None of us slept too well in the old Bootham Guest House: perhaps it was just too hot. We were up early, and watched a bit of Wimbledon round up on the telly while waiting for breakfast to be served at 8:30. On cue we showed up in the little breakfast area,and sat down to a little table packed with plates and cups and silverware and butter, etc. The very friendly lady greeted us and asked if we would all be having the full English Breakfast, to which we experimentally said Yes. Soon large plates containing baked beans, fried egg, stewed tomato and mushroom, a sausage and a piece of fried bread arrived. Woof! We ate what we could, but on the whole it was too much, and surprisingly... unappetizing. We staggered away!
To walk it off, we decided to walk the walls of city. It's about two miles, and although the wall break down sometimes, for the most part they are a well-kept pathway atop them around York. At the city gates (called "Bars") there are sometimes little shops within the wall. The one at the north gate was actually one of the finest little gift shops we'd seen anywhere in England, and there, next to the little museum where they prove that Richard III did not kill the princes in the tower, but was in fact slandered by Henry the VII, Will finally found his ROMANS. That is to say, little Roman soldier figures.
Contrary to the impression you get when arriving in York by car, that the medieval city is small, walking its walls shows you how big it actually was. When we ended we were glad to be near the railway station, for we could take refuge in the small but mighty York Model Railway Museum. Kate and I mostly sat on chairs, but the boys eagerly investigated each and every one of the many little trains running around complex dioramas. You could start them with buttons.
As we left, one of the employees asked us if we were going to see Mallard pull out. What's this, we asked: Mallard is going somewhere? Oh, yes, he says: Mallard is being moved to Shilton, near Durham, and Tornado is going to pull her there. The departure time was ten to three, and the likes of it "will never be seen again!" Mallard, he said, will probably never return to York. We were astounded the good fortune of our having seen Mallard yesterday. "I can't believe they let it outside overnight," he said. Later, a video on the Yorkshire Evening Post's website revealed what a big deal it was to railfans that the Mallard was out of the building: no wonder there had been so many people there.
From the Model Railway Museum we walked into the old city and looked for lunch. It was one of our difficult eating days: a sandwich for starving Will from a sandwich shop; McDonalds for Galen from a crowded McDonalds; pasties for Morgan and Kate from a Cornish Pasty Shop. Then we had a few last errands: some special vinegars for Aprille from a lovely shop where they sell them in bulk from large from decanters; and a visit to the Green Apple Bookshop: one of those bookshops, the ones where I feel everything has been hand-picked for me.
We got in our car and left York at about 3:00, and the railway track overpass that we came to, north of the city, was crammed with pedestrians with cameras. They were waiting for Mallard and Tornado! We were sorry we couldn't stop too, but there was simply nowhere to park.
About a half an hour out of York we realized that the special vinegars were not in the car. After racking my brain for a while I remembered that we had definitely had them before the bookstore, but perhaps not after. I might have left them in a square by a fountain Will had wanted to see. We turned around and returned to York on the impossible mission of recovering the lost present! We found our way successfully into the heart of town, traffic wasn't too bad, we turned on our mobiles, and dropped Kate at the square. She verified that the bag was not at the fountain and headed for the bookstore on foot, while we took the car in search of somewhere we could just pull over for a minute. Before we found it she was phoning from the bookstore to say it was found! We turned around and picked her up in the square seconds later--and just kept going out of town: success!
Pretty easy though long drive south through Doncaster on the A1(M), the A1 and the M1. Got lost in Chesterfield, twice this time, but made it through to Bakewell--and then it's like we know the way home. Arrived at Aprille's at 7:00 sharp, and she was a wonderful host, making a meal for us!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
National Railway Museum, York
We left Aprille's at 9:30 with just what we thought we would need for a single night. We'd made a reservation at a hotel in York, the Bootham Guest House, and we thought we'd take about three hours to get there, and three hours to drive back tomorrow.
We drove east through leafy Bakewell and on to Chesterfield: new territory for us. Chesterfield was nothing to write home about, and we managed to make a wrong turn. Soon enough though we were on the M1 northbound, which took us north to Sheffield and then on to Leeds; although we can't really say we saw those cities: just the exit for them. two cities we can't really say we saw. We stopped at a couple rest areas: had lunch on the grass at Wooley Edge, which was another one of these great Moto rest areas with a bookstore and free wifi.
We arrived in York around 1:00, and went to the National Railway Museum. Just before we got there, we could see the medieval walls of the city ahead of us, which was very exciting!
We parked in a large lot that appeared to be a former railyard, and indeed the museum itself seems to be in a former station. The first thing we saw, to Will's delight, was Mallard, the world's fastest steam engine. There was however, a bit more in this museum than we could see. After visiting many engines, and viewing a film about the Shinkansen, we roller-skated through the "Warehouse:" thousands of pieces of railway objects. We experienced railway satiation!
We walked into the old city for the rest of the day. We walked along the tops of the walls, up to the immense York Minster, and through the city's narrow tiny streets. (These streets though are packed with expensive little shops!) York Minster wanted £8 per adult to go in, so we stood just inside the door and admired the space but went no further. We lit a candle for Fletcher, and Wren. (Do all cathedrals charge you to enter now?)
After 4:00 we retrieved our car from the NRM and drove to the Bootham Guest House, on Bootham Crescent. It's about five minutes' walk outside the old city, on a street of row houses. Our instructions, emailed to us, told us to unlock the door with a code, and find an envelope inside on the table. This in turn contianed a parking pass and the key to our room: #8. We ascended the narrow stairs, up and around, floor after floor, to find this was the very top room, on a floor of its own, under the roof. Its window was a big skylight, and to Will and Galen's delight, there were separate beds for each of them.
Then we went out to look for dinner. In the old city we ate at a pub called The Hole In The Wall. Afterwards we walked around the inner town some more. Walks seem very popular here: there were ghost walks advertised, walks about the Roman history, the Viking history, and medieval history, and we saw a few groups following their costumed leaders. We also saw a memorial to the Yorkshire dead in the Boer War (quite a long list), and, across from a statue of Constantine, a column from the basilica of the original Roman headquarters here.
Back at the Guest House (we still have not met our hosts), it was a hot night. We slept with the ceiling fan on, and the skylight wide open. Oddly, we still have not met the proprietors. Presumably they will seek us out, so we can pay them. Perhaps at breakfast tomorrow.
We drove east through leafy Bakewell and on to Chesterfield: new territory for us. Chesterfield was nothing to write home about, and we managed to make a wrong turn. Soon enough though we were on the M1 northbound, which took us north to Sheffield and then on to Leeds; although we can't really say we saw those cities: just the exit for them. two cities we can't really say we saw. We stopped at a couple rest areas: had lunch on the grass at Wooley Edge, which was another one of these great Moto rest areas with a bookstore and free wifi.
We arrived in York around 1:00, and went to the National Railway Museum. Just before we got there, we could see the medieval walls of the city ahead of us, which was very exciting!
We parked in a large lot that appeared to be a former railyard, and indeed the museum itself seems to be in a former station. The first thing we saw, to Will's delight, was Mallard, the world's fastest steam engine. There was however, a bit more in this museum than we could see. After visiting many engines, and viewing a film about the Shinkansen, we roller-skated through the "Warehouse:" thousands of pieces of railway objects. We experienced railway satiation!
We walked into the old city for the rest of the day. We walked along the tops of the walls, up to the immense York Minster, and through the city's narrow tiny streets. (These streets though are packed with expensive little shops!) York Minster wanted £8 per adult to go in, so we stood just inside the door and admired the space but went no further. We lit a candle for Fletcher, and Wren. (Do all cathedrals charge you to enter now?)
After 4:00 we retrieved our car from the NRM and drove to the Bootham Guest House, on Bootham Crescent. It's about five minutes' walk outside the old city, on a street of row houses. Our instructions, emailed to us, told us to unlock the door with a code, and find an envelope inside on the table. This in turn contianed a parking pass and the key to our room: #8. We ascended the narrow stairs, up and around, floor after floor, to find this was the very top room, on a floor of its own, under the roof. Its window was a big skylight, and to Will and Galen's delight, there were separate beds for each of them.
Then we went out to look for dinner. In the old city we ate at a pub called The Hole In The Wall. Afterwards we walked around the inner town some more. Walks seem very popular here: there were ghost walks advertised, walks about the Roman history, the Viking history, and medieval history, and we saw a few groups following their costumed leaders. We also saw a memorial to the Yorkshire dead in the Boer War (quite a long list), and, across from a statue of Constantine, a column from the basilica of the original Roman headquarters here.
Back at the Guest House (we still have not met our hosts), it was a hot night. We slept with the ceiling fan on, and the skylight wide open. Oddly, we still have not met the proprietors. Presumably they will seek us out, so we can pay them. Perhaps at breakfast tomorrow.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Chatsworth
Summer Solstice! Aprille said that, on the telly this morning, the Druid element were out at Stonehenge.
We went over to the Duke of Devonshire's estate outside Bakewell today, a giant house-&-grounds called Chatsworth. The boys were a bit excited because in "Monopoly--The Derbyshire Edition" Chatsworth is the "Boardwalk" property.
We did not go in the house: the gardens alone were a couple hours of exploring. We saw greenhouses and an entire room of furniture made of topiary; the stupendous fountain powered by gravity, and the sensory garden. Two highlights were when we saw them turn on the Cascade, a long fountain of steps that stretches a couple hundred metres down a slope; and the Maze. The boys and I got lost in the maze (which was hedges), but eventually we mapped it and found our way to the centre. And out again.
We also got to see the new sundial for the gardens, unveiled by the Duke today. (At first Kate was eager to be there for the unveiling, but as the hour approached she wasn't so keen. She would like to be the duchess, but I think ordering about all the servants would get on her nerves.) Anyway, this sundial was fascinating. It was a sculpture, like a stack of intersecting cubes: different faces act as the gnomon at different times of day. There are many indices also on various faces, so you might look at the top to see the time around noon, but on the left side to see times around 8:00 or 9:00 a.m.
On the way home we stopped in Buxton to buy Will a second harmonica as a real music store, and to buy him a pair of Wellies (boots) at Millet's. The young man behind the cash register said our accents we sounded like his girlfriend's, and that she was from central Minnesota. We laughed about how that's almost Canada, and then I asked what she did. "Oh, she was working for CERN, the European Nuclear research centre, in Geneva," he said offhandedly, "but now she's doing her doctorate at Manchester."
Back at the Grange, Galen and I played Risk in the barnyard, and later he practised with Aprille's ukelele. Galen is quite in love with the ukelele. He's pretty sure he wants one, and he wants to explore playing it on his own. He's learned the C chord so far.
We went over to the Duke of Devonshire's estate outside Bakewell today, a giant house-&-grounds called Chatsworth. The boys were a bit excited because in "Monopoly--The Derbyshire Edition" Chatsworth is the "Boardwalk" property.
We did not go in the house: the gardens alone were a couple hours of exploring. We saw greenhouses and an entire room of furniture made of topiary; the stupendous fountain powered by gravity, and the sensory garden. Two highlights were when we saw them turn on the Cascade, a long fountain of steps that stretches a couple hundred metres down a slope; and the Maze. The boys and I got lost in the maze (which was hedges), but eventually we mapped it and found our way to the centre. And out again.
We also got to see the new sundial for the gardens, unveiled by the Duke today. (At first Kate was eager to be there for the unveiling, but as the hour approached she wasn't so keen. She would like to be the duchess, but I think ordering about all the servants would get on her nerves.) Anyway, this sundial was fascinating. It was a sculpture, like a stack of intersecting cubes: different faces act as the gnomon at different times of day. There are many indices also on various faces, so you might look at the top to see the time around noon, but on the left side to see times around 8:00 or 9:00 a.m.
On the way home we stopped in Buxton to buy Will a second harmonica as a real music store, and to buy him a pair of Wellies (boots) at Millet's. The young man behind the cash register said our accents we sounded like his girlfriend's, and that she was from central Minnesota. We laughed about how that's almost Canada, and then I asked what she did. "Oh, she was working for CERN, the European Nuclear research centre, in Geneva," he said offhandedly, "but now she's doing her doctorate at Manchester."
Back at the Grange, Galen and I played Risk in the barnyard, and later he practised with Aprille's ukelele. Galen is quite in love with the ukelele. He's pretty sure he wants one, and he wants to explore playing it on his own. He's learned the C chord so far.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Live Music and a Short Walk
Today was Sunday, and Aprille does a weekly bluegrass gig at the pub in Longnor called The Olde Cheshire Cheese. The ensemble is five musicians, and one of them, Steve, came over in the morning to practise with Aprille. We sat in and listened, which was delightful. Then we had lunch together and learned all sorts of interesting things about Steve. He's canoed more rivers in the Yukon and Northwest Territories than most anyone I know in Canada; and before that he was a mountaineer in Europe and Canada. He's also frequently in the US at bluegrass festivals. He'll be going over in a couple months to canoe the Yukon from Whitehorse to Dawson, and to hike the Chilkoot Trail. Yikes!
After lunch we went to the Olde Cheshire Cheese. They were playing outside, so we sat out in the sun and drank ginger beers while we listened. The pub owner came out and did a couple astounding card tricks for Galen. The card kept appearing under my drink, on on the top of the deck, or on his forehead. It turns out he is a professional magician! None of us wanted to play poker with him later.
After about an hour and half of live music, we set out on a short walk from Longnor. Galen was navigator in charge: he was the only one with a map, and the only one who looked at the map. He led us on a footpath south along the Manifold River for about a kilometre, and back on a higher, parallel track. Great job! It was, as Kate said, a home-educator's dream: your kid takes the map and decides he wants to figure it all out by himself, and does a good job. (Reading a footpath map is an interesting hybrid of topographic map and road map-type reading. There is a network of paths, but they're largely invisible on the ground except for the stiles and gates; so it's easy to stray off the path into the wrong parts of fields. We met a couple of large groups of high-school-age girls: they had backpacks, and it seemed they were on the last leg of a trip. perhaps for an outdoor pursuits class?
Back at the grange we made dinner for Aprille, and had another nice meal together.
After lunch we went to the Olde Cheshire Cheese. They were playing outside, so we sat out in the sun and drank ginger beers while we listened. The pub owner came out and did a couple astounding card tricks for Galen. The card kept appearing under my drink, on on the top of the deck, or on his forehead. It turns out he is a professional magician! None of us wanted to play poker with him later.
After about an hour and half of live music, we set out on a short walk from Longnor. Galen was navigator in charge: he was the only one with a map, and the only one who looked at the map. He led us on a footpath south along the Manifold River for about a kilometre, and back on a higher, parallel track. Great job! It was, as Kate said, a home-educator's dream: your kid takes the map and decides he wants to figure it all out by himself, and does a good job. (Reading a footpath map is an interesting hybrid of topographic map and road map-type reading. There is a network of paths, but they're largely invisible on the ground except for the stiles and gates; so it's easy to stray off the path into the wrong parts of fields. We met a couple of large groups of high-school-age girls: they had backpacks, and it seemed they were on the last leg of a trip. perhaps for an outdoor pursuits class?
Back at the grange we made dinner for Aprille, and had another nice meal together.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Road Trip
Today was our day to drive down to Aprille's house near Buxton, and we set aside the whole day for it. But It proved remarkably easy. We drove out through Windermere to roads that got progressively bigger, and led us to the M6. The M6 was a road wholly unlike England: three lanes going each way, wide enough for North American standards, with a breakdown lane every where. I'm sure traditionalists would disagree, but it was delightful.
And so fast. We were circling Manchester in just over an hour. Driving from the lake Park to teh Peak Park was like driving from Connecticut to New Jersey. We stopped on the way there at a rest area, to see what those would be like in England. There was a WH Smith bookstore, a Marks and Spencer food store, a Costa Coffee restaurant, and a computer screen showing road conditions in both directions. It put to shame the Turnpikes in the Eastern US.
We wanted to have lunch at one (for novelty), and the map showed that if we took the ring road around Manchester clockwise we would encounter another around noon. Unfortunately there was construction and the rest area must have gone by without a sign. So we wound up looking for lunch in Stockport, the suburb of Manchester to the southeast.
Stockport was choked with traffic, and it took us a long time to get to the downtown parking areas. But park we did, next to a Sainsbury's. We took the opportunity to use their toilets and buy more Polar bars (our latest craze). Then we explored by lunch. Although it was a Saturday, and a market day (all sorts of stalls set up around the historic market building), there was surprisingly little street food. I think we were looking for something that was not a sit down meal: it was sunny but cool, and we wanted to be outside, and then on our way. Galen decided to try a McDonald's, which was very busy, and Will and I found chicken tikka sandwiches at a tiny place called "Porky's Sandwitches." Kate abstained from lunch, having eaten a big breakfast when we were trying to use up the remaining food in the cottage.
Back on the road (now the very ordinary A6) we covered the distance to Buxton in about half and hour, found the parking lot at Spring Garden, and did our week's food shopping at Waitrose's. The car was absolutely stuffed as we drove on to Aprille's, the kids sitting with groceries under their feet. It was great to see Aprille, and she had made dinner for us. We settled into the cottage and Galen and Will were quite excited to see the Risk game and the Derbyshre Monopoly again.
I sat in on Aprille's nightly ukelele practice, and then, because she had a guitar handy, we played a few songs together, which was really fun. She also plays the double bass in a bluegrass band, and I have to say it's great to be accompanied with a real bass!
And so fast. We were circling Manchester in just over an hour. Driving from the lake Park to teh Peak Park was like driving from Connecticut to New Jersey. We stopped on the way there at a rest area, to see what those would be like in England. There was a WH Smith bookstore, a Marks and Spencer food store, a Costa Coffee restaurant, and a computer screen showing road conditions in both directions. It put to shame the Turnpikes in the Eastern US.
We wanted to have lunch at one (for novelty), and the map showed that if we took the ring road around Manchester clockwise we would encounter another around noon. Unfortunately there was construction and the rest area must have gone by without a sign. So we wound up looking for lunch in Stockport, the suburb of Manchester to the southeast.
Stockport was choked with traffic, and it took us a long time to get to the downtown parking areas. But park we did, next to a Sainsbury's. We took the opportunity to use their toilets and buy more Polar bars (our latest craze). Then we explored by lunch. Although it was a Saturday, and a market day (all sorts of stalls set up around the historic market building), there was surprisingly little street food. I think we were looking for something that was not a sit down meal: it was sunny but cool, and we wanted to be outside, and then on our way. Galen decided to try a McDonald's, which was very busy, and Will and I found chicken tikka sandwiches at a tiny place called "Porky's Sandwitches." Kate abstained from lunch, having eaten a big breakfast when we were trying to use up the remaining food in the cottage.
