breakfast of back-bacon, sausage, a fried egg, and toast.

In Search of...
Arthur and Guinevere. OK, this one's more ephemeral. Let's say we were in search of the legend of King Arthur, the guy who brought peace to Britain, pulled the sword from the stone and inspired a Broadway musical with lots of "knights skipping through the castle." (Such is Richard's assessment of the musical Camelot.)

Tintagel

One of several places that claim to be the birthplace of King Arthur is Tintagel. It is a beautiful setting on the Cornish coast. The cliffs have caves in them, and one of them is known as Merlin's Cave. This is where, according to one legend, Merlin lived while tutoring the boy Arthur. In another version of the legend, Merlin found Arthur washed ashore in the cave below the castle.

It was claimed by Geoffrey of Monmouth in History of the Kings of Britain written around 1136 that the castle at Tintagel was where King Uther Pendragon seduced Queen Igraine of Cornwall, while her husband, Gorlois, was under siege elsewhere. The movie “Excalibur” has a scene where Merlin summons the “breath of the dragon”, on which Uther rides across the inlet from one hill top to the other where the castle is. The dramatic landscape begs for a bridge or “breath of the dragon” to reduce the substantial hike up and down the hills to a short ride.

In Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan und Isolde, the castle's main role is as the chief castle of King Mark of Cornwall, who was the uncle of Sir Tristan and husband of Isolde. The two fall in love after mistakingly drinking a love potion, and are forced to hide their love from Mark for the rest of their lives. Gottfried's version of the legend is the first to exalt love as supreme, regardless of social consequences and the sinful nature of Tristan and Isolde's adultery

Such legends are powerful stuff. In 1233, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, built a castle here due to the Arthurian legends that were associated with the area and because it was seen as the traditional place for Cornish kings. He was not of Cornish birth, being the younger brother of the Plantagenet King Henry III, but was quite successful in winning over his subjects through cunning use of the legends. He was such a skilled politician that he campaigned for Holy Roman Emperor. He almost made it. In 1257 Richard was crowned German King ( officially King of the Romans, i.e., emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire) by the pope Alexander IV in Aachen. Such is the power of legends, and being in Tintagel made a far greater impression on me than I expected. The feeling was something similar to being in Rome, with all of its historical significance.

Glastonbury

One of several places that claim to be Avalon, the final resting place of King Arthur, is Glastonbury. Before the surrounding wetlands were drained, the hill of Glastonbury Tor looked like an island.

But Glastonbury is associated as much with the Grail legend as with Avalon. The legend starts back in first years a.d. Joseph of Arimathea was a tin merchant who frequently traveled to England. On one of his trips, he took his great-nephew Jesus with him. When Jesus was crucified, Joseph use the cup of the last supper to catch the blood from the side of Jesus, and then he donated his own tomb for Jesus's burial. Thirty years later, he took the cup to Glastonbury. When he arrived, he planted his walking stick in the ground. It then took root, and sprouted into the Glastonbury Thorn, which blooms twice every year at Easter and Christmas. He then built the first church in England to house the cup, the Holy Grail.

In 1191, the monks at the Abbey claimed to find a buried oak trunk with two skeletons. On the trunk was a lead cross with the inscription, "Here lies interred the famous King Arthur on the Isle of Avalon". The second skeleton was said to be Guenevere's. In 1287, King Edward I had a tomb created in the Abbey church, and the remains of Arthur and Guenevere were reburied.

By the fourteenth century, only Westminster Abbey was richer than Glastonbury. So, in 1539, after Henry VIII became head of the church, the Abbey was stripped of its valuables, and in the following years the stones were used in the construction of other buildings in town. Today, the Abbey is a beautiful ruin. The ruins are more appropriate for my tastes. Too much history distracts from the much more interesting legends.

In search of...

ghosts, a good sermon and centuries of history in York.