Back on the road (now the very ordinary A6) we covered the distance to Buxton in about half and hour, found the parking lot at Spring Garden, and did our week's food shopping at Waitrose's. The car was absolutely stuffed as we drove on to Aprille's, the kids sitting with groceries under their feet. It was great to see Aprille, and she had made dinner for us. We settled into the cottage and Galen and Will were quite excited to see the Risk game and the Derbyshre Monopoly again.
I sat in on Aprille's nightly ukelele practice, and then, because she had a guitar handy, we played a few songs together, which was really fun. She also plays the double bass in a bluegrass band, and I have to say it's great to be accompanied with a real bass!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Angle Tarn
I got to go off on my own today. My Father's Day treat: to go for a hike to Angle Tarn. Kate and the boys were going to have a rest day, do some packing and cleaning, and mail off our surplus stuff for home. I took the car and left for Langdale, a nearby valley, at 8:00.
At the head of Langdale, as far up it as you can drive, is a hotel called the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. There's a New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel too, about a mile below it. Both are named for Dungeon Ghyll, a stream that comes down the side of Langdale through a dark (and presumably dungeon-like) gorge. Langdale is the classic glacial U-shaped valley, and up on one rim are the crags that that are famous for climbing here, so the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel is also modestly famous as the climbers hang-out and bar. I parked in its parking lot.
(Inside the hotel is nice! High ceilings. Flowery wall paper, classy furniture. It would be fun to stay here.)
I hiked up the bottom of the U-shaped valley, which at this point is occupied by a stream called Mickelden Beck. At first it was farms with stone walls; then I passed the last stone wall and it was just green, well-cropped sheep pasture from valley wall to valley wall. It took me about an hour on a level, wide path. At one point a bridge over a small watercourse was built of big slabs of shale. The morning was heavily overcast, and still, with the cloud right at the valley rim, hiding any higher peaks. Stickle Pike, a fine tower that looked like something in Arizona, but dripping with green turf, stuck up from the north rim, and below and to its right was Glimmer Crags, a nice sweep of rock that goes up several hundred feet--but quite the approach hike to its base!
At the head of Mickleden the path divided, and you could pick between two steep routes out of the head of the valley: right or left. I went left, and began a switchback ascent of about 450 metres through the fern and grass, weaving through rock outcrops. It was one of these stairs-constructed-in-the-wilderness trails: beautiful wide stones placed in a staircase about four feet wide. It took me up a side stream called Rossett Gill, and then right up the headwall, to top out on a pass. The cloud was about 50 metres over my head now, and there below me was Angle Tarn.
Now I have to say a word about sheep, and I'll try to be restrained. They are a blight on this country. Everywhere beautiful you go, there are sheep grazing and sheep droppings. Although the water looks beautiful and clear, remember Hite's First Law of Lakeland Water: there is always a sheep above you in the watershed. The best thing England could do would be to ban sheep from the high country: from the Downs, from the Moors, from the Fells. It seems crazy to waste such valuable recreational land on animals which have so little value, which form no useful portion of the national economy, and which make all the water contaminated. There, I'm done.
Angle Tarn is a round lake, a couple hundred metres across, about the size of Crater Lake near Smithers. It's surrounded by green grass and fallen boulders, and across the back there's a cirque of stony headwalls, disappearing, at this point, up into cloud. A waterfall was chuckling away quietly on the far side, a riffle of wind moving the surface, water of indigo blue. The trail crossed the outlet stream and headed up the far side to further destinations, but this was my destination, and since it was about 11:30, so I hung out and had lunch and explored around. Unexpectedly, it was a tremendous relief to be out of sight of settled country. (I ignored the sheep.)
Those of you who know me know I have an amateur's passion for geology, and on the back of my new Harvey's British Mountain map I had both a geologic map and an explanation of the formation of the two bedrock types found in this area. There were the rhyolitic tuffs, which were formed when big volcanos poured out pyroclastic flows; and there were sandstones, formed when the volcanic lavas were eroded into shallow seas. Both types of events happened in the Ordivician, which is geologically speaking an even longer time ago than Long Ago, so both types of rock were further cooked, crushed, and metamorphosed. The sandstone was cooked into shale, and they call it 'Lakeland Green shale'; it's quarried lower down in Langdale and used for building. All the buildings in Ambleside, including our cottage, are sided in Lakeland Green Shale, for example. The tuffs are the crags on which the rockclimbing occurs here.
I spent the better part of an hour inspecting all the boulders near where I was sitting, to see what kinds they were, and glassing the outcrops above me at the back of the lake to see if I could do a little geology-by-binocular. Then I walked back up to the pass and out on a nearby height called Rossett Pike. After considerable confusion I figured out that the tuffs are much whiter from a distance, and when you get up to them they have a coarse texture like sugar that's gotten wet and has hard lumps in it. The sandstone, on the other hand, looks grey-green from a distance, but up close, where it breaks, open it is extremely fine-grained and almost black (with a hint of green). The tuffs erode to big vertical faces that look almost glassy, whereas the sandstones erode into crumbly nubbins that barely stick out of the earth at all. This occupied me for a couple happy hours in all.
At about 2:00 I started back, stopping frequently to examine rocks, and once to hang out in the shade where Rossett Gill had cut deep into its banks and three birch trees hung overhead. It had become a brutally hot day! After I'd rejoined Mickleden, the numbers of people coming up the trail increased, and I realized that it was Friday afternoon, and weekend visitors were coming in. I was particularly pleased to see a school group outfitted with backpacks and clearly intending to spend the night in the mountains, because so far that day all I'd seen was MIDDLE AGED PEOPLE (including myself). The mountains don't seem right without young people around.
Back at home I found Kate and the boys had accomplished all their tasks, PLUS a walk to the waterfront and back. We ate dinner, and completed the pack up.
At the head of Langdale, as far up it as you can drive, is a hotel called the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. There's a New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel too, about a mile below it. Both are named for Dungeon Ghyll, a stream that comes down the side of Langdale through a dark (and presumably dungeon-like) gorge. Langdale is the classic glacial U-shaped valley, and up on one rim are the crags that that are famous for climbing here, so the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel is also modestly famous as the climbers hang-out and bar. I parked in its parking lot.
(Inside the hotel is nice! High ceilings. Flowery wall paper, classy furniture. It would be fun to stay here.)
I hiked up the bottom of the U-shaped valley, which at this point is occupied by a stream called Mickelden Beck. At first it was farms with stone walls; then I passed the last stone wall and it was just green, well-cropped sheep pasture from valley wall to valley wall. It took me about an hour on a level, wide path. At one point a bridge over a small watercourse was built of big slabs of shale. The morning was heavily overcast, and still, with the cloud right at the valley rim, hiding any higher peaks. Stickle Pike, a fine tower that looked like something in Arizona, but dripping with green turf, stuck up from the north rim, and below and to its right was Glimmer Crags, a nice sweep of rock that goes up several hundred feet--but quite the approach hike to its base!
At the head of Mickleden the path divided, and you could pick between two steep routes out of the head of the valley: right or left. I went left, and began a switchback ascent of about 450 metres through the fern and grass, weaving through rock outcrops. It was one of these stairs-constructed-in-the-wilderness trails: beautiful wide stones placed in a staircase about four feet wide. It took me up a side stream called Rossett Gill, and then right up the headwall, to top out on a pass. The cloud was about 50 metres over my head now, and there below me was Angle Tarn.
Now I have to say a word about sheep, and I'll try to be restrained. They are a blight on this country. Everywhere beautiful you go, there are sheep grazing and sheep droppings. Although the water looks beautiful and clear, remember Hite's First Law of Lakeland Water: there is always a sheep above you in the watershed. The best thing England could do would be to ban sheep from the high country: from the Downs, from the Moors, from the Fells. It seems crazy to waste such valuable recreational land on animals which have so little value, which form no useful portion of the national economy, and which make all the water contaminated. There, I'm done.
Angle Tarn is a round lake, a couple hundred metres across, about the size of Crater Lake near Smithers. It's surrounded by green grass and fallen boulders, and across the back there's a cirque of stony headwalls, disappearing, at this point, up into cloud. A waterfall was chuckling away quietly on the far side, a riffle of wind moving the surface, water of indigo blue. The trail crossed the outlet stream and headed up the far side to further destinations, but this was my destination, and since it was about 11:30, so I hung out and had lunch and explored around. Unexpectedly, it was a tremendous relief to be out of sight of settled country. (I ignored the sheep.)
Those of you who know me know I have an amateur's passion for geology, and on the back of my new Harvey's British Mountain map I had both a geologic map and an explanation of the formation of the two bedrock types found in this area. There were the rhyolitic tuffs, which were formed when big volcanos poured out pyroclastic flows; and there were sandstones, formed when the volcanic lavas were eroded into shallow seas. Both types of events happened in the Ordivician, which is geologically speaking an even longer time ago than Long Ago, so both types of rock were further cooked, crushed, and metamorphosed. The sandstone was cooked into shale, and they call it 'Lakeland Green shale'; it's quarried lower down in Langdale and used for building. All the buildings in Ambleside, including our cottage, are sided in Lakeland Green Shale, for example. The tuffs are the crags on which the rockclimbing occurs here.
I spent the better part of an hour inspecting all the boulders near where I was sitting, to see what kinds they were, and glassing the outcrops above me at the back of the lake to see if I could do a little geology-by-binocular. Then I walked back up to the pass and out on a nearby height called Rossett Pike. After considerable confusion I figured out that the tuffs are much whiter from a distance, and when you get up to them they have a coarse texture like sugar that's gotten wet and has hard lumps in it. The sandstone, on the other hand, looks grey-green from a distance, but up close, where it breaks, open it is extremely fine-grained and almost black (with a hint of green). The tuffs erode to big vertical faces that look almost glassy, whereas the sandstones erode into crumbly nubbins that barely stick out of the earth at all. This occupied me for a couple happy hours in all.
At about 2:00 I started back, stopping frequently to examine rocks, and once to hang out in the shade where Rossett Gill had cut deep into its banks and three birch trees hung overhead. It had become a brutally hot day! After I'd rejoined Mickleden, the numbers of people coming up the trail increased, and I realized that it was Friday afternoon, and weekend visitors were coming in. I was particularly pleased to see a school group outfitted with backpacks and clearly intending to spend the night in the mountains, because so far that day all I'd seen was MIDDLE AGED PEOPLE (including myself). The mountains don't seem right without young people around.
Back at home I found Kate and the boys had accomplished all their tasks, PLUS a walk to the waterfront and back. We ate dinner, and completed the pack up.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Orrest Head, Allen Knot, and a Rowboat
We decided today we needed a mellow walk. The one we picked from the Crimson Short Walks, Lakes District: Great Short Walks For All The Family was "Orrest Head and Allan Knot." In brief, one goes to the nearby town of Windermere, which is in the gently rolling countryside south of the main mountain zone, and ascend to Orrest Head, a viewpoint above town. Then you walk through a patchwork of farms to Allen Knott, a hill that once had a hill fort on it. Then you walk back. Four and a half miles: two hours. Says the guide. Really, our first experience with actually using a guide.
Orrest Head was interesting: it did have great views. We get up there on a well-worn and well-marked path, and then set off down the other side into sheep fields. The only other people on Orrest Head was a Japanese tour group that had walked up from their bus, and I realized that Orrest Head itself (which did have great views) was probably as close as the tour was going to let them get to actual walking. I felt privileged.
We followed our directions and map to this ladder stile and that kissing gate; "ascend through field to through-stile then cross small enclosure noting nicely pollarded ash tree to left;" and so on. It got hot. Really hot. 25 or so. The sun baked us. Cows tried to refuse us access to their field by blocking the stile.
I have to say that the sheep dung and cow poop are really beginning to get to me. The only parts of this walk where we weren't weaving between piles of poo were when we were walking on the road. It's a complete contradiction to the National Park thing. Here you have these idyllic cottages, these scenic stone walls, these pastoral trees and streams, and throughout, even, yea, unto the highest fell, sheep and sheep dung. I thought the golfers in Westward Ho! who were playing through the obstacle course of sheep dung were tolerant, but how can outdoor enthusiasts accept the sheep droppings all over their beloved fells?
Eventually after lunch at Allen Knott, we became weary of this trek through Other People's Farms, and decided we liked the high fells better. Upon return to Windermere the boys were rewarded for their patience with ice creams, and Kate scored some good curriculum books in the WH Smiths bookstore. Then we headed back to Ambleside and our rendezvous with a rowboat. It was so hot we had to head for the lake.
At the head of Windermere, as I think I described before, there's a large marina, which is more or less in the town of Ambleside. Lots of sailboats are parked here, the streamboat calls from Bowness-on-Windermere, and you can rent rowboats. The rowboats are lined up on the shore, and they are all identical, beautiful, wooden rowboats, with four oars each, a back seat wher eyou can serendae your lover, and a name. We took Spray out for an hour.
Galen or Will would row on the aft set of oars, and Kate or I would row on the fore set, trying to match the kid in front of us. Galen had a slow steady stroke, but Will was a madman, a real turbine to keep up with. Nonetheless we did a good job of rowing all over the head of Windermere, avoided the steamer, and explored up the mouth of the River Rothay. Those not rowing got to trail their hands in the water and cool off. A little sign in the boat said "Do not stand up to change places." But we figure that could not have been intended to apply to Canadians. These rowboats were massive, far harder to tip over than a canoe. And we stand up in our canoe to change places all the time.
A military helicopter flew by, low over the water. Kate was grinning.
Home for dinner, and "In The Night Garden." Even I am beginning to be able to tell the Ninky-Nonk from the Pinky-Ponk at this point.
Orrest Head was interesting: it did have great views. We get up there on a well-worn and well-marked path, and then set off down the other side into sheep fields. The only other people on Orrest Head was a Japanese tour group that had walked up from their bus, and I realized that Orrest Head itself (which did have great views) was probably as close as the tour was going to let them get to actual walking. I felt privileged.
We followed our directions and map to this ladder stile and that kissing gate; "ascend through field to through-stile then cross small enclosure noting nicely pollarded ash tree to left;" and so on. It got hot. Really hot. 25 or so. The sun baked us. Cows tried to refuse us access to their field by blocking the stile.
I have to say that the sheep dung and cow poop are really beginning to get to me. The only parts of this walk where we weren't weaving between piles of poo were when we were walking on the road. It's a complete contradiction to the National Park thing. Here you have these idyllic cottages, these scenic stone walls, these pastoral trees and streams, and throughout, even, yea, unto the highest fell, sheep and sheep dung. I thought the golfers in Westward Ho! who were playing through the obstacle course of sheep dung were tolerant, but how can outdoor enthusiasts accept the sheep droppings all over their beloved fells?
Eventually after lunch at Allen Knott, we became weary of this trek through Other People's Farms, and decided we liked the high fells better. Upon return to Windermere the boys were rewarded for their patience with ice creams, and Kate scored some good curriculum books in the WH Smiths bookstore. Then we headed back to Ambleside and our rendezvous with a rowboat. It was so hot we had to head for the lake.
At the head of Windermere, as I think I described before, there's a large marina, which is more or less in the town of Ambleside. Lots of sailboats are parked here, the streamboat calls from Bowness-on-Windermere, and you can rent rowboats. The rowboats are lined up on the shore, and they are all identical, beautiful, wooden rowboats, with four oars each, a back seat wher eyou can serendae your lover, and a name. We took Spray out for an hour.
Galen or Will would row on the aft set of oars, and Kate or I would row on the fore set, trying to match the kid in front of us. Galen had a slow steady stroke, but Will was a madman, a real turbine to keep up with. Nonetheless we did a good job of rowing all over the head of Windermere, avoided the steamer, and explored up the mouth of the River Rothay. Those not rowing got to trail their hands in the water and cool off. A little sign in the boat said "Do not stand up to change places." But we figure that could not have been intended to apply to Canadians. These rowboats were massive, far harder to tip over than a canoe. And we stand up in our canoe to change places all the time.
A military helicopter flew by, low over the water. Kate was grinning.
Home for dinner, and "In The Night Garden." Even I am beginning to be able to tell the Ninky-Nonk from the Pinky-Ponk at this point.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Red Screes, Kate's Birthday
We decided to go for a short hike this morning, but to be back in town just after lunch for Kate to lose herself in some shopping, and for the boys and me to go on a secret errand to get her presents. Mini golf (or Crazy Golf, as they call it here) was also supposed to make an appearance in there somewhere. So we packed a simple lunch and left for Kirkstone Pass just before 10:00.
Kirkstone Pass is a pass in the high fells about 3 miles from Ambleside. The road to reach it is the usual narrow lane between two stone walls, but that seemed normal enough to us now. The road had a short notorious patch called "The Struggle" (you have to love England) where the grade is 20%, but after yesterday that hardly seemd noticeable. So soon we were in the capacious parking lot at Kirkstone Pass, well above treeline at 455 metres. (The irony here is that at our house in Smithers, this would be underground.) Grassy slopes extended in all directions, criss-crossed by stone walls. Across the road from the parking lot was the pub--because although it's a lonely pass, there's no reason for there not to be a pub!
On the west side of the pass is a mountain named Red Screes (for the red screes streaming down its sides), and the route up it is a sustained steep climb of 325 metres (or about 1000 feet) in less than a kilometre. That's basically a staircase. Wainwright describes it as "a rough ascent," and adds that, "The direct descent to Kirkstone is rough, too rough to be enjoyable." That sounded a bit much for us, so we were going to go up on the east side of the pass, a mellow ridge called St. Raven's Edge. It runs parallel to the road, and the gentle climb is about 150 metres. We thought we'd go up there and explore along its top.
But when we got out of the car, Galen was quite taken with Red Screes, and said it would be much better than the boring old ridge on the other side. (Could he have inherited some of those genes from his Dad?) He convinced Kate, and so off we set. But not up the trail: Galen cried, "Adventure calls!" and off we went, striking out overland for our own route ascending the peak. We went by boulder and grasstuft up the fall line, deviating around outcrops and finding tiny ways up through notches. We got to make decisions about what was too steep, and what could be gone up but not down, and how to think about the consequences of a fall.
When we were about one third of the way up, we heard a roar, and a fighter jet came out of nowhere, made a hard turn right acoss from us in the pass, and zoomed out of sight to the north. Kate was jumping up and down with excitement! We're pretty sure the RAF arranged it for her birthday. (Will said, "Did you see the missiles under his wings?" It was quite close.)
When we reached the headwall we had a fortuitous convergence with the trail and took that the rest of the way. It was was a steady climb, but gorgeous views unfolded below us as we rose higher above the pass. Adjacent peaks one by one slid down, as we got higher than Stoney Cove Pike, High Street, Racecourse Hill, and finally Ill Bell.
On top at the summit cairn we met two ladies who had started just before us. They were from Hampshire, and Kate got into a long and delightful conversation with one of them. They exchanged email addresses. Will threw stones in a mud pit. Galen stood on top of several summit cairns, and then on top of the Ordnance Survey column itself.
We fitted Will with his shoes for the descent (he went up in Crocs; Galen went up and down in Crocs), and took the trail all the way on the descent. With all due respect to Wainwright, it was enjoyable.
On the lane down to Ambleside, we saw a field of Highland Cattle, which are a particular Kate favourite with their huge shaggy coats and long dangerous-looking horns. We pulled over and Kate shot some pics. Another fortuitous birthday event.
In town, we dropped our stuff and split up. Kate went out to do some free-lance shopping and the boys and I headed off to Windermere to get her a special sheep pencil and keyring that Galen had spotted last Saturday. When the pay-&-display lot at the Windermere station was full, we discovered the grocery store Booth's had its own free lot. We bought chocolate ice cream for Kate (from Will) and took that home to the freezer. Then we set out to play Crazy Golf at the park in Ambleside. The friendly and easy-going attendant encouraged us to play as many rounds as we liked! Galen got a hole-in-one, and as he danced around Will said, "Oh, now he'll be impossible for the rest of the day!" Later Will got a hole-in-one too.
Eventually the boys and Kate returned home to rest, and I went out one more time just to hang around in bookstores and pour over the maps and guides, to see what types of maps are being used, and generally what the "guide" thing is about. I also bought myself a hunk of Stilton cheese.
Birthday dinner, from "Walnut Fish Bar," was a chicken and mushroom pie for Kate and me, fish and onion rings for Galen, sausage and chips for Will. I also ordered haggis, but they needed ten minutes advance warning to make it, so I skipped that. Is it possible it's not ordered very often?
I read to the boys (Winter Holidays: they are dead set against Dick and Dorthea, but I think they'll acknowledge they're okay soon), and then went to the Queens Hotel to collect a wonderful pile of birthday greeting emails for Kate. The bartender recognized me (hey, I'm a regular), and said "Ginger Beer, right?" But instead this time I had the Dandelion and Burdock Root soft drink. Which I have to say was pretty tasty.
Kirkstone Pass is a pass in the high fells about 3 miles from Ambleside. The road to reach it is the usual narrow lane between two stone walls, but that seemed normal enough to us now. The road had a short notorious patch called "The Struggle" (you have to love England) where the grade is 20%, but after yesterday that hardly seemd noticeable. So soon we were in the capacious parking lot at Kirkstone Pass, well above treeline at 455 metres. (The irony here is that at our house in Smithers, this would be underground.) Grassy slopes extended in all directions, criss-crossed by stone walls. Across the road from the parking lot was the pub--because although it's a lonely pass, there's no reason for there not to be a pub!
On the west side of the pass is a mountain named Red Screes (for the red screes streaming down its sides), and the route up it is a sustained steep climb of 325 metres (or about 1000 feet) in less than a kilometre. That's basically a staircase. Wainwright describes it as "a rough ascent," and adds that, "The direct descent to Kirkstone is rough, too rough to be enjoyable." That sounded a bit much for us, so we were going to go up on the east side of the pass, a mellow ridge called St. Raven's Edge. It runs parallel to the road, and the gentle climb is about 150 metres. We thought we'd go up there and explore along its top.
But when we got out of the car, Galen was quite taken with Red Screes, and said it would be much better than the boring old ridge on the other side. (Could he have inherited some of those genes from his Dad?) He convinced Kate, and so off we set. But not up the trail: Galen cried, "Adventure calls!" and off we went, striking out overland for our own route ascending the peak. We went by boulder and grasstuft up the fall line, deviating around outcrops and finding tiny ways up through notches. We got to make decisions about what was too steep, and what could be gone up but not down, and how to think about the consequences of a fall.
When we were about one third of the way up, we heard a roar, and a fighter jet came out of nowhere, made a hard turn right acoss from us in the pass, and zoomed out of sight to the north. Kate was jumping up and down with excitement! We're pretty sure the RAF arranged it for her birthday. (Will said, "Did you see the missiles under his wings?" It was quite close.)
When we reached the headwall we had a fortuitous convergence with the trail and took that the rest of the way. It was was a steady climb, but gorgeous views unfolded below us as we rose higher above the pass. Adjacent peaks one by one slid down, as we got higher than Stoney Cove Pike, High Street, Racecourse Hill, and finally Ill Bell.
On top at the summit cairn we met two ladies who had started just before us. They were from Hampshire, and Kate got into a long and delightful conversation with one of them. They exchanged email addresses. Will threw stones in a mud pit. Galen stood on top of several summit cairns, and then on top of the Ordnance Survey column itself.
We fitted Will with his shoes for the descent (he went up in Crocs; Galen went up and down in Crocs), and took the trail all the way on the descent. With all due respect to Wainwright, it was enjoyable.
On the lane down to Ambleside, we saw a field of Highland Cattle, which are a particular Kate favourite with their huge shaggy coats and long dangerous-looking horns. We pulled over and Kate shot some pics. Another fortuitous birthday event.
In town, we dropped our stuff and split up. Kate went out to do some free-lance shopping and the boys and I headed off to Windermere to get her a special sheep pencil and keyring that Galen had spotted last Saturday. When the pay-&-display lot at the Windermere station was full, we discovered the grocery store Booth's had its own free lot. We bought chocolate ice cream for Kate (from Will) and took that home to the freezer. Then we set out to play Crazy Golf at the park in Ambleside. The friendly and easy-going attendant encouraged us to play as many rounds as we liked! Galen got a hole-in-one, and as he danced around Will said, "Oh, now he'll be impossible for the rest of the day!" Later Will got a hole-in-one too.
Eventually the boys and Kate returned home to rest, and I went out one more time just to hang around in bookstores and pour over the maps and guides, to see what types of maps are being used, and generally what the "guide" thing is about. I also bought myself a hunk of Stilton cheese.
Birthday dinner, from "Walnut Fish Bar," was a chicken and mushroom pie for Kate and me, fish and onion rings for Galen, sausage and chips for Will. I also ordered haggis, but they needed ten minutes advance warning to make it, so I skipped that. Is it possible it's not ordered very often?
I read to the boys (Winter Holidays: they are dead set against Dick and Dorthea, but I think they'll acknowledge they're okay soon), and then went to the Queens Hotel to collect a wonderful pile of birthday greeting emails for Kate. The bartender recognized me (hey, I'm a regular), and said "Ginger Beer, right?" But instead this time I had the Dandelion and Burdock Root soft drink. Which I have to say was pretty tasty.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Roman Ruins, Ravenglass Railway, and a beach
Ambleside is in the middle of the peaks of the Lakes District, but for today's outing we needed to get down to the sea, on the west coast of Cumbria. We opted for the short and direct route, what the map showed as a narrow, steep road following the old Roman road through the Wrynose Pass and the Hardknott Pass down to the sea at Ravenglass. After looking at the way it was represented on various maps, I deduced that it would be a one-lane road with lots of twists and turns, and this was correct. But once it had climbed above the trees and stone walls, into the wide open, fern-&-sheep zone, it was easy to see cars coming. It was a delight.
We went past the signs saying things like "30% grade ahead" and "Road narrows to 6' 6" ahead" and climbed up Wrynose Pass. It was a rare treat of driving up on the fells. At the top we found a surprising number of cars, people using this as a sort of informal trailhead for walks. We played around for a while among the rocks and looked ahead to Hardknott Pass: we could see a line of cars crawling up it, and we realized this was actually a rather popular route. Hardknott Pass had the 30% grades, but plenty of pullouts, and although we met many cars it was never a problem. Got out there and played some more, and then descended to the Hardknott Roman Fort.
This was an interesting ruin. The Romans built this fort here, garrisoned with 500 men, to control the road from Ambleside to the port at Ravenglass, where Roman ships would deliver supplies for the troops on Hadrian's Wall. The fort was on the fells, high above the more sheltered lands below, and you could imagine the hardship of troops stationed here. It had a fine view of Scafell Pike to the north, and, to the west, down the valley of Eskdale to the sea. The walls still stand about four or five feet high, and the remarkable thing about it was its squareness. Although it's draped over an uneven rocky slope, the Romans built the walls straight and put a gate exactly in the middle of each wall. They liked things to be mathematical. They didn't care if the landscape saw it otherwise.
We drove down to Ravenglass, only getting lost a couple times, and parked at the station. You can get on regular national rail trains here, but one half of the station is for something else: the narrow gauge Ravenglass and Eskdale railway. We watched a train pull in: the engine was only about three feet high, with a tiny coal tender. The engineer (an adult barely fits in the cab) was shovelling coal into the tiny firebox door, about 8 inches wide. These were actual engines used on this mining railway to bring ore out of Eskdale in the late nineteenth century--now lovingly kept in service and run by mostly volunteers. We bought return tickets for the journey up to Eskdale.
After lunch at the station's pub we climbed into the open coaches. Everything on this railway was kid-sized. The rails were only 15 inches apart. In the cars you'd sit on little benches, two facing forward and two backward, your knees knocking against each other. But most of the customers were adults without children. The conductor blew his whistle, the engine peeped back, and off we started. We went fast! We were racing along--of course it felt faster because we were in these open cars, like roller-coaster cars, but without any kind of bar to hold you in, and an open door on one side. We went flying along, out the estuary, up the valley, calling at various stations (Muncaster Mill, Irton Road, Eskdale Green), for fully 40 minutes, until we were at the far end, at Dalegarth. It was tremendous. The sun was shining, the forest was green, the rhododendrons were purple, and the villages cute. It was unbelievably fun. It beat the heck out of any little railway at Disneyland. We even thought it was better than the Bluebell Railway in Sussex.
It was pretty late in the day by the time we got back down to Ravenglass, but it was our last chance to see the beach on this trip. So we drove out to St. Bees, a small town just up the coast that we had read had a good beach. Wow, traffic was pushy here: it was rush hour outside the nuclear fuel processing plant at Sellafield, and we were actually passed on narrow curvy roads by quite a few cars who thought we were too slow. Well, we were slow. The beach at St. Bees was not terribly inspiring, with its tiny waves, but a magical thing was happening. As we played there the tide went out fast. Will and I were standing up to our knees and in a few minutes we were only up to our ankles. Lots of sand appeared. There were tiny crab shells from molting crabs.
We drove home on the main roads via Whitehaven, Cockermouth, and Keswick. Luckily these were unusually wide and straight roads (for England), and we got home by 7:00. The mountainous portion of the Lakes district is really quite small--about 30 km by 30 km--but the windy roads make it seem much bigger.
Whew: enough of the car for a while!
We went past the signs saying things like "30% grade ahead" and "Road narrows to 6' 6" ahead" and climbed up Wrynose Pass. It was a rare treat of driving up on the fells. At the top we found a surprising number of cars, people using this as a sort of informal trailhead for walks. We played around for a while among the rocks and looked ahead to Hardknott Pass: we could see a line of cars crawling up it, and we realized this was actually a rather popular route. Hardknott Pass had the 30% grades, but plenty of pullouts, and although we met many cars it was never a problem. Got out there and played some more, and then descended to the Hardknott Roman Fort.
This was an interesting ruin. The Romans built this fort here, garrisoned with 500 men, to control the road from Ambleside to the port at Ravenglass, where Roman ships would deliver supplies for the troops on Hadrian's Wall. The fort was on the fells, high above the more sheltered lands below, and you could imagine the hardship of troops stationed here. It had a fine view of Scafell Pike to the north, and, to the west, down the valley of Eskdale to the sea. The walls still stand about four or five feet high, and the remarkable thing about it was its squareness. Although it's draped over an uneven rocky slope, the Romans built the walls straight and put a gate exactly in the middle of each wall. They liked things to be mathematical. They didn't care if the landscape saw it otherwise.
We drove down to Ravenglass, only getting lost a couple times, and parked at the station. You can get on regular national rail trains here, but one half of the station is for something else: the narrow gauge Ravenglass and Eskdale railway. We watched a train pull in: the engine was only about three feet high, with a tiny coal tender. The engineer (an adult barely fits in the cab) was shovelling coal into the tiny firebox door, about 8 inches wide. These were actual engines used on this mining railway to bring ore out of Eskdale in the late nineteenth century--now lovingly kept in service and run by mostly volunteers. We bought return tickets for the journey up to Eskdale.
After lunch at the station's pub we climbed into the open coaches. Everything on this railway was kid-sized. The rails were only 15 inches apart. In the cars you'd sit on little benches, two facing forward and two backward, your knees knocking against each other. But most of the customers were adults without children. The conductor blew his whistle, the engine peeped back, and off we started. We went fast! We were racing along--of course it felt faster because we were in these open cars, like roller-coaster cars, but without any kind of bar to hold you in, and an open door on one side. We went flying along, out the estuary, up the valley, calling at various stations (Muncaster Mill, Irton Road, Eskdale Green), for fully 40 minutes, until we were at the far end, at Dalegarth. It was tremendous. The sun was shining, the forest was green, the rhododendrons were purple, and the villages cute. It was unbelievably fun. It beat the heck out of any little railway at Disneyland. We even thought it was better than the Bluebell Railway in Sussex.
It was pretty late in the day by the time we got back down to Ravenglass, but it was our last chance to see the beach on this trip. So we drove out to St. Bees, a small town just up the coast that we had read had a good beach. Wow, traffic was pushy here: it was rush hour outside the nuclear fuel processing plant at Sellafield, and we were actually passed on narrow curvy roads by quite a few cars who thought we were too slow. Well, we were slow. The beach at St. Bees was not terribly inspiring, with its tiny waves, but a magical thing was happening. As we played there the tide went out fast. Will and I were standing up to our knees and in a few minutes we were only up to our ankles. Lots of sand appeared. There were tiny crab shells from molting crabs.
We drove home on the main roads via Whitehaven, Cockermouth, and Keswick. Luckily these were unusually wide and straight roads (for England), and we got home by 7:00. The mountainous portion of the Lakes district is really quite small--about 30 km by 30 km--but the windy roads make it seem much bigger.
Whew: enough of the car for a while!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Walk over fells to Lang How
This was the walk that wasn't supposed to be: for the want of £3, we discovered it.
This morning we left Ambleside, in Eddie, with lunch, water and windbreakers, headed for the White Moss Common parking lot. It was only a five minute drive, and we were going to walk around Rydal Lake. After two days in Ambleside and seeing all the walkers, we were going to see what all the fuss was about. This three and a half mile hike was recommended in a guide as a family hike, and we figured it would be a sort of easy, friendly introduction for the boys to walking, a practice we didn't want to turn them off of.
But when we got to the parking lot we found it was Pay-and-Display, and we didn't have the three £1 coins we needed. We decided to go to the nearby village of Grasmere to see if we could get change. On the way, Kate saw the fells, the upland areas above treeline, and said, "Wow, why don't we go up there?"
Easy to get to Grasmere, not easy to get change: one thing led to another. We dropped Kate off on the main street, which was lined with stores and cafes (gosh, pretty upscale for a small village; what's going on here?), and had, of course, no parking. After we turned around in the cramped parking lot of a posh hotel, and I bumped my head on the car door trying to wave to Kate--we're over here!) she said all stores had refused to give her change. We decided to buy a coffee to get change, and while she was off doing this (we are in Eddie, wedged in an alley illegally), I perused the map for possibilities around here. Actually, Grasmere looked like a pretty good starting place to walk up on a nice fell to its southwest. There might be a nice view down into the valley called Langdale from there.
All around us, was a constant stream of hikers moving through Grasmere from the pay-&-display lot on the edge of town. Ah: clarity dawned. The first, and perhaps hardest thing about hiking in the Lakes is finding parking. Nothing else happens--no nice walk, no fell views, no wicked weather--until you find parking. You could be all set to go, in your Patagonia coat with your Karrimor pack and your twin nordic walking poles, and be in tears, dead in the water, because you can't find parking.
So, £1 coins in hand we parked in Grasmere's large pay-&-display, and set out through the town (running to stay just ahead of a large Japanese tour headed for the churchyard and the Wordsworth graves). We ran the gamut of shops (organic skin care, woolen sweaters, garden supplies, hotel, restaurant, gingerbread factory), and found our way onto a little road out of town, a stone wall on either side and naturally (are you joking?) no sidewalks. The surprisingly large number of posh hotels (what is this place?) began to gave way to fields, and then IT happened. A fighter jet came screaming in overhead from the east at an impossibly low altitude and banked hard over Grasmere to negotiate the valley as it turned away to the north. Another one was hard on his tail. "Wow!" said Kate and spun around with light in her eyes. You see, Kate LOVES fighter planes, so this was not like something ruining our Nice Little Lakes Experience: this is actually making it better.
Now we left the road onto a public footpath, and climbed up through lovely fields and trees, by moss-covered stone walls, the whole thing looking like a picture on a calendar ("England Through The Seasons"). We ascended up out beyond trees, where it's just endless grass and ferns, and began to encounter sheep. Another fighter jet roared over head. Kate was in heaven: sheep, fighter planes, and partial cloud.
The boys did great, as they tend to on these kind of hikes. Will was into music, composing pieces on his new harmonica as he ascended. In fact we were treated to harmonica music all day, all over the fells. I suspect some of the hikers we passed had never heard a little boy playing the harmonica above treeline before. Galen was somewhere else, listening to his mp3 player, practising to one day become a teenager; but no slowpoke.
At some point we left the track to attempt some cross-country navigation, since I naturally can't stay on a trail. Had lunch on a point of rock. The boys eagerly pulled out their latest find: "Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding" flavoured potato chips. (They were nasty. Yesterday they had "Dutch Edam Cheese" flavoured, which were pretty good. If you're guessing that this little potato chip campaign has something to do with the World Cup, you're probably right.)
Discovered a compelling, craggy hill on top of the fells called Lang How; climbed it. Fantastic views in all directions. Found some marshes and pools. Sheep everywhere. It reminded Kate and me of hiking on tundra in Alaska, the way the green turf is draped over the bones of the rocks; except for the sheep, and the fact that down off the fells we could see fields and small civilized towns. And so I began to relate hiking in the Lakes to my experience of hiking on Hudson Bay Mountain in Smithers. You can imagine it's wilderness until you look over the edge and there's a town down there. Kind of spoils it. But here I think that's very much what people expect and want. They want to be in sturdy hiking boots approaching the summit cairn in the morning, and taking tea in the garden of the Hotel a few hours later. That may in fact be the pattern for a lot of European hiking, and that might explain why it's so popular.