One of several places that Richard could live in is York. It has a nice mixture of ancient and medieval history, the oldest part of town is pedestrian-friendly, and it's a fun College Town with many ghost stories. The York Minster has good examples of the ancient and medieval history. The church has a central tower that weighs 16,000 tons. In the 1960s cracks were forming in the walls, and it was discovered that the tower was falling. So the foundations were excavated, and the problem was fixed. In the process, the foundations of a roman legionary fortress were found. People tell of seeing the ghost of a roman soldier walking in front of the church, but only the top half of the ghost is above the ground, as if the ghost were walking on the level of the ancient fortress. In 306 a.d. the Emperor Constantine was at the foreign outpost when he learned of the death of his father (Emperor Constantius), and was proclaimed emperor of Rome.

Also in the crypt were found the foundations of the previous Anglo-Saxon and Norman churches. The present church was begun in 1220. The north transept, with the lancet windows called the Five Sisters, and the south transept, with the Rose Window, were completed first. The choir has the Great East Window, which is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world.

We stayed for Evensong, in order to hear the boys' choir. It was held in the choir, with its beautiful wooden stalls. The singing was also beautiful, of course. The choir is as big as some parish churches. What we didn't expect was to hear a sermon, and a good one it was. The preacher was criticizing a statement made by “my Lord Carlisle,” (an elderly member of the House of Lords) who said something about the recent flooding being God's punishment for “declining moral standards”. The vicar explained how that made God out to be a monster, and how it was as bad as those Muslims who blame Hurricane Katrina on God's vengeance for declining moral standards in America, or Jerry Falwell when he attributed the September 11 terrorist attacks to gays and feminists in America. He made the point that if God works on this Earth, then he works through humans, through their compassionate reponses, not through natural disasters to punish a society through its poorest citizens. He finished by asking the rhetorical question: “Why don't more preachers speak out against such statements?” Good question. We were astonished to hear such reasoned common sense in a sermon.

We ate well in York. For lunch we went to a Carvery, a restaurant serving roast beef, pork, or lamb with a selection of traditional side dishes. All the different meats looked juicy, and the Yorkshire Pudding was very light and fluffy. We had a nice dinner at a place called Cafe Concerto, across from the Minster. Richard had a Frittata, with its light egg base and nice vegetables and spices and cheese. Kathy had Mediterranean vegetables and, for dessert, cinnamon-raspberry-almond cake.

We walked the old walls, and took a tour of the museum.

Scotland
Only Edinburgh actually, where we only had a few hours, but Kathy was too fascinated by the tartan weaving mill next to the Edinburgh castle entrance to visit the castle itself. We arrived around lunchtime, had a very tasty lunch in a small, quirky kind of place called "Ecce Vino," (behold the wine), on a sloping side street between the train station and the Royal Mile. Then Kathy had to seek out a shop specializing in funky, handmade knitwear on the Royal Mile: Ragamuffin. Riotous colors covered the walls. Knit and felted sweaters, hats and scarves were stacked everywhere, most locally made. Didn't buy anything, but it counted toward the inspiration storehouse in the wannabe fiber artist's head. So we made our way toward the castle, but Kathy was distracted by the weaving mill churning out tartans, where you could watch the machines in operation. Tartans by the hundreds were sold in wool or synthetic blends as well as ready-made blankets, shirts, hats, kilts, you name it. Mannequins in kilts from throughout history displayed the history of Scottish dress, accompanied by a taped narration. Close by, one could be photographed wearing traditional dress. At the time we visited, one of the weaving machines was turning out the Scottish National Rugby Team's tartan by the foot before our eyes. An attendant kept full bobbins loaded into the shuttles, and we could see the metal "cards" that determined which harnesses rose to form the sheds while the shuttle arms swung violently in and out. We couldn't see the shuttles, they were moving so fast. Then we watched a guy operating a warping machine. Behind him was a massive bank of yarn cones all threaded through a piece of a rigid heddle, mounted ahead of the warping frame, in sequence so as to form half of a symmetric red, black and yellow pattern. The worker pushed a button to start a large cylindrical warping frame turning, and stopped it after a certain number of turns. Then he turned the rigid heddle upside down, reversing the color order, and rotated the frame some more turns. His scissors snipped all the threads as one and he tucked the cut ends behind the wound warp with a practiced turn of the wrist, turned the heddle again and attached the threads for the next section of warp, ready to start again. Fascinating. The trick of getting the warp threads into the loom was one I very much wanted to see. Another good inspirational stop.