Found another footpath running across the fells and followed it back towards Grasmere. We descended through fern forests which smelled wonderful. We returned to the world of trees, and rock fences, and left the sheep behind. In Grasmere we bought some of "Sarah Nelson's Original Celebrated Grasmere Gingerbread" from a tiny shop in the church, as another fighter plane roared overhead. "Does that go on every day?" I asked the lady. "Pretty much," she said, and the baker behind her added, "Except when it's wet--then you don't hear 'em." I could just imagine when the cloud was low: these valleys as cul-de-sacs.
Kate liked the gingerbread so much she went back in and bought more. On the way back to the car she got sidetracked into organic skin care and bought some body balm. Truly a red letter day for her. (We got lots of ideas for her birthday, which is Wednesday.)
Drove home, dropped our packs, and walked down through Ambleside to the Galava Roman Fort, which is a ruin at the north end of [lake] Windermere. Poked around there, and then walked over to the Ambleside Dock, where a steamer calls every hour or so to take you down-lake to Bowness-on-Windermere, the only big town actually on Windermere. There was an office renting beautiful wooden rowboats, and we dearly wanted to hire one, but they were closed for want of staff.
Walked home. Kate got dinner ready, Will polished his harmonica, and the boys turned on the telly to catch their favourite CBBC show: "Night Garden." Which I can only describe as a tele-tubbies-like fantasy about tiny creatures. It's gentle and fantastical.
I went to the Queens Hotel to check the email and learned the sad news that Fletcher, our cat, had had to be put down over the weekend. (He had been dying of kidney failure for over a year.) I phoned the vet and got the details. There were lots of long faces around our dinner table.
This morning we left Ambleside, in Eddie, with lunch, water and windbreakers, headed for the White Moss Common parking lot. It was only a five minute drive, and we were going to walk around Rydal Lake. After two days in Ambleside and seeing all the walkers, we were going to see what all the fuss was about. This three and a half mile hike was recommended in a guide as a family hike, and we figured it would be a sort of easy, friendly introduction for the boys to walking, a practice we didn't want to turn them off of.
But when we got to the parking lot we found it was Pay-and-Display, and we didn't have the three £1 coins we needed. We decided to go to the nearby village of Grasmere to see if we could get change. On the way, Kate saw the fells, the upland areas above treeline, and said, "Wow, why don't we go up there?"
Easy to get to Grasmere, not easy to get change: one thing led to another. We dropped Kate off on the main street, which was lined with stores and cafes (gosh, pretty upscale for a small village; what's going on here?), and had, of course, no parking. After we turned around in the cramped parking lot of a posh hotel, and I bumped my head on the car door trying to wave to Kate--we're over here!) she said all stores had refused to give her change. We decided to buy a coffee to get change, and while she was off doing this (we are in Eddie, wedged in an alley illegally), I perused the map for possibilities around here. Actually, Grasmere looked like a pretty good starting place to walk up on a nice fell to its southwest. There might be a nice view down into the valley called Langdale from there.
All around us, was a constant stream of hikers moving through Grasmere from the pay-&-display lot on the edge of town. Ah: clarity dawned. The first, and perhaps hardest thing about hiking in the Lakes is finding parking. Nothing else happens--no nice walk, no fell views, no wicked weather--until you find parking. You could be all set to go, in your Patagonia coat with your Karrimor pack and your twin nordic walking poles, and be in tears, dead in the water, because you can't find parking.
So, £1 coins in hand we parked in Grasmere's large pay-&-display, and set out through the town (running to stay just ahead of a large Japanese tour headed for the churchyard and the Wordsworth graves). We ran the gamut of shops (organic skin care, woolen sweaters, garden supplies, hotel, restaurant, gingerbread factory), and found our way onto a little road out of town, a stone wall on either side and naturally (are you joking?) no sidewalks. The surprisingly large number of posh hotels (what is this place?) began to gave way to fields, and then IT happened. A fighter jet came screaming in overhead from the east at an impossibly low altitude and banked hard over Grasmere to negotiate the valley as it turned away to the north. Another one was hard on his tail. "Wow!" said Kate and spun around with light in her eyes. You see, Kate LOVES fighter planes, so this was not like something ruining our Nice Little Lakes Experience: this is actually making it better.
Now we left the road onto a public footpath, and climbed up through lovely fields and trees, by moss-covered stone walls, the whole thing looking like a picture on a calendar ("England Through The Seasons"). We ascended up out beyond trees, where it's just endless grass and ferns, and began to encounter sheep. Another fighter jet roared over head. Kate was in heaven: sheep, fighter planes, and partial cloud.
The boys did great, as they tend to on these kind of hikes. Will was into music, composing pieces on his new harmonica as he ascended. In fact we were treated to harmonica music all day, all over the fells. I suspect some of the hikers we passed had never heard a little boy playing the harmonica above treeline before. Galen was somewhere else, listening to his mp3 player, practising to one day become a teenager; but no slowpoke.
At some point we left the track to attempt some cross-country navigation, since I naturally can't stay on a trail. Had lunch on a point of rock. The boys eagerly pulled out their latest find: "Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding" flavoured potato chips. (They were nasty. Yesterday they had "Dutch Edam Cheese" flavoured, which were pretty good. If you're guessing that this little potato chip campaign has something to do with the World Cup, you're probably right.)
Discovered a compelling, craggy hill on top of the fells called Lang How; climbed it. Fantastic views in all directions. Found some marshes and pools. Sheep everywhere. It reminded Kate and me of hiking on tundra in Alaska, the way the green turf is draped over the bones of the rocks; except for the sheep, and the fact that down off the fells we could see fields and small civilized towns. And so I began to relate hiking in the Lakes to my experience of hiking on Hudson Bay Mountain in Smithers. You can imagine it's wilderness until you look over the edge and there's a town down there. Kind of spoils it. But here I think that's very much what people expect and want. They want to be in sturdy hiking boots approaching the summit cairn in the morning, and taking tea in the garden of the Hotel a few hours later. That may in fact be the pattern for a lot of European hiking, and that might explain why it's so popular.
Found another footpath running across the fells and followed it back towards Grasmere. We descended through fern forests which smelled wonderful. We returned to the world of trees, and rock fences, and left the sheep behind. In Grasmere we bought some of "Sarah Nelson's Original Celebrated Grasmere Gingerbread" from a tiny shop in the church, as another fighter plane roared overhead. "Does that go on every day?" I asked the lady. "Pretty much," she said, and the baker behind her added, "Except when it's wet--then you don't hear 'em." I could just imagine when the cloud was low: these valleys as cul-de-sacs.
Kate liked the gingerbread so much she went back in and bought more. On the way back to the car she got sidetracked into organic skin care and bought some body balm. Truly a red letter day for her. (We got lots of ideas for her birthday, which is Wednesday.)
Drove home, dropped our packs, and walked down through Ambleside to the Galava Roman Fort, which is a ruin at the north end of [lake] Windermere. Poked around there, and then walked over to the Ambleside Dock, where a steamer calls every hour or so to take you down-lake to Bowness-on-Windermere, the only big town actually on Windermere. There was an office renting beautiful wooden rowboats, and we dearly wanted to hire one, but they were closed for want of staff.
Walked home. Kate got dinner ready, Will polished his harmonica, and the boys turned on the telly to catch their favourite CBBC show: "Night Garden." Which I can only describe as a tele-tubbies-like fantasy about tiny creatures. It's gentle and fantastical.
I went to the Queens Hotel to check the email and learned the sad news that Fletcher, our cat, had had to be put down over the weekend. (He had been dying of kidney failure for over a year.) I phoned the vet and got the details. There were lots of long faces around our dinner table.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Rain and rest and shopping
I went for a run this morning, and in 15 minutes I was surprised to find that I had made it to Rydal, the next village up the Rothay valley. I'd been looking at maps and thinking that was a long way. The whole area strikes me as being remarkably like Princeton, where I grew up in New Jersey. Those of you who also grew up, or lived, there would recognize here the compact stone walls, the nicely finished houses, the deciduous trees, the green fields. Everything is very pretty and genteel. Simultaneously there's the feeling of exclusivity: most of the properties have walls to distance themselves from you and you hardly feel welcome going in a private driveway. Belying the idea that this is a "mountain" region, there was a sidewalk ("pavement") and bus service the whole way. However it being a Sunday morning I saw almost no one. Two other walkers. A farmer feeding his sheep. A heron and a pied wagtail.
Back home, the boys woke up and turned on the telly to find out what had happened in England versus USA. It had been a tie, 1:1.
It was a rainy day, as predicted, and we spent the day lazing about, shopping, figuring out internet and reading. It was lovely. It rained heavily at times, and at others it was almost clearing. But after 10:00, the town was full of people, some dressed in common rainwear, some with very serious outdoorwear, some in windbreakers. There were families with teenagers, groups from Japan, and elderly people. Amazing elderly people. They are almost always wearing backpacks and they are Here To Walk. Apparently the English do not give up when they get old.
I sussed out the wifi internet; there are many choices but the bar of the Queens Hotel is the thing. It's got the table with the outlet and the unencrypted network that the traveller wants. Kate meanwhile took advantage of the copious outdoor retail and sussed out rainwear. She replaced her famous blue raincoat with a lime green one. (She dragged the boys through about twenty stores and they were very good about it). She also did a little pre-birthday investigation regarding what presents she might want. Will found a paperback copy of Arthur Ransome's "Winter Holidays," which is the next book that we need to read in the Swallows and Amazons series. (These books are set here in the Lakes, for any of you unfortunately enough not to have read them. Before we leave I need to go to the lake called Conniston Water and see where Ransome spent his childhood holidays, and the landscape that inspired him to write these wonderful stories.)
In the house, Will and Galen have discovered a little toy roulette game. It has a wheel, chips, and a green felt betting area. I've taught them how to play, and they can't get enough of it. Galen turns out to be a terrible gambler, always betting on the wrong thing and soon out of chips. But Will, frighteningly, is a natural! He always comes away with a large pile of winnings.
The sky cleared at about the end of the day, and we had dinner at home. Started reading Winter Holiday aloud. (We're also in the middle of Prince Caspian.)
Back home, the boys woke up and turned on the telly to find out what had happened in England versus USA. It had been a tie, 1:1.
It was a rainy day, as predicted, and we spent the day lazing about, shopping, figuring out internet and reading. It was lovely. It rained heavily at times, and at others it was almost clearing. But after 10:00, the town was full of people, some dressed in common rainwear, some with very serious outdoorwear, some in windbreakers. There were families with teenagers, groups from Japan, and elderly people. Amazing elderly people. They are almost always wearing backpacks and they are Here To Walk. Apparently the English do not give up when they get old.
I sussed out the wifi internet; there are many choices but the bar of the Queens Hotel is the thing. It's got the table with the outlet and the unencrypted network that the traveller wants. Kate meanwhile took advantage of the copious outdoor retail and sussed out rainwear. She replaced her famous blue raincoat with a lime green one. (She dragged the boys through about twenty stores and they were very good about it). She also did a little pre-birthday investigation regarding what presents she might want. Will found a paperback copy of Arthur Ransome's "Winter Holidays," which is the next book that we need to read in the Swallows and Amazons series. (These books are set here in the Lakes, for any of you unfortunately enough not to have read them. Before we leave I need to go to the lake called Conniston Water and see where Ransome spent his childhood holidays, and the landscape that inspired him to write these wonderful stories.)
In the house, Will and Galen have discovered a little toy roulette game. It has a wheel, chips, and a green felt betting area. I've taught them how to play, and they can't get enough of it. Galen turns out to be a terrible gambler, always betting on the wrong thing and soon out of chips. But Will, frighteningly, is a natural! He always comes away with a large pile of winnings.
The sky cleared at about the end of the day, and we had dinner at home. Started reading Winter Holiday aloud. (We're also in the middle of Prince Caspian.)
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Kendal and Ambleside
In the morning we went down to the breakfast room and had the most wonderful breakfast. It was a real dining room with big windows showing the river an the bridge. It was lovely and the boys were grinning from ear to ear over the buffet.
We walked to Enterprise, which was just around the corner near the station and rented our car. We got a silver Hyundai i30, which, while not as special and snazzy as the Renault we had in Brighton, is a darn sight smaller and better than the Vauxhall Insignias. We parked it back at the hotel, loaded our bags in it and checked out.
We walked up to the pedestrian shopping streets of Kendal, and went to drugstores and bookstores. In Waterstones we found our first really good bookstore in England, and I bought a few late birthday presents: one of the Wainwright guides ("The Eastern Fells"), "Geology Explained In The Lakes District", and , and Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Tmie to Keep Silence," a book on monasteries. Kate picked up some curriculum for Will, and Galen discovered a new series, Mr. Gum.
I went into a store to top up my mobile, and all the employees had the St. George flag (that "English" flag) painted on their faces. World Cup fever.
A kind of farmer's market was going on in the streets, so we provisioned up with fruit and nuts, and headed for Ambleside. We weren't suppose to get to our cottage until 2:00, so we delayed by stopping in Windermere and poking around in the Co-op and a candy store. (Kate pleased the man in the latter by asking which, of the hundreds of jars of candy he was selling, were the best mints.) Then while Galen and I explored the Lake District Park's visitor centre, Kate and Will discovered Booth's grocery store, hidden in a large building beside the railway station. They bought hte rest of our provisions. I got one of the famous (among hikers) Kendal Mint Cakes: a small, hard, slab of minty sugar. Kind of like a big mint Pez. It's good. If you're in the mood for eating a block of sugar. I'm sure it tastes great on the trail.
Arrived in Ambleside and located our cottage at 4 Park Street. It's a thin slice of a dark stone building, maybe fourteen feet wide, but three floors high. The outer walls, like all of Ambleside, are course on course of massive dark gneisses, slates or shales. They are seemingly built without mortar, but on closer inspection the mortar is just deep within. It's a very attractive architecture. Within, on the second floor (we'd call it the third floor in North America) is the boys' bedroom and the bathroom; on the first floor is our bedroom and a spare room; on the ground floor is the kitchen and living room. It's a vertical life when you have to run up two floors just to use the toilet!
Ambleside is a compact town of narrow winding streets, overhung with trees, built on a gentle hillside. As we walked about we went past outdoor store after outdoor store, separated sometimes by hotels or cafes. There are perhaps more outdoor stores per square mile than anywhere in North America: more than Boulder, Colorado, Jackson, Wyoming, or Canmore, Alberta. It's as if you took the dollar stream that tourists spend in Aspen or Whistler, and magnified it by being just a few hours from, say, New York--but set within the genteel architecture, deciduous trees, and compact spatial layout of a New England town. Ambleside is a bonfire of outdoor spending. Imagine having an entire store dedicated to hiking boots; here, there is more than one. Expecting a big store with every imaginable type of outdoor gear? There are fifteen or twenty, all within a few blocks. Millets, Gaynors, the Edge Of The World, The Climbers Shop, Jack Wolfskin, etc. etc.
We walked up to Stockghyll Force, a waterfall on a creek outside of town. It has however, like most small features around here, almost legendary status among Lakeland Lovers, another consequence of Britain's most popular National Park being scrutinized, surveyed, written about, measured, waxed lyrical over and generally exalted. It was lovely: clear water flowing down over rocky beds through a beech forest. But it was, well, really a minor trickle in the world of waterfalls. It was like an exercise in aesthetics, rather than a blow-me-away natural wonder. Which I suspect is the right attitude to bring to the Lakes. We're not here for the highest mountain or the most massive rock face: we're here for Some Very Nice Stuff.
We walked back down into town and found Wearing's Books: specializing in maps and guides. You can't really take me to towns like Ambleside: it makes me crazy. I coveted the guides to hiking in the High Tatra, the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, and Corsica. I drooled over the many guides to where we were. I recognized that it was my life's mission to hike all of the routes in all of these books. Then my kids finished their ice creams and we moved on.
Home to watch a bit of the World Cup hype (Britain versus the USA tonight), cook dinner and unpack. The World Cup coverage revealed another important British theme: the avoidance of the uncomfortabletruth. The station the boys were watching was full of hype, prepping everyone for the beginning of the game in 30 minutes, showing backgrounders and features on the World Cup, and talking about the line-up for the game. But, when 7:30 came, they switched to rugby coverage. What was going on? Apparently only certain pay channels had the rights to show the actual game. But they had never warned us of this. You were just supposed to know that this channel was never going to show you the game: you had to go to the pub to see it.
We walked to Enterprise, which was just around the corner near the station and rented our car. We got a silver Hyundai i30, which, while not as special and snazzy as the Renault we had in Brighton, is a darn sight smaller and better than the Vauxhall Insignias. We parked it back at the hotel, loaded our bags in it and checked out.
We walked up to the pedestrian shopping streets of Kendal, and went to drugstores and bookstores. In Waterstones we found our first really good bookstore in England, and I bought a few late birthday presents: one of the Wainwright guides ("The Eastern Fells"), "Geology Explained In The Lakes District", and , and Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Tmie to Keep Silence," a book on monasteries. Kate picked up some curriculum for Will, and Galen discovered a new series, Mr. Gum.
I went into a store to top up my mobile, and all the employees had the St. George flag (that "English" flag) painted on their faces. World Cup fever.
A kind of farmer's market was going on in the streets, so we provisioned up with fruit and nuts, and headed for Ambleside. We weren't suppose to get to our cottage until 2:00, so we delayed by stopping in Windermere and poking around in the Co-op and a candy store. (Kate pleased the man in the latter by asking which, of the hundreds of jars of candy he was selling, were the best mints.) Then while Galen and I explored the Lake District Park's visitor centre, Kate and Will discovered Booth's grocery store, hidden in a large building beside the railway station. They bought hte rest of our provisions. I got one of the famous (among hikers) Kendal Mint Cakes: a small, hard, slab of minty sugar. Kind of like a big mint Pez. It's good. If you're in the mood for eating a block of sugar. I'm sure it tastes great on the trail.
Arrived in Ambleside and located our cottage at 4 Park Street. It's a thin slice of a dark stone building, maybe fourteen feet wide, but three floors high. The outer walls, like all of Ambleside, are course on course of massive dark gneisses, slates or shales. They are seemingly built without mortar, but on closer inspection the mortar is just deep within. It's a very attractive architecture. Within, on the second floor (we'd call it the third floor in North America) is the boys' bedroom and the bathroom; on the first floor is our bedroom and a spare room; on the ground floor is the kitchen and living room. It's a vertical life when you have to run up two floors just to use the toilet!
Ambleside is a compact town of narrow winding streets, overhung with trees, built on a gentle hillside. As we walked about we went past outdoor store after outdoor store, separated sometimes by hotels or cafes. There are perhaps more outdoor stores per square mile than anywhere in North America: more than Boulder, Colorado, Jackson, Wyoming, or Canmore, Alberta. It's as if you took the dollar stream that tourists spend in Aspen or Whistler, and magnified it by being just a few hours from, say, New York--but set within the genteel architecture, deciduous trees, and compact spatial layout of a New England town. Ambleside is a bonfire of outdoor spending. Imagine having an entire store dedicated to hiking boots; here, there is more than one. Expecting a big store with every imaginable type of outdoor gear? There are fifteen or twenty, all within a few blocks. Millets, Gaynors, the Edge Of The World, The Climbers Shop, Jack Wolfskin, etc. etc.
We walked up to Stockghyll Force, a waterfall on a creek outside of town. It has however, like most small features around here, almost legendary status among Lakeland Lovers, another consequence of Britain's most popular National Park being scrutinized, surveyed, written about, measured, waxed lyrical over and generally exalted. It was lovely: clear water flowing down over rocky beds through a beech forest. But it was, well, really a minor trickle in the world of waterfalls. It was like an exercise in aesthetics, rather than a blow-me-away natural wonder. Which I suspect is the right attitude to bring to the Lakes. We're not here for the highest mountain or the most massive rock face: we're here for Some Very Nice Stuff.
We walked back down into town and found Wearing's Books: specializing in maps and guides. You can't really take me to towns like Ambleside: it makes me crazy. I coveted the guides to hiking in the High Tatra, the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, and Corsica. I drooled over the many guides to where we were. I recognized that it was my life's mission to hike all of the routes in all of these books. Then my kids finished their ice creams and we moved on.
Home to watch a bit of the World Cup hype (Britain versus the USA tonight), cook dinner and unpack. The World Cup coverage revealed another important British theme: the avoidance of the uncomfortabletruth. The station the boys were watching was full of hype, prepping everyone for the beginning of the game in 30 minutes, showing backgrounders and features on the World Cup, and talking about the line-up for the game. But, when 7:30 came, they switched to rugby coverage. What was going on? Apparently only certain pay channels had the rights to show the actual game. But they had never warned us of this. You were just supposed to know that this channel was never going to show you the game: you had to go to the pub to see it.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Travel To Kendal
We got up early to a beautiful sunny day, and did the pack and clean up thing. I hadn't slept that much: after-effects of the Cream Tea.
The boys watched some wierd stuff on CBBC: Zingzillas and Chuggington. We packed the car, and Kate replaced the concrete block we had moved to enlarge our parking spot. Drove to Barnstaple, where I found the Enterprise place. Kate was amazed! I love impressing her that way. Enterprise sent us to the railway station in a taxi, and we were actually so early that we could get on to the 9:43 to Exeter -- an hour before we'd planned. Found seats and luggage space, for a pleasant ride to Exeter St. David's.
At Exeter we got civilized and used a lift to move between platforms. We learned that you can't get reserved seats unless you arrange them the night before. So we sat in the sun on a bench and tried to guess where coach C, the unreserved coach would come in. Our train was 10:57 "Cross Country" train to Glasgow Central--although we were only riding it to Birmingham. It's one of the major changes to England since I last visited: British Rail has been replaced by a mosaic of private companies: Virgin, Southern, Cross Country, First, and a host of smaller ones. On this train we got good seats: two facing forward and two facing back, luggage nearby.
The design of the British coaches has half the seats facing backwards at all times--often they face in the opposite direction across the aisle. It seems silly, as if they can't be bothered to align the coaches with the direction of travel. Or maybe it's just an invitation to consider whether the glass is half full or half empty. In any case, you get quite used to riding backwards.
Birmingham New Street station is like Penn Central in New York: all underground. We came in on platform 9, and made our way via a lift and even deeper "subways" (tunnels) to platform 4b, where we found our train already loading. It was pretty full already. The best we could do was to stash the big bags in the hall outside the toilet, but we did find four seats together, albeit riding backwards. (Finding a place for your luggage on British trains is like parking in British towns: you can only do it by inconveniencing someone, and you're supposed to do so, and act as though it's normal.)
Nonetheless this was also a pleasant ride. Two little girls across the aisle from us kept us entertained, and we were in Lancaster by 16:08. Lots of students in school uniforms on the platform, reminding us that it was a Friday afternoon. Here in Lancaster we had to wait an hour for our 17:25 train, but it was a fun station to hang out in. Galen kept reading the board to see what was coming next, and we watched trains roar through or stop for a minute. The train to Kendal was quite crowded and we did not get seats, but we didn't mind since it was only 30 minutes. The interior of the Transpennine Express coaches was purple!
Stepped off the platform at Kendal and contemplated the town map. It looked totally different from my map, because north was down in the corner. Not exactly clear how they chose which way was up. Walked our bags down the street to the Riverside Hotel. Got a wonderful room, on the third floor, on one end, facing out over the river.
Went for a walk to find some dinner. Discovered Kendal's remarkably posh pedestrian shopping area. There are more outdoor stores here than anywhere else we've been! Only slightly behind are estate agents: obviously real estate is a big deal here. The prices are high. A log home on a river near Ambleside will run you £685,000. We ate some fish & chips,and some chinese food; neither was outstanding, but it was all we needed.
Home to the hotel room and watched World Cup for a few minutes on TV, and took showers.
The boys watched some wierd stuff on CBBC: Zingzillas and Chuggington. We packed the car, and Kate replaced the concrete block we had moved to enlarge our parking spot. Drove to Barnstaple, where I found the Enterprise place. Kate was amazed! I love impressing her that way. Enterprise sent us to the railway station in a taxi, and we were actually so early that we could get on to the 9:43 to Exeter -- an hour before we'd planned. Found seats and luggage space, for a pleasant ride to Exeter St. David's.
At Exeter we got civilized and used a lift to move between platforms. We learned that you can't get reserved seats unless you arrange them the night before. So we sat in the sun on a bench and tried to guess where coach C, the unreserved coach would come in. Our train was 10:57 "Cross Country" train to Glasgow Central--although we were only riding it to Birmingham. It's one of the major changes to England since I last visited: British Rail has been replaced by a mosaic of private companies: Virgin, Southern, Cross Country, First, and a host of smaller ones. On this train we got good seats: two facing forward and two facing back, luggage nearby.
The design of the British coaches has half the seats facing backwards at all times--often they face in the opposite direction across the aisle. It seems silly, as if they can't be bothered to align the coaches with the direction of travel. Or maybe it's just an invitation to consider whether the glass is half full or half empty. In any case, you get quite used to riding backwards.
Birmingham New Street station is like Penn Central in New York: all underground. We came in on platform 9, and made our way via a lift and even deeper "subways" (tunnels) to platform 4b, where we found our train already loading. It was pretty full already. The best we could do was to stash the big bags in the hall outside the toilet, but we did find four seats together, albeit riding backwards. (Finding a place for your luggage on British trains is like parking in British towns: you can only do it by inconveniencing someone, and you're supposed to do so, and act as though it's normal.)
Nonetheless this was also a pleasant ride. Two little girls across the aisle from us kept us entertained, and we were in Lancaster by 16:08. Lots of students in school uniforms on the platform, reminding us that it was a Friday afternoon. Here in Lancaster we had to wait an hour for our 17:25 train, but it was a fun station to hang out in. Galen kept reading the board to see what was coming next, and we watched trains roar through or stop for a minute. The train to Kendal was quite crowded and we did not get seats, but we didn't mind since it was only 30 minutes. The interior of the Transpennine Express coaches was purple!
Stepped off the platform at Kendal and contemplated the town map. It looked totally different from my map, because north was down in the corner. Not exactly clear how they chose which way was up. Walked our bags down the street to the Riverside Hotel. Got a wonderful room, on the third floor, on one end, facing out over the river.
Went for a walk to find some dinner. Discovered Kendal's remarkably posh pedestrian shopping area. There are more outdoor stores here than anywhere else we've been! Only slightly behind are estate agents: obviously real estate is a big deal here. The prices are high. A log home on a river near Ambleside will run you £685,000. We ate some fish & chips,and some chinese food; neither was outstanding, but it was all we needed.
Home to the hotel room and watched World Cup for a few minutes on TV, and took showers.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Rest Day In Appledore
It was a rest day of rest days. We had nothing on plan, except mailing off our excess loot, making a stab at connecting with the internet, and visiting the North Devon Maritime Museum, which is a block from our house. We never even picked up the camera.
I went down to the Docton Court gallery at 10:00 and hooked in to their internet, and met David Carter, who is the local historian who has written the two volumes of the Illustrated History of Appledore. He's also the lead guy in fighting the proposed Richmond Dock development, about which we see flyers and posters on every telelphone pole. The issue is that a developer wants to put housing in the historic shipyard below our cottage. The local residents seem largely opposed: many houses we pass have signs in their windows saying "Save Richmond Shipyard!" It's half a world away, but their trials are much like what we experience opposing the molybdenum mine in Smithers. Public protest to government is only being accepted at certain times and in certain formats; comment has to be restricted to constructive suggestions; the developer resubmits his plans with only minor changes; and so on.
Went up next to meet Kate and boys at the Maritime Museum. I thought they'd be done in a few minutes in this small local museum, but when I got there they were enthralled, and they were there for two hours in the end. Besides the excellent exhibits, the museum had two great men who told us us stories. There were exhibits on local ships and ship builders dating back to the 16th century (explorers to the Northeast Passage, and fishermen to Newfoundland, then traders in Virginia tobacco, and so on). We learned that the City of Chichester, the cargo ship Galen and Will liberally shelled from the Newhaven Fort, was built here in Appledore, as was the keel of the Queen Elizabeth air craft Carrier yet to be launched.
One room was titled "Appledore's Secret war," and in photographs told the story of all the bizarre and sometimes disastrous military inventions that during the war were tested on the beaches near here. One was the Great Panjandrum, a 12 foot high wheel (like a cable spool) which was filled in the centre with explosives and fitted with rockets around the edges. The idea was that the landing craft released the panjandrum, the rockets were lit, and it rolled up the beach at 60 miles per hour. The explosives detonated in the Atlantic Wall and blew a tank-sized hole through it. When tested on the public beach in Westward Ho! in 1944 it got loose, some of the rockets came off, and it began to go every which way, and was, actually, a disaster. More recently it has been suggested that the whole thing was a disinformation campaign to convince the Germans that the Allies were planning on invading near Calais, where the Germans had such a wall. That's why it was tested so publicly.
One of the men volunteering at the museum was Jim Jackson, who organizes the Appledore Book Festival. Last year, to kick off the festival, he built a half-size model of the actual Panjandrum, and ignited it on a local beach.
We popped back to the cottage for lunch and tried to eat our way through our remaining food. Then went down to John's and bought some padded mailing enveopes for sending home books the kids have finished, etc., around the corner into Market Street for Will to buy the tiny VW bus he's been dreaming of, up Irsha Street to the RNLI for Kate to buy a t-shirt (unfortunately their store was not open) and home again.
I went out at 4:00 for a Cream Tea at the Schooner Tea Room. Advertisements for Cream Teas are everywhere, as if they are an indispensable part of any visit to Devon (or Cornwall). They look kind of tasty and I thought perhaps I should not leave Devon without trying one--and no one else wanted to go. (Kate: "I've tried that, and once was enough!") It was lovely having tea by myself, but the Cream Tea, well, it's a bit of a killer. I mean, a public health hazard. They serve you a couple scones and a lot of clotted cream, which is sort of like whipped cream with butter in it. It's like when you order nachos and it comes with a side of sour cream, and you think "That looks like it'll lead to a coronary, so I'll just skip that." But here the clotted cream is, like, the main point: you spread it on the scones and just eat it. I dug in because, well, when in Rome... but I really couldn't believe it. Couldn't eat for hours afterward.
We mailed our packages off at the Post Office in John's, which was wonderfully easy. Lots of school kids on the Quay jigging for crabs and taking turns at kayaks. Stiff wind blowing from the northeast. Tidal rips in the estuary.
I went down to the Docton Court gallery at 10:00 and hooked in to their internet, and met David Carter, who is the local historian who has written the two volumes of the Illustrated History of Appledore. He's also the lead guy in fighting the proposed Richmond Dock development, about which we see flyers and posters on every telelphone pole. The issue is that a developer wants to put housing in the historic shipyard below our cottage. The local residents seem largely opposed: many houses we pass have signs in their windows saying "Save Richmond Shipyard!" It's half a world away, but their trials are much like what we experience opposing the molybdenum mine in Smithers. Public protest to government is only being accepted at certain times and in certain formats; comment has to be restricted to constructive suggestions; the developer resubmits his plans with only minor changes; and so on.
Went up next to meet Kate and boys at the Maritime Museum. I thought they'd be done in a few minutes in this small local museum, but when I got there they were enthralled, and they were there for two hours in the end. Besides the excellent exhibits, the museum had two great men who told us us stories. There were exhibits on local ships and ship builders dating back to the 16th century (explorers to the Northeast Passage, and fishermen to Newfoundland, then traders in Virginia tobacco, and so on). We learned that the City of Chichester, the cargo ship Galen and Will liberally shelled from the Newhaven Fort, was built here in Appledore, as was the keel of the Queen Elizabeth air craft Carrier yet to be launched.
One room was titled "Appledore's Secret war," and in photographs told the story of all the bizarre and sometimes disastrous military inventions that during the war were tested on the beaches near here. One was the Great Panjandrum, a 12 foot high wheel (like a cable spool) which was filled in the centre with explosives and fitted with rockets around the edges. The idea was that the landing craft released the panjandrum, the rockets were lit, and it rolled up the beach at 60 miles per hour. The explosives detonated in the Atlantic Wall and blew a tank-sized hole through it. When tested on the public beach in Westward Ho! in 1944 it got loose, some of the rockets came off, and it began to go every which way, and was, actually, a disaster. More recently it has been suggested that the whole thing was a disinformation campaign to convince the Germans that the Allies were planning on invading near Calais, where the Germans had such a wall. That's why it was tested so publicly.
One of the men volunteering at the museum was Jim Jackson, who organizes the Appledore Book Festival. Last year, to kick off the festival, he built a half-size model of the actual Panjandrum, and ignited it on a local beach.
We popped back to the cottage for lunch and tried to eat our way through our remaining food. Then went down to John's and bought some padded mailing enveopes for sending home books the kids have finished, etc., around the corner into Market Street for Will to buy the tiny VW bus he's been dreaming of, up Irsha Street to the RNLI for Kate to buy a t-shirt (unfortunately their store was not open) and home again.
I went out at 4:00 for a Cream Tea at the Schooner Tea Room. Advertisements for Cream Teas are everywhere, as if they are an indispensable part of any visit to Devon (or Cornwall). They look kind of tasty and I thought perhaps I should not leave Devon without trying one--and no one else wanted to go. (Kate: "I've tried that, and once was enough!") It was lovely having tea by myself, but the Cream Tea, well, it's a bit of a killer. I mean, a public health hazard. They serve you a couple scones and a lot of clotted cream, which is sort of like whipped cream with butter in it. It's like when you order nachos and it comes with a side of sour cream, and you think "That looks like it'll lead to a coronary, so I'll just skip that." But here the clotted cream is, like, the main point: you spread it on the scones and just eat it. I dug in because, well, when in Rome... but I really couldn't believe it. Couldn't eat for hours afterward.
We mailed our packages off at the Post Office in John's, which was wonderfully easy. Lots of school kids on the Quay jigging for crabs and taking turns at kayaks. Stiff wind blowing from the northeast. Tidal rips in the estuary.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
A Walk To Westward Ho! And Back
When we first went to Westward Ho! last Saturday we had thought it would be fun to walk there from Appledore on the South West Coast Trail, and today we did that. The weather report said that it would be a mixture of sunny breaks and rain showers however, so we packed our raingear as well as our swimsuits. We made sure the eboys both had their walking shoes on, instead of Crocs, but we had barely made it to the playground at the far end of the Quay when Will began to complain of hot feet. "Let's just be smart and turn around right now and get him his Crocs," said Kate. "Anything would be better than hearing about his hot feet for six hours!" So we did that, and with Will happily skipping along in his Crocs, we headed off.
As you leave Appledore to the north you go down yet another pretty street lined with cleverly painted houses that we had not yet seen: Irsha Street. We saw some new colours: lavender, purple and darker green. At its end was the RNLI lifeboat station, and then roads ended and the path continued as a muddy track right above the sea. Tide was thoroughly out, at full ebb, so we were skirting around a vast area of mud identified on the map as the Skarn. When the path divided into High Tide and Low Tide alternate routes, we took the High Tide one because the mud did not look appealing to us. Both routes united at the Northam Burrows County park: 'burrows' seems to be a common name for dunes here.
A friendly attendant at the park gate asked if we'd been here before and recommended we walk straight across the area towards an interpretive centre on the far side. The map showed a golf course in the way, but when I asked if that would be a problem he just shrugged his shoulders. And it was the strangest golf course: it was a sheep field, the grass thickly littered with sheep droppings, and yet it also had tees, fairways, and holes, not to mention sand traps. To Kate's great interest, sheep were being herded into pens by two people and two dogs: we got to watch the dogs racing back and forth doing their work, and doing it very well.
At the interpretive centre we climbed a long berm of cobbles and at its top we heard and saw the sea. Before us was a long stretch of sand out to the water, perhaps 300 metres, and to our right and left it stretched on for kilometres. Westward Ho! was visible down to the left. There were almost no people about: a few were walking dogs. We sat down and lunched.
For a long time, Galen and Will drew things with sticks on the immense canvas of the clean sand. There were occasional peeps of sun, but on the whole it was windy and cloudy, the wind from the sea (northwest) and the clouds apparently moving in from the land (southwest). Far out to sea a thick bank of cloud was visible beyond blue sky. Then the boys decided it was time for swimming, changed into trunks and headed for the shallow surf. I put on my suit too and joined them, although I was only brave enough to go in up to my hips. It was screamingly cold, except when the occasional mysterious warm current would wash around our feet. Most of the waves came from straight out, but there was also a small supply of waves coming from the left, as if they'd bounced off a headland beyond Westward Ho!. Kate wisely watched from the safety of the shallows.