But far be it from us not to visit a historical building when so many present themselves. We did make it to St. Giles Cathedral, full of banners witness to the proud, warlike Scots' service in many world conflicts on behalf of the British Crown. This Church is home to the Thistle Chapel, built in 1911 with exclusively Scottish materials. We saw the royal seat, used by the Queen when she inducts a new member of the Order of the Thistle (the order dates back to 1687). Fascinating were the profusion of plaques of coats of arms for the royalty and nobility who had occupied the designated seats in the chapel over the time of its existence . A dignified gentleman was answering questions for visitors, and he pointed out that the coat of arms of the United Kingdom displayed in front of the monarch's seat, as one looks at it, had the Scottish unicorn on the left and the English lion on the right, because the monarch is here as Queen of Scotland first. In England the two animals would be reversed. In addition, the red Scottish lion rampant appears in two quarters of the shield as well as on top of the crest. All those details bound up in the heraldry of English royalty are fascinating to me, symbols of an old-fashioned system though they are. Maybe it appeals to me because these people are very aware of their origins and can proclaim it in symbols, while this humble American hardly even knows where in France, Ireland, England, and Germany her ancestors came from.

The mystique of English history and legend has a pull, I believe, for these two Anglo-Americans, because it is in part the history and legend of our origins. The legends and stories which inspire so, inspire us because we can read them in English. The German and Scandinavian legends were not as available to us in book form when we were at the impressionable age when the Arthur stories took hold of us. When I was a kid, my grandmother's collection of children's books included Greek mythology and the Arthur legends. That's what I read when I visited her. My father had a Classics Illustrated comic book of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Richard says that the Parzival story by a German author, Wolfram von Eschenbach, was particularly inspiring for him. Even though the story was interpreted by a German, the story of Parzival references the court and knights of King Arthur. The Irish (and Welsh) legends of Arthur and all the fairy stories of those two countries were either co-opted by the medieval English authors, or not a part of our awareness when we were young. They are no less interesting for all that, though.

Travel hints
Tip 1: If you're going to England and planning on visiting many famous historic sites and monuments, most of which are managed by English Heritage, it pays to get a membership. With it you get free parking, and free admission to many, many historical sites throughout England. It pays for itself if you visit seven sites or more, which is easy to do.

http://www.britishheritagepass.com/Welcome

Accommodation tip: Make reservations as you go for Bed and Breakfasts through any town's Tourist Information office. Generally we stopped in the afternoon in a town in which we were sightseeing and made a reservation for where we thought we could drive to that evening. We have heard that you can just walk right up to a B&B, designated in England by a red and white rose symbol and in Ireland by a green shamrock, and get a room for the night, but then you wouldn't know the rates ahead of time, and might have to drive a while before coming to the next possibility. By reserving through the tourist information office you get a range of options according to the price you're willing to pay. We paid around €35 per person per night. If you require more than one room, it's definitely a good idea to book ahead during the high season June through August. We were advised that less crowded times to visit are April or September.

Tip 3: When a good bakery is hard to find, and you just want a good cup of coffee or tea and a pastry to relax with, the chain Costa Coffee is easy to find both in Ireland and in the UK. Expect a wide variety of coffee drinks, baked goods, and possibly sarnies (sandwiches). In some English towns the level of industrialization is such that no more traditional bakery exists, or the ones that do offer (probably canned) strawberry pie topping on a cream puff as a substitute for a scone with jam and cream and use artificially colored cherry bits in their "scones." Sad. I normally avoid chains (esp. Starbucks) and make snide remarks ("We don't have to worry about starving") when I see a Pizza Hut or KFC billboard in a European train station, but sometimes, when you're exhausted at the end of a two week vacation and have only enough energy to see a movie and get a coffee afterwards, you want something dependable.

That was our first week of vacation. The second week, in Ireland, we spent with Richard's sister Katie and his mother Sharon. Katie wrote a previously posted description of our week in Ireland (see the August archive).