When finally chilled, we dressed, packed up and hiked down to Westward Ho! to investigate the mini-golf. To us who have played mini-golf across North America, it was a fairly unimaginative course: 9 pretty straightforward holes for £7.50, but the boys played in such a civilized manner that I couldn't have been happier. (Mini-golf in our family is sometimes the occasion of a breakdown of good behaviour.) Kate wisely (again) took a walk and explored while we did this.
We had agreed to meet at the RNLI lifeguard truck on the beach, but when we went to go there, there was no lifeguard truck! There was no beach! The tide had come up so high that the entire beach was gone, and the lifeguard truck was parked up on the ramp (Kate next to it), and the lifeguards were out surfing. We bought ices, and Kate, unusually, argued for chips and hot chocolate as well. While we ate these in the lee of some big rocks it began to rain in earnest.
In full raingear we hiked north out of town on the Pebble Ridge, which is the actual name of the berm of cobbles that runs behind the beach. It was like a backpacking trip when hiking in bad weather you lose touch with your buddies: adjusting your hood to screen your face from the driving rain, and watching your footing on piles of wet round rocks. When the rain stopped, we found ourselves in an area where round depressions had been scooped out of the summit of the ridge, as if people had been making shelters for tents or fires or picnicking. Each was about two feet deep and ten feet in diameter. We stopped in one: it was warm to be out of the wind in there. The thing is that they were quite close to each other: one every ten yards or so, so either there are typically a heck of a lot of picnickers, or there is some other explanation.
Once we left the Pebble Ridge and headed back across the golf course, it got hot. The sheep had been released and spent a lot of time baa-ing at us. There were also golfers to avoid. At the Coast Path, even though it was fully high tide now, we took the Low Tide trail: we could see now where it went and it was both above water and non-muddy.
Coming back into Appledore we visited the RNLI lifeboat station. RNLI stands fr the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and its a charity rather than some arm of the government or military. Kate was so inspired by their stories of rescue that she's decided to join as a supporter. (If we lived here she said she'd be volunteering too, but only for on-shore duties.) Kate also has her eye on a pale green bit of house on Irsha Street that is for sale: it looks like it has a commanding view of the estuary out the back.
Bought a cod & chips for Galen at Sylvester's (no line!) as we came through the centre of Appledore. It was so big we were able to feed the entire family on it. When we got home Kate took in the laundry, and as we ate dinner it poured rain outside. But just a shower again: soon the sun was shining. We hung the laundry inside the house.
As you leave Appledore to the north you go down yet another pretty street lined with cleverly painted houses that we had not yet seen: Irsha Street. We saw some new colours: lavender, purple and darker green. At its end was the RNLI lifeboat station, and then roads ended and the path continued as a muddy track right above the sea. Tide was thoroughly out, at full ebb, so we were skirting around a vast area of mud identified on the map as the Skarn. When the path divided into High Tide and Low Tide alternate routes, we took the High Tide one because the mud did not look appealing to us. Both routes united at the Northam Burrows County park: 'burrows' seems to be a common name for dunes here.
A friendly attendant at the park gate asked if we'd been here before and recommended we walk straight across the area towards an interpretive centre on the far side. The map showed a golf course in the way, but when I asked if that would be a problem he just shrugged his shoulders. And it was the strangest golf course: it was a sheep field, the grass thickly littered with sheep droppings, and yet it also had tees, fairways, and holes, not to mention sand traps. To Kate's great interest, sheep were being herded into pens by two people and two dogs: we got to watch the dogs racing back and forth doing their work, and doing it very well.
At the interpretive centre we climbed a long berm of cobbles and at its top we heard and saw the sea. Before us was a long stretch of sand out to the water, perhaps 300 metres, and to our right and left it stretched on for kilometres. Westward Ho! was visible down to the left. There were almost no people about: a few were walking dogs. We sat down and lunched.
For a long time, Galen and Will drew things with sticks on the immense canvas of the clean sand. There were occasional peeps of sun, but on the whole it was windy and cloudy, the wind from the sea (northwest) and the clouds apparently moving in from the land (southwest). Far out to sea a thick bank of cloud was visible beyond blue sky. Then the boys decided it was time for swimming, changed into trunks and headed for the shallow surf. I put on my suit too and joined them, although I was only brave enough to go in up to my hips. It was screamingly cold, except when the occasional mysterious warm current would wash around our feet. Most of the waves came from straight out, but there was also a small supply of waves coming from the left, as if they'd bounced off a headland beyond Westward Ho!. Kate wisely watched from the safety of the shallows.
When finally chilled, we dressed, packed up and hiked down to Westward Ho! to investigate the mini-golf. To us who have played mini-golf across North America, it was a fairly unimaginative course: 9 pretty straightforward holes for £7.50, but the boys played in such a civilized manner that I couldn't have been happier. (Mini-golf in our family is sometimes the occasion of a breakdown of good behaviour.) Kate wisely (again) took a walk and explored while we did this.
We had agreed to meet at the RNLI lifeguard truck on the beach, but when we went to go there, there was no lifeguard truck! There was no beach! The tide had come up so high that the entire beach was gone, and the lifeguard truck was parked up on the ramp (Kate next to it), and the lifeguards were out surfing. We bought ices, and Kate, unusually, argued for chips and hot chocolate as well. While we ate these in the lee of some big rocks it began to rain in earnest.
In full raingear we hiked north out of town on the Pebble Ridge, which is the actual name of the berm of cobbles that runs behind the beach. It was like a backpacking trip when hiking in bad weather you lose touch with your buddies: adjusting your hood to screen your face from the driving rain, and watching your footing on piles of wet round rocks. When the rain stopped, we found ourselves in an area where round depressions had been scooped out of the summit of the ridge, as if people had been making shelters for tents or fires or picnicking. Each was about two feet deep and ten feet in diameter. We stopped in one: it was warm to be out of the wind in there. The thing is that they were quite close to each other: one every ten yards or so, so either there are typically a heck of a lot of picnickers, or there is some other explanation.
Once we left the Pebble Ridge and headed back across the golf course, it got hot. The sheep had been released and spent a lot of time baa-ing at us. There were also golfers to avoid. At the Coast Path, even though it was fully high tide now, we took the Low Tide trail: we could see now where it went and it was both above water and non-muddy.
Coming back into Appledore we visited the RNLI lifeboat station. RNLI stands fr the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and its a charity rather than some arm of the government or military. Kate was so inspired by their stories of rescue that she's decided to join as a supporter. (If we lived here she said she'd be volunteering too, but only for on-shore duties.) Kate also has her eye on a pale green bit of house on Irsha Street that is for sale: it looks like it has a commanding view of the estuary out the back.
Bought a cod & chips for Galen at Sylvester's (no line!) as we came through the centre of Appledore. It was so big we were able to feed the entire family on it. When we got home Kate took in the laundry, and as we ate dinner it poured rain outside. But just a shower again: soon the sun was shining. We hung the laundry inside the house.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Woolacombe Sands
I got up at 7:00 a.m. to listen to BBC 2 for the weather report. They said, "It was a dreadful day yesterday, but it's getting better. Up to 17 today, but still plenty of showers for this morning." From this we deduced that after some point this morning it would stop raining, and we debated about what to do. However, when we saw blue sky out the window at 9:00 or so, we decided it was our day for Woolacombe Sands, a giant beach that Kate had set her sights on.
(The news report preceding the weather forecast was, well, surprisingly 'tabloid' for the BBC. They led with the story of the team from Devon heading off to London to press the case that the Cream Tea should be recognized as a special food under EU law, like champagne. They interviewed several team members, one of whom said, "It should go quite quickly, unless we run into some red tape in Europe." Which implied, first, that he really had no idea how the process worked, and second, that he didn't think he lived in Europe. If we're not in Europe, where are we?)
We set off just before 11, with a bit of light rain still pattering down, but blue sky still in view. As we approached Woolacombe, the blue sky grew bigger and bigger. We passed many holiday parks, and the number of VW campers increased noticeably. We parked by the beach, and beheld the miles long stretch of sand, but with most of teh activity right at this end. Thee RNLI lifeguards were there, with the red-&-yellow flags marking out the area to swim in, their special truck and a jetski on a trailer. The were loads of people there, and a chip cooking truck out on the sand.
Galen and Will jumped right in. The tide was rising, so every now and then Kate and Morgan had to move their stuff back higher up the beach. The water was very cold (all the other children had wetsuits on, but not these hardy Canadians), but as the waves would recede across the sand it would pick up its heat and it was quite warm when it returned to the sea. When the sun would come out, the sea was a beautiful green and blue, almost Carribean. The waves were big (about 6 feet) but they would break quite far out and they were very mellow when they reached the beach. There were lots of surfers, including some parents with their children.
We also got the watch the RNLI practising. They took out the jetski and roared around in the surf.
We ate lunch, bought some chips for dessert, walked down the beach and then Galen and Will wanted to go back in. They put their suits back on (we would change in the car, even though available for hire were not only wetsuits and body boards but also a line of multi-coloured beach huts) and dived back in! They lay in the path of oncoming waves, and Galen rescued moon jellyfish being washed ashore, by lifting them up on pads of sand. Finally, Will was practically blue, and they had to come out. Will also said his leg hurt, and when we found two thin red lines on on it we surmised that he had been stung by one of the mysterious blue jellyfish we had seen. (Will said, "There was a jellyfish swimming with us!") But it was a minor thing, so we set off.
We next walked around the coast a little way to Barracane Beach, a tiny pocket beach, only about 15 metres wide, between vertical walls of rock. The beach was all shell bits, and adjacent to it was a fantastical landscape of rock and tide pools. The strata were turned vertical here, and the way they had eroded made little walls and walkways. The surf was rolling in right at the same level just off shore, giving the impression that we were below sea level in a walled garden. In the pools were limpets and seaweed.
At this point we began to realize we were actually getting sunburnt on the backs of our necks, so we turned to leave. One more bit of business though: we went into the touristy streets of Wollacombe Village to buy some ices.
On the way home we detoured where it said "Superstore" in Braunton, but when Kate saw it was a Tesco's, she said "Keep on going!" So we just kept going. Missed a turn in Barnstaple, and in the confusion that followed I instinctively pulled into the right lane in an intersection. Got out of that awkwardly, and found our way back to the right road. Stopped now at the Sainsbury's in West Barnstable, and went in to get apples and milk. As always, shopping was a delightful adventure, and we emerged with all sorts of other treats as well: Battenberg cake, mint Polars, olives for Will, Fox's ginger cream biscuits, dark chocolate Hobnobs.
Made it home about 7:00. Dinner, Laundry, Reading... and to bed.
(The news report preceding the weather forecast was, well, surprisingly 'tabloid' for the BBC. They led with the story of the team from Devon heading off to London to press the case that the Cream Tea should be recognized as a special food under EU law, like champagne. They interviewed several team members, one of whom said, "It should go quite quickly, unless we run into some red tape in Europe." Which implied, first, that he really had no idea how the process worked, and second, that he didn't think he lived in Europe. If we're not in Europe, where are we?)
We set off just before 11, with a bit of light rain still pattering down, but blue sky still in view. As we approached Woolacombe, the blue sky grew bigger and bigger. We passed many holiday parks, and the number of VW campers increased noticeably. We parked by the beach, and beheld the miles long stretch of sand, but with most of teh activity right at this end. Thee RNLI lifeguards were there, with the red-&-yellow flags marking out the area to swim in, their special truck and a jetski on a trailer. The were loads of people there, and a chip cooking truck out on the sand.
Galen and Will jumped right in. The tide was rising, so every now and then Kate and Morgan had to move their stuff back higher up the beach. The water was very cold (all the other children had wetsuits on, but not these hardy Canadians), but as the waves would recede across the sand it would pick up its heat and it was quite warm when it returned to the sea. When the sun would come out, the sea was a beautiful green and blue, almost Carribean. The waves were big (about 6 feet) but they would break quite far out and they were very mellow when they reached the beach. There were lots of surfers, including some parents with their children.
We also got the watch the RNLI practising. They took out the jetski and roared around in the surf.
We ate lunch, bought some chips for dessert, walked down the beach and then Galen and Will wanted to go back in. They put their suits back on (we would change in the car, even though available for hire were not only wetsuits and body boards but also a line of multi-coloured beach huts) and dived back in! They lay in the path of oncoming waves, and Galen rescued moon jellyfish being washed ashore, by lifting them up on pads of sand. Finally, Will was practically blue, and they had to come out. Will also said his leg hurt, and when we found two thin red lines on on it we surmised that he had been stung by one of the mysterious blue jellyfish we had seen. (Will said, "There was a jellyfish swimming with us!") But it was a minor thing, so we set off.
We next walked around the coast a little way to Barracane Beach, a tiny pocket beach, only about 15 metres wide, between vertical walls of rock. The beach was all shell bits, and adjacent to it was a fantastical landscape of rock and tide pools. The strata were turned vertical here, and the way they had eroded made little walls and walkways. The surf was rolling in right at the same level just off shore, giving the impression that we were below sea level in a walled garden. In the pools were limpets and seaweed.
At this point we began to realize we were actually getting sunburnt on the backs of our necks, so we turned to leave. One more bit of business though: we went into the touristy streets of Wollacombe Village to buy some ices.
On the way home we detoured where it said "Superstore" in Braunton, but when Kate saw it was a Tesco's, she said "Keep on going!" So we just kept going. Missed a turn in Barnstaple, and in the confusion that followed I instinctively pulled into the right lane in an intersection. Got out of that awkwardly, and found our way back to the right road. Stopped now at the Sainsbury's in West Barnstable, and went in to get apples and milk. As always, shopping was a delightful adventure, and we emerged with all sorts of other treats as well: Battenberg cake, mint Polars, olives for Will, Fox's ginger cream biscuits, dark chocolate Hobnobs.
Made it home about 7:00. Dinner, Laundry, Reading... and to bed.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Tintagel and Padstow
Galen has been saying he wanted to go to Padstow, in Cornwall, ever since we began planning this trip. It's a small harbour he's sailed around many times in "Ship Simulator," so, yes, here were were going to a place because someone had seen it in a computer game.
It looked like a long drive, so we left pretty early, about 9:20. It was an actual rainy day! As we drove the twisting and winding (yet narrow!) A39 towards Bude, with all the windows up, Will started to feel sick. (This was when the car got the new nickname, the Stinky Whale). We spent a long time in a remote yet charming lay-by near the turn for Hartlands Point, and then proceeded with all windows open. It was mighty cold! But it worked for Will, and he made it into our first stop, Tintagel, without problem.
The village of Tintagel is, as you will read in many a guide book, a bit of a disaster. The famous castle (which I was wanted to see; I was the motivating force in coming here), built half on a headland, half on a island, and graced by a lot of Arthurian hoopla, draws so many visitors that every tourist shop imaginable has sprung up in the little village. As you drive in, the word "commercial" does come to mind, but that said, the village is set well back from the ruin and does not really intrude on it. And there's a lot of interesting pottery for sale.
Somehow we were befuddled at first. We parked in a car park whose sign heralded "Closest to Castle!" but then, on foot, we somehow missed the signage for the castle and wound up walking into a newish development of detached houses, and came upon to a ghastly castle-like hotel ("Camelot Hotel: Best coffee in Cornwall!") built overlooking the real ruin. Now we could see where we should have gone, so we trekked back into town and down the right path. We passed a bakery where they were making pasties in the window (Will had to be promised one later) and a sign that said "Land Rover service, £1.50." They'll actually drive you, in a Land Rover, down the long path to the shore where the ruin is; and more importantly, back up.
But we walked. It was pretty windy and rainy at times, but there was still a man in the little English Heritage booth at the entrance to the ruin. "So you want to go in, do you?" he said sceptically. We showed him our English Heritage card and he passed us through. Down slippery steps in spitting rain to a little wooden ramp that goes over to the island, and then up more wet steps, switchbacking up to the entrance of the "Island Keep." There were birds wheeling in the gap between the headland and the island, and it was, well, despite all the New Age excitement, quite magical. We had the ruins mostly to ourselves because of the weather, and we explored all over. The views out along the coast were also wonderful, with high cliffs in both directions, and caves. Just to the south we were pretty sure we could see the cliffs where they filmed the "Cliffs Of Insanity" scene in the Princess Bride: massive black cliffs, topped with thick green turf, white birds wheeling in the gulf of air, surf crashing at the bottom. But really all of the Cornwall coast seems to look like that. So maybe it wasn't.
Most of the wheeling birds were gulls, but there was one pair that were something different. For one thing, they had white spots on the top of each grey wing; for another, they almost never flapped. Their bodies were shorter than a gull's, and they heads and tails were white. Mystery bird.
Reminding us of the day's theme of visiting a place familiar from the computer, Will said, of the grasses waving in the wind atop the island, "That's just like special effects!"
A quick visit to the gift shop, and walked back up to the village, where we bought pasties and ate them inside a small shop while it continued to spit rain outside. A quick survey of the street indicated one could by a hundred different kinds of pasty, and ice cream, but little else. Piled into the car and drove to Padstow. Both boys slept.
Padstow was unexpectedly charming, a town on a blue-green estuary (more Caribbean water!) with a working quay of fishing boats, and a full-blown tourist scene next to that. It was definitely raining now, and yet it was downright crowded! Galen and Will danced with glee to see the actual places they know from Ship Simulator ("I always try to bring my boat in through that entrance to the inner harbour and I always scrape the sides!") and we shot the requisite pictures of them in front of these scenes. We ran from shop to shop to stay dry. The Pasty thing in Cornwall is even more out of control than it is in Devon. There were actually three pasty shops in a row on one street.
Headed out around 5:00, and the last stop on the long drive home was to buy some petrol. Pulled over near St. Kew to do just this, and we could not figure out how to get the gas cap open! However it was merely the last of a long series of challenges we'd faced that day. The solution to this one was my pocket knife. I don't think I actually broke anything.
Arrived home about 7:00 and had a late dinner. The drive was exhausting. I don't think I've ever shifted gears so much. Every 60 seconds there is a different speed zone or type of curve, or change in grade. (And this is a green A-road!) And the oncoming traffic zooming past you mere inches away. It would be delightful if it weren't so dangerous.
It looked like a long drive, so we left pretty early, about 9:20. It was an actual rainy day! As we drove the twisting and winding (yet narrow!) A39 towards Bude, with all the windows up, Will started to feel sick. (This was when the car got the new nickname, the Stinky Whale). We spent a long time in a remote yet charming lay-by near the turn for Hartlands Point, and then proceeded with all windows open. It was mighty cold! But it worked for Will, and he made it into our first stop, Tintagel, without problem.
The village of Tintagel is, as you will read in many a guide book, a bit of a disaster. The famous castle (which I was wanted to see; I was the motivating force in coming here), built half on a headland, half on a island, and graced by a lot of Arthurian hoopla, draws so many visitors that every tourist shop imaginable has sprung up in the little village. As you drive in, the word "commercial" does come to mind, but that said, the village is set well back from the ruin and does not really intrude on it. And there's a lot of interesting pottery for sale.
Somehow we were befuddled at first. We parked in a car park whose sign heralded "Closest to Castle!" but then, on foot, we somehow missed the signage for the castle and wound up walking into a newish development of detached houses, and came upon to a ghastly castle-like hotel ("Camelot Hotel: Best coffee in Cornwall!") built overlooking the real ruin. Now we could see where we should have gone, so we trekked back into town and down the right path. We passed a bakery where they were making pasties in the window (Will had to be promised one later) and a sign that said "Land Rover service, £1.50." They'll actually drive you, in a Land Rover, down the long path to the shore where the ruin is; and more importantly, back up.
But we walked. It was pretty windy and rainy at times, but there was still a man in the little English Heritage booth at the entrance to the ruin. "So you want to go in, do you?" he said sceptically. We showed him our English Heritage card and he passed us through. Down slippery steps in spitting rain to a little wooden ramp that goes over to the island, and then up more wet steps, switchbacking up to the entrance of the "Island Keep." There were birds wheeling in the gap between the headland and the island, and it was, well, despite all the New Age excitement, quite magical. We had the ruins mostly to ourselves because of the weather, and we explored all over. The views out along the coast were also wonderful, with high cliffs in both directions, and caves. Just to the south we were pretty sure we could see the cliffs where they filmed the "Cliffs Of Insanity" scene in the Princess Bride: massive black cliffs, topped with thick green turf, white birds wheeling in the gulf of air, surf crashing at the bottom. But really all of the Cornwall coast seems to look like that. So maybe it wasn't.
Most of the wheeling birds were gulls, but there was one pair that were something different. For one thing, they had white spots on the top of each grey wing; for another, they almost never flapped. Their bodies were shorter than a gull's, and they heads and tails were white. Mystery bird.
Reminding us of the day's theme of visiting a place familiar from the computer, Will said, of the grasses waving in the wind atop the island, "That's just like special effects!"
A quick visit to the gift shop, and walked back up to the village, where we bought pasties and ate them inside a small shop while it continued to spit rain outside. A quick survey of the street indicated one could by a hundred different kinds of pasty, and ice cream, but little else. Piled into the car and drove to Padstow. Both boys slept.
Padstow was unexpectedly charming, a town on a blue-green estuary (more Caribbean water!) with a working quay of fishing boats, and a full-blown tourist scene next to that. It was definitely raining now, and yet it was downright crowded! Galen and Will danced with glee to see the actual places they know from Ship Simulator ("I always try to bring my boat in through that entrance to the inner harbour and I always scrape the sides!") and we shot the requisite pictures of them in front of these scenes. We ran from shop to shop to stay dry. The Pasty thing in Cornwall is even more out of control than it is in Devon. There were actually three pasty shops in a row on one street.
Headed out around 5:00, and the last stop on the long drive home was to buy some petrol. Pulled over near St. Kew to do just this, and we could not figure out how to get the gas cap open! However it was merely the last of a long series of challenges we'd faced that day. The solution to this one was my pocket knife. I don't think I actually broke anything.
Arrived home about 7:00 and had a late dinner. The drive was exhausting. I don't think I've ever shifted gears so much. Every 60 seconds there is a different speed zone or type of curve, or change in grade. (And this is a green A-road!) And the oncoming traffic zooming past you mere inches away. It would be delightful if it weren't so dangerous.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Tarka Trail
It was overcast this morning, and without internet we had no idea how to check the weather forecast. We tried listening to the radio while making breakfast, but it was all either religious programming or church music. It is a Sunday morning, after all. (Note: the caretaker for this cottage just dropped by and told me I could listen to "Heart" for a weather forecast, and it's somewhere on the dial below BBC 1, which is near 90MHz, FM.)
Will slept in, so we didn't really get going until after nine, but we decided at that point to go cycling on the Tarka Trail. The Tarka Trail is what we'd call a "rails-to-trails conversion" in North America: an old rail grade, its tracks taken up, renewed now as a trail. Such trails are usually a very gentle grade, and in fact here on the estuary the map indicated this one would be dead flat. The trail is named for Tarka the Otter, a character from a popular children's book set in this area (which none of us have read).
(Let me digress for a bit of geography here. Two estuaries meet off Appledore: the Taw and the Torridge. A few miles up the Torridge estuary is Bideford, our nearest town, and a few miles up the Taw estuary is Barnstaple, where we arrived by rail. The trail follows the estuary edges between the two towns.)
When we left the cottage an ominous fog was blowing in quite thickly from the west, but we forged ahead anyway, the principle being that you never decide to turn back before you're actually on the route.
We knew there was cycle hire in Barnstaple at the train station, but our OS "Explorer" map (that's 1:25,000 topographic, with public footpaths and other trails marked, plus various other information of interest to walkers) also indicated "Cycle Hire" on a lonely stretch of the trail, halfway between Barnstaple and Bideford. We decided to try to find this cycle hire place, because it looked like a fun, remote place to ride. We really didn't know how many miles the kids would be good for.
The map was unclear on how one actually gets to this place--there did not seem to be a road--so we drove to the nearby village of Fremington, and looked for signs. We found one to "Historic Fremington Quay" and that led us to a one-lane road (with many confidence-inspiring lay-bys), along a tiny sub-estuary called Fremington Pill. It brought us to a lonely yet lovely building out where the mud flats begin, complete with tea house, rental cottage, parking lot, and cycle hire. It was very magical.
The estuaries have vast mud areas that disappear at high tide. Tide was approaching high now, so we were looking out across long grass to water, and across the estuary we could see an airport, possibly at Royal Marines Base at Chivern. A white plane with long wings, like a glider, repeatedly took off and landed. The wind sock there was standing out. No fog any more.
The guy at the cycle hire shop expertly and rapidly fitted us all for cycles. Galen declared this was a Crazy Mission and that he would Not Go because there were no helmets. However, free helmets materialized, along with panniers, a lock, and a repair kit. We were extremely well-outfitted. We ate our picnic lunch and set out on bikes westward, for the village of Instow, about a mile and a half away. The wind was in our teeth, but it was dead flat, riding along above salt marshes and between rows of trees scultpted by the sea breeze. We stopped to adjust this and that, and teach Will how to use gears, and we passed many a family, and older couples botanizing and birding along the way. Wild roses were blooming, the hawthorn was blooming, and lots of other little flowers. In many places the trial was lined with trees: oaks, ash, hawthorn, willow or pine. When we arrived in Instow, the boys were doing quite well.
Instow is a small viallge like Appledore, which it faces across the Torridge Estuary. All its buildings are white or pastel, and there is a quay whcih runs the length of the waterfront. We saw sailors in wetsuits wading out to their light sailbaots and preparing to race, There was an excellent, steady wind. We continued on towards Bideford. The water (to our right) was bright blue, like a Carribean blue, and Appledore was a compact village on the far shore. Near it was the huge shed of Babcock's Appledore Shipyard, a major employer here. We cycled under the bridge of the A39, and came into what is techncially not the part of Bideford on the east side of teh river, but a separate town named East-The-Water. Will was pretty interested in turning around at this point, but we tempted him with a visit to Happy Pasty, a pasty factory in Bideford we'd seen an ad for. We stashed our bikes at the old station in East-The-Water, and walked across the 600 year-old brdge of 24 arches, of which Bideford is right proud. We found the Happy Pasty, closed, alas, for Sunday, and vowed to return.
Now with the wind at our backs we cycled the three miles back quite quickly, Stopped in Instow for ice cream. The sailing races had ended, and we could see sailors pulling their craft ashore into the "North Devon Yacht Club." Timing, to take out the boat at just the moment the tide was still high enough, looked crucial. These sailors were wearing very heroic-looking, quasi-military gear: full-body, black wetsuits and trim grey lifevests. Racing is a serious business here.
The weather cleared fully now, blue sky everywhere. At about 3:30 we turned the bikes back in at Fremington Quay, and headed home. In the Whale's parking niche, Kate moved the little concrete blocks so I could wedge our marine mammal another inch further in. She and Will stopped down at John's of Appledore for milk and eggs. We did a load of laundry and cooked chicken tikka for dinner. Will experienced a burst of energy and led Galen and me on a round-the-block race (up through our garden and out our back door; along the alley, then drop steeply to New Street; along descending New Street, dropping past our front door and out on the main road at sea level; around the fire house and back up up up the alley to our car. Whew!) Kate and the boys went for an after dinner walk to the playground.
Will slept in, so we didn't really get going until after nine, but we decided at that point to go cycling on the Tarka Trail. The Tarka Trail is what we'd call a "rails-to-trails conversion" in North America: an old rail grade, its tracks taken up, renewed now as a trail. Such trails are usually a very gentle grade, and in fact here on the estuary the map indicated this one would be dead flat. The trail is named for Tarka the Otter, a character from a popular children's book set in this area (which none of us have read).
(Let me digress for a bit of geography here. Two estuaries meet off Appledore: the Taw and the Torridge. A few miles up the Torridge estuary is Bideford, our nearest town, and a few miles up the Taw estuary is Barnstaple, where we arrived by rail. The trail follows the estuary edges between the two towns.)
When we left the cottage an ominous fog was blowing in quite thickly from the west, but we forged ahead anyway, the principle being that you never decide to turn back before you're actually on the route.
We knew there was cycle hire in Barnstaple at the train station, but our OS "Explorer" map (that's 1:25,000 topographic, with public footpaths and other trails marked, plus various other information of interest to walkers) also indicated "Cycle Hire" on a lonely stretch of the trail, halfway between Barnstaple and Bideford. We decided to try to find this cycle hire place, because it looked like a fun, remote place to ride. We really didn't know how many miles the kids would be good for.
The map was unclear on how one actually gets to this place--there did not seem to be a road--so we drove to the nearby village of Fremington, and looked for signs. We found one to "Historic Fremington Quay" and that led us to a one-lane road (with many confidence-inspiring lay-bys), along a tiny sub-estuary called Fremington Pill. It brought us to a lonely yet lovely building out where the mud flats begin, complete with tea house, rental cottage, parking lot, and cycle hire. It was very magical.
The estuaries have vast mud areas that disappear at high tide. Tide was approaching high now, so we were looking out across long grass to water, and across the estuary we could see an airport, possibly at Royal Marines Base at Chivern. A white plane with long wings, like a glider, repeatedly took off and landed. The wind sock there was standing out. No fog any more.
The guy at the cycle hire shop expertly and rapidly fitted us all for cycles. Galen declared this was a Crazy Mission and that he would Not Go because there were no helmets. However, free helmets materialized, along with panniers, a lock, and a repair kit. We were extremely well-outfitted. We ate our picnic lunch and set out on bikes westward, for the village of Instow, about a mile and a half away. The wind was in our teeth, but it was dead flat, riding along above salt marshes and between rows of trees scultpted by the sea breeze. We stopped to adjust this and that, and teach Will how to use gears, and we passed many a family, and older couples botanizing and birding along the way. Wild roses were blooming, the hawthorn was blooming, and lots of other little flowers. In many places the trial was lined with trees: oaks, ash, hawthorn, willow or pine. When we arrived in Instow, the boys were doing quite well.
Instow is a small viallge like Appledore, which it faces across the Torridge Estuary. All its buildings are white or pastel, and there is a quay whcih runs the length of the waterfront. We saw sailors in wetsuits wading out to their light sailbaots and preparing to race, There was an excellent, steady wind. We continued on towards Bideford. The water (to our right) was bright blue, like a Carribean blue, and Appledore was a compact village on the far shore. Near it was the huge shed of Babcock's Appledore Shipyard, a major employer here. We cycled under the bridge of the A39, and came into what is techncially not the part of Bideford on the east side of teh river, but a separate town named East-The-Water. Will was pretty interested in turning around at this point, but we tempted him with a visit to Happy Pasty, a pasty factory in Bideford we'd seen an ad for. We stashed our bikes at the old station in East-The-Water, and walked across the 600 year-old brdge of 24 arches, of which Bideford is right proud. We found the Happy Pasty, closed, alas, for Sunday, and vowed to return.
Now with the wind at our backs we cycled the three miles back quite quickly, Stopped in Instow for ice cream. The sailing races had ended, and we could see sailors pulling their craft ashore into the "North Devon Yacht Club." Timing, to take out the boat at just the moment the tide was still high enough, looked crucial. These sailors were wearing very heroic-looking, quasi-military gear: full-body, black wetsuits and trim grey lifevests. Racing is a serious business here.
The weather cleared fully now, blue sky everywhere. At about 3:30 we turned the bikes back in at Fremington Quay, and headed home. In the Whale's parking niche, Kate moved the little concrete blocks so I could wedge our marine mammal another inch further in. She and Will stopped down at John's of Appledore for milk and eggs. We did a load of laundry and cooked chicken tikka for dinner. Will experienced a burst of energy and led Galen and me on a round-the-block race (up through our garden and out our back door; along the alley, then drop steeply to New Street; along descending New Street, dropping past our front door and out on the main road at sea level; around the fire house and back up up up the alley to our car. Whew!) Kate and the boys went for an after dinner walk to the playground.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Westward Ho!
Our first day of "relaxing." We had a relaxed get-up and a relaxed breakfast, and still it was only like 8:30. We went for a relaxed walk around the narrow streets of Appledore. In one tiny shop, where half of it was tourist stuff and the other was boat repair supplies, Kate bought a red toque. By eavesdropping on others we learned there's no chemist (pharmacy) in Appledore, but you can go up to Northam for one (a nearby village).
We went into a few of the galleries hosting special exhibits for the Visual Arts Frestival, and saw some fun creative stuff. There are yurts on the quay where you can learn about the festival. With the tide now high, we watched boys fishing for crab off the Quay. You can buy a little crab line (it looks like kite string wrapped around an H-shaped frame) and bait, and a bucket to hold your crabs, at a shop near the one where Kate got her hat. We saw several postcards that featured VW camper-busses driving around Devon, or parked in front of various bits of the Devon coast. Realization: there is a VW camper thing in Devon.
We piled into the Whale, and with Kate outside directing I managed to get it scrape-free out of our alley. Our first stop was Marshford Organics, a small farm shop on the way out of town. Will came running out to say, "Dad, it's the kind of store where you love everything!" We bought half our groceries there (Kate: "I want to Move Here") and went for the other half to Morrisson's in Bideford. This was a big, busy store with a large parking lot. We went up and down all the aisles, marvelled at how the eggs are sold unrefrigerated, and got most of everything we need for the week.
Came home and ate lunch, and then the boys were keen to swim, so we set off for the nearby town of Westward Ho!, the only town in Britain to be named after a book, and the only town anywhere with an exclamation mark in its name. It's only about ten minutes away, after you extract the Whale from its parking niche. We found a pay-and-display lot, and spilled out onto the giant beach. It's about two kilometres long and 500 metres deep. Lifeguards from the Royal National Lifesaving Institution (RNLI) had set up a pair of yellow-and-red flags, which you were supposed to swim between, and they were on station with their snazzy little RNLI truck. Lots of people were weearing wetsuits, but Galen and Will charged in wearing their regular swim trunks, and had a blast. Kate and Morgan rolled up their pants and watched.
Finally as the boys were turning blue we quit the beach and had an ice cream. Saw the Southwest Coastal Path sign which said "Appledore 3 1/2 mi." and decided we should walk here next time. Will also spotted mini-golf, one of his real passions. We headed home at around 5. Pasties for dinner from John's, with salad. We went for an after-dinner walk along the Quay, and explored the graveyard at St. Mary's church. The boys are eager to buy firewood and build a fire in our cottage, but John's is out of this. Besides, given the rarity of forests in England, firewood must be a precious commodity. It might make more sense to wait and build fires back in Canada.
We went into a few of the galleries hosting special exhibits for the Visual Arts Frestival, and saw some fun creative stuff. There are yurts on the quay where you can learn about the festival. With the tide now high, we watched boys fishing for crab off the Quay. You can buy a little crab line (it looks like kite string wrapped around an H-shaped frame) and bait, and a bucket to hold your crabs, at a shop near the one where Kate got her hat. We saw several postcards that featured VW camper-busses driving around Devon, or parked in front of various bits of the Devon coast. Realization: there is a VW camper thing in Devon.
We piled into the Whale, and with Kate outside directing I managed to get it scrape-free out of our alley. Our first stop was Marshford Organics, a small farm shop on the way out of town. Will came running out to say, "Dad, it's the kind of store where you love everything!" We bought half our groceries there (Kate: "I want to Move Here") and went for the other half to Morrisson's in Bideford. This was a big, busy store with a large parking lot. We went up and down all the aisles, marvelled at how the eggs are sold unrefrigerated, and got most of everything we need for the week.
Came home and ate lunch, and then the boys were keen to swim, so we set off for the nearby town of Westward Ho!, the only town in Britain to be named after a book, and the only town anywhere with an exclamation mark in its name. It's only about ten minutes away, after you extract the Whale from its parking niche. We found a pay-and-display lot, and spilled out onto the giant beach. It's about two kilometres long and 500 metres deep. Lifeguards from the Royal National Lifesaving Institution (RNLI) had set up a pair of yellow-and-red flags, which you were supposed to swim between, and they were on station with their snazzy little RNLI truck. Lots of people were weearing wetsuits, but Galen and Will charged in wearing their regular swim trunks, and had a blast. Kate and Morgan rolled up their pants and watched.
Finally as the boys were turning blue we quit the beach and had an ice cream. Saw the Southwest Coastal Path sign which said "Appledore 3 1/2 mi." and decided we should walk here next time. Will also spotted mini-golf, one of his real passions. We headed home at around 5. Pasties for dinner from John's, with salad. We went for an after-dinner walk along the Quay, and explored the graveyard at St. Mary's church. The boys are eager to buy firewood and build a fire in our cottage, but John's is out of this. Besides, given the rarity of forests in England, firewood must be a precious commodity. It might make more sense to wait and build fires back in Canada.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Travel To Devon
We were up pretty early, like 6 a.m., to finish packing and cleaning. Beautiful sunny day again. Galen and Will watched Zingzillas, a bizarre kids' morning show on the telly, and we were walking out the door just before 8:30, a bright sunny day.
Drove along the now-familiar route through the white buildings of Rottingdean and Saltdean, gulls in the air, and found the Enterpirse car rental place, hidden in a temporary building under the railway viaduct in Brighton. They decided that my indiscretion, the one where I had accidentally rammed a giant flowerpot at our cottage while trying to find out whether the car had a front parking sensor, would cost me £50. Ah well. It was a pretty deep scratch. The guy who drove us to the railway station had moved recently from Poland. He said he'd just been working in Scotland, but that he couldn't understand anything anyone said there. Kate's response: "We have to go there!"
We bought pasties in the station, and Will immediately pounced on the Chicken Tikka Savoury Slice. Kate had coffee! Boarded the 10:19 for London Victoria, The first car we stepped into was just a commuter-type coach and had no luggage racks, and we had three big bags and four knapsacks to stow. We headed into other cars, at Kate's insistence, and found the ideal: a luggage rack and seats right next to them. Settled in for a fast and comfortable ride to Clapham Junction.
There we had to wrestle the bags up and down stairs to another platform, but there was planety of time. Kate bought more pasties, because Will was consuming them as fast as he could lay his hands on them. It's his new love, the chicken pasty. Watched the multi-coloured trains of Southern and Southwest come and go.
The 11:27 to Exter was pretty full, and again not really designed to accommodate people with large bags. We squeezed on board with some trepidation. After searching, Kate and the boys lodged in an air-conditioned car, at the very front of the train, in a set of four seats with a table. Luggage racks throughout the train were full though, so I sat with the two big bags in the cycle storage rack, one car back, for about the first half hour. Then the conductor befriended me, and convinced me that no one was going to run off with our bags. "I've worked 20 years on this railway," he said, "and only seen one bag go missing. And that was because the lady forgot where she put it." But to make matters better, he offered to lock our bags behind a set of sliding doors near the driver's compartment. Another trainman also befriended us and gave us pens branded with "RMT"--which turns out to be the railway workers union. So we had a very comfortable ride to Exeter, about three hours, passing through Salisbury.
At Exeter we did not have to change platforms at all, but the train to Barnstaple was a pitiful affair of two dinky cars that looked like they belonged more in a subway--and it was already full when it pulled in! We rode the whole way standing in the doorwell, squeezed between our bags and other people in a similar situation. When the doors would open we would all shift around to make room, and then create a channel for those getting off. But it was a pretty ride through countryside, up a little river for half and hour, and down another pretty little river that eventually became the River Taw, and led us to Barnstaple. We got off at that little station and smiled, for our train journey was over.
Enterprise sent a taxi to pick us up: a class operation. From our short ride through it, Barnstaple looks like a pretty town with a core of old buildings. We were furnished with a car, but unfortunately it's another Vauxhall Insignia; "free upgrade" is always a bad sign.
We drove out to Appledore and noted that Roads Are Wider In Devon. There are little shoulders, and even gratis lay-by's on the A39, as if road designers thought they would be a good idea AND were able to find land to put them on. Here it's as if there's a littel more land than in Sussex.
Appledore is a village on a hillside. At first glance, all the houses are painted white or pastels: pink, yellow, grey, blue. But when you look more closely, each has also a "waterline" along the bottom, as on a boat, where a dark colour has been painted from the pavement of the street up about 30 cm. They might use a deep blue for a pastel blue house, or deep orange for a pale yellow house. The colour is usually repeated in the trim of the door and windows. On streets that go steeply uphill, the waterline is actually a triangle, thick at the downhill end, thin at the uphill end, so as you look up the street the housefronts appear to be set on a series of triangles rising like steps.
We're in a white home, with black waterline and trim, just one segment of a long row of connected houses on "New Street," which is a narrow alleyway that curves up across a hill over the harbour. Our parking is off a nameless alley, about 30' higher in elevation, that parallels New Street. So when we say we have to descend down our garden to get to the back door, we're going down about two floors! Our parking space is tiny, and our car has already acquired the nickname of The Whale.
The cottage is a cute two-storey place where Galen and Will have a small whitewashed bedroom right next to our small whitewashed bedroom. Our window looks out front and their looks out the back into the garden. There is one great window in our bedroom through which you can see out over the roofs of town, and across the estuary to Instow, the village on the far side.
We walked down into Appledore and discovered that "The Quay" is the street along the waterfront, that there is no water there at low tide, because on this estuary (the Torridge River estuary) at low tide there are extensive mud flats and not much water. We found that all other streets of Appledore are tiny and steep, and that there are little shops along the one called Market Street. We ate dinner in the yard of the Shipgate Hotel, a pub on the Quay, and perused "Johns of Appledore," the general store and post office, open to 9:00, the place where you can get all sorts of groceries and what-have-you. We observed a massive queue at Sylvester's Fish & Chips, so it's either pretty special or well-marketed.
We also found the Appledore Visual Arts Festival will be going on here for two more days. ("4 days, 70 + events, one small riverside village, one big festival") There are films screenings, talks, walks and gallery shows, musicians in the streets, and basically the town is looking its best for this. There is a Best Dressed Doorknocker competition.
Drove along the now-familiar route through the white buildings of Rottingdean and Saltdean, gulls in the air, and found the Enterpirse car rental place, hidden in a temporary building under the railway viaduct in Brighton. They decided that my indiscretion, the one where I had accidentally rammed a giant flowerpot at our cottage while trying to find out whether the car had a front parking sensor, would cost me £50. Ah well. It was a pretty deep scratch. The guy who drove us to the railway station had moved recently from Poland. He said he'd just been working in Scotland, but that he couldn't understand anything anyone said there. Kate's response: "We have to go there!"
We bought pasties in the station, and Will immediately pounced on the Chicken Tikka Savoury Slice. Kate had coffee! Boarded the 10:19 for London Victoria, The first car we stepped into was just a commuter-type coach and had no luggage racks, and we had three big bags and four knapsacks to stow. We headed into other cars, at Kate's insistence, and found the ideal: a luggage rack and seats right next to them. Settled in for a fast and comfortable ride to Clapham Junction.
There we had to wrestle the bags up and down stairs to another platform, but there was planety of time. Kate bought more pasties, because Will was consuming them as fast as he could lay his hands on them. It's his new love, the chicken pasty. Watched the multi-coloured trains of Southern and Southwest come and go.
The 11:27 to Exter was pretty full, and again not really designed to accommodate people with large bags. We squeezed on board with some trepidation. After searching, Kate and the boys lodged in an air-conditioned car, at the very front of the train, in a set of four seats with a table. Luggage racks throughout the train were full though, so I sat with the two big bags in the cycle storage rack, one car back, for about the first half hour. Then the conductor befriended me, and convinced me that no one was going to run off with our bags. "I've worked 20 years on this railway," he said, "and only seen one bag go missing. And that was because the lady forgot where she put it." But to make matters better, he offered to lock our bags behind a set of sliding doors near the driver's compartment. Another trainman also befriended us and gave us pens branded with "RMT"--which turns out to be the railway workers union. So we had a very comfortable ride to Exeter, about three hours, passing through Salisbury.
At Exeter we did not have to change platforms at all, but the train to Barnstaple was a pitiful affair of two dinky cars that looked like they belonged more in a subway--and it was already full when it pulled in! We rode the whole way standing in the doorwell, squeezed between our bags and other people in a similar situation. When the doors would open we would all shift around to make room, and then create a channel for those getting off. But it was a pretty ride through countryside, up a little river for half and hour, and down another pretty little river that eventually became the River Taw, and led us to Barnstaple. We got off at that little station and smiled, for our train journey was over.
Enterprise sent a taxi to pick us up: a class operation. From our short ride through it, Barnstaple looks like a pretty town with a core of old buildings. We were furnished with a car, but unfortunately it's another Vauxhall Insignia; "free upgrade" is always a bad sign.
We drove out to Appledore and noted that Roads Are Wider In Devon. There are little shoulders, and even gratis lay-by's on the A39, as if road designers thought they would be a good idea AND were able to find land to put them on. Here it's as if there's a littel more land than in Sussex.
Appledore is a village on a hillside. At first glance, all the houses are painted white or pastels: pink, yellow, grey, blue. But when you look more closely, each has also a "waterline" along the bottom, as on a boat, where a dark colour has been painted from the pavement of the street up about 30 cm. They might use a deep blue for a pastel blue house, or deep orange for a pale yellow house. The colour is usually repeated in the trim of the door and windows. On streets that go steeply uphill, the waterline is actually a triangle, thick at the downhill end, thin at the uphill end, so as you look up the street the housefronts appear to be set on a series of triangles rising like steps.
We're in a white home, with black waterline and trim, just one segment of a long row of connected houses on "New Street," which is a narrow alleyway that curves up across a hill over the harbour. Our parking is off a nameless alley, about 30' higher in elevation, that parallels New Street. So when we say we have to descend down our garden to get to the back door, we're going down about two floors! Our parking space is tiny, and our car has already acquired the nickname of The Whale.
The cottage is a cute two-storey place where Galen and Will have a small whitewashed bedroom right next to our small whitewashed bedroom. Our window looks out front and their looks out the back into the garden. There is one great window in our bedroom through which you can see out over the roofs of town, and across the estuary to Instow, the village on the far side.
We walked down into Appledore and discovered that "The Quay" is the street along the waterfront, that there is no water there at low tide, because on this estuary (the Torridge River estuary) at low tide there are extensive mud flats and not much water. We found that all other streets of Appledore are tiny and steep, and that there are little shops along the one called Market Street. We ate dinner in the yard of the Shipgate Hotel, a pub on the Quay, and perused "Johns of Appledore," the general store and post office, open to 9:00, the place where you can get all sorts of groceries and what-have-you. We observed a massive queue at Sylvester's Fish & Chips, so it's either pretty special or well-marketed.
We also found the Appledore Visual Arts Festival will be going on here for two more days. ("4 days, 70 + events, one small riverside village, one big festival") There are films screenings, talks, walks and gallery shows, musicians in the streets, and basically the town is looking its best for this. There is a Best Dressed Doorknocker competition.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
In a way, a day of mishaps.
We set out at 8:15 for the Newhaven Town railway station, just two roundabouts away. A crystal clear, sunny, blue day: not a cloud in the sky, the promise of very warm temperatures indeed. We all wore shorts.
Now, Mark had warned us not to try to travel from the Newhaven station: "There's not really any parking," he'd said. Either we didn't believe him or we forgot, but in any case when we got there, although we could drive around it, there was no parking. We'd never seen a station with no parking; but the next station we went to topped that: it didn't exist. We drove a few blocks looking for Newhaven Harbour Station, and although there was a clear chain of signs to follow there, there was no station. Frustrated, and unable to find parking near Newhaven Town station, we decided to drive to Brighton & take the train from there. (The 9:04 from Newhaven was to take us anyway to a 10:30 from Brighton anyway.)
Thirty minutes later we were pulling into the car park at Brighton Station, having followed signage only (no maps!). I got a bit frazzled because the ticket machine refused three of my credit cards and a debit card, and there was a horrendous line for the ticket window. Kate came to my rescue with her credit card, which had a cleaner magnetic stripe, and for £30 we were all four of us on the 9:33 to Havant; change for Portsmouth Harbour.
At first all we were able to find were seats together facing backwards. But it was a very pleasant journey, stopping every few minutes at a different station. At Havant we got out and the train to Portsmouth came along on the same track a few minutes later. It was really crowded, and we had to stand for the three stops to Portsmouth Harbour. Which is an exciting station: right on the water, ferries to Gosport leaving from the side, the HMS Warrior moored just across from it.
We walked first to the Co-op across the street to buy three big padded envelopes, and mail our accumulated booty of the week home. They had what we needed, but it was awkward stuffing and addressing in the tiny shop.
The Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is right next to the rail station, but before we got there Will said he was hungry (it was 11:30), and poor Galen, who had woke up with a sore throat and was now beginning to resemble the walking dead, also needed something. It was frustrating, but just short of the dockyard entrance we stopped at a pub called the Ship & Castle. Actually it was very nice inside: a kids menu, roomy, and almost empty. Kate and I split a salad, and Galen and Will split some chicken nuggets, and I had a ginger beer because that's what you do in pubs. It gave us all a good rest. But let's face it: we have reached exhaustion.
(I got to try salad cream, It's not bad: I take back the aspersions I was casting on it. I also got to try Brown Sauce. It was bad.)
Now we entered the historic dockyard and found it was £55 for the family: to see the Warrior, the Victory, the Mary Rose Museum (minus the hull of the Mary Rose, which has been removed for refurbishment), Action Stations (a kind of recruitment festival put on by Royal Navy for kids, except you pay them to participate), and a Harbour Tour. We got over the sticker shock by reasoning we'd come all this way (across the Atlantic, as well as from Newhaven). Nonetheless the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard was in the end perhaps the only museum we've been a little disappointed in.
We went to see the Victory first, becaue that was at the top of Galen's list (and he looked like he might expire any minute). It was very magnificent, very dark, massive, and very crowded with other visitors. However, a great moment: at the spot marked on the deck by a brass plaque where Nelson fell, shot by a French sniper, Galen asks me to turn on the video camera, and he very dramatically collapses on the deck with a loud THUMP! You'd have thought a dead body had been dropped on the deck. People turned around and gasped. I was killing myself inside, but I kept a steady hand on the camera. Oddly we were not thrown out for our irreverence on the holy site.
We visited Action Stations next, drawn by the lure of "simulators,", but it was really just a big warehouse full of science-museum crap: some of it quite good, it must be said, but nothing that you would see only in Portsmouth. Will was so excited that he walked into a pillar. Poor guy! Good black eye coming up tomorrow.
(It appears that in England spreading excitement about the military comes without the nefarious overtones it would carry in the USA. Small island, must be defended, actual threats out there--that sort of thing. Indeed, even weapons contractors seemed to have a free hand to present and explain their stuff in this exhibit, something that in the US would raise eyebrows and invite cynical commentary.)
Galen was now pretty exhausted (and did he have a fever?) and it was hot and sunny, so we decided to peruse a couple of gift shops and sit down for the Harbour Tour. The gift shops (there are at least three in the dockyard, along with three restaurants, further contributing to the Disneyland-like impression that you have, in the end, really just been lured here to be parted from your cash) were nice, but ultimate just more stuff.
But the Harbour Tour for 3:00 p.m. was now full! So instead we went out on the wharf next to the Warrior, a steel wind & sail warship from 1860. Will and I explored the Warrior while Galen and Kate sat on a bench and watched the fantastic & varied water traffic in the harbour. Ferries going to the Isle of Wight, to Gosport, to the Channel islands, to Brittany, and of course all sizes of military craft. Inside the Warrior (which was vast and far more comfortable than the Victory, and never took put in an actual naval engagement) Will encountered a station for making a paddle-wheel boat from cardboard, paper clips and a rubber band. (Another half-term bonus!) He made one and it was really fun. Just his thing.
Also kept encountering a group of children speaking what might have been Ukrainian, and wearing hats that said "Chernobyl Children's Lifeline."
Tottled to the railway station to catch the 4:29 Southern train to Brighton. Nice ride home. Had forward-facing seats and decent air. Galen seemed to be sleeping on his tray table. At one station I saw a confident Oxfam ad out the window that I'd like to see in Canada: Climate Change is killing people--"Let's sort it here and now." Also saw two great examples of the British use of a plural verb with a collective noun: "When England win, you win!" and "We are an agency that become excitable when..."
Drove home, still not a cloud in the sky. Beautiful blue sea on our right hand. We decided as we approached home to fill the car with petrol, as we have to return it tomorrow morning, so we pulled into the Sainsbury's near our cottage. Guessed correctly on which side the fuel cap was! Filled up with unleaded ("the green one"), and the price, for those of you interested in the price of fuel, was about what we would pay in Canada per litre if you simply substitute the £ for a $. (This is a recurring impression we have: that prices here are the same numbers they would be in Canada, but with a £ instead of a $.)
I go in to pay, and while I'm in there Will comes running in and says, "Dad, I need the key! The car alarm is going off!" With me and the magic key away from it, the car had decided it was in danger, and when Will, who had helped me fuel up, bumped the door on the outside, it slammed on all the door locks (locking Galen and Kate inside) and began honking the horn! Not very snazzy behaviour from an otherwise snazzy car. They were great and kept their heads: they sent Will to get the key from me. It was the best mishap of the day.
Home, dinner of mac and cheese to use up the pasta, Galen lay on the couch and watched British Talent on the telly, which was an education for both him and Will.
Tomorrow we leave to return our car, and take the train: Brighton--Clapham Junction--Exeter--Barnstaple. Not sure when we will be back in Internet land again.
We set out at 8:15 for the Newhaven Town railway station, just two roundabouts away. A crystal clear, sunny, blue day: not a cloud in the sky, the promise of very warm temperatures indeed. We all wore shorts.
Now, Mark had warned us not to try to travel from the Newhaven station: "There's not really any parking," he'd said. Either we didn't believe him or we forgot, but in any case when we got there, although we could drive around it, there was no parking. We'd never seen a station with no parking; but the next station we went to topped that: it didn't exist. We drove a few blocks looking for Newhaven Harbour Station, and although there was a clear chain of signs to follow there, there was no station. Frustrated, and unable to find parking near Newhaven Town station, we decided to drive to Brighton & take the train from there. (The 9:04 from Newhaven was to take us anyway to a 10:30 from Brighton anyway.)
Thirty minutes later we were pulling into the car park at Brighton Station, having followed signage only (no maps!). I got a bit frazzled because the ticket machine refused three of my credit cards and a debit card, and there was a horrendous line for the ticket window. Kate came to my rescue with her credit card, which had a cleaner magnetic stripe, and for £30 we were all four of us on the 9:33 to Havant; change for Portsmouth Harbour.
At first all we were able to find were seats together facing backwards. But it was a very pleasant journey, stopping every few minutes at a different station. At Havant we got out and the train to Portsmouth came along on the same track a few minutes later. It was really crowded, and we had to stand for the three stops to Portsmouth Harbour. Which is an exciting station: right on the water, ferries to Gosport leaving from the side, the HMS Warrior moored just across from it.
We walked first to the Co-op across the street to buy three big padded envelopes, and mail our accumulated booty of the week home. They had what we needed, but it was awkward stuffing and addressing in the tiny shop.
The Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is right next to the rail station, but before we got there Will said he was hungry (it was 11:30), and poor Galen, who had woke up with a sore throat and was now beginning to resemble the walking dead, also needed something. It was frustrating, but just short of the dockyard entrance we stopped at a pub called the Ship & Castle. Actually it was very nice inside: a kids menu, roomy, and almost empty. Kate and I split a salad, and Galen and Will split some chicken nuggets, and I had a ginger beer because that's what you do in pubs. It gave us all a good rest. But let's face it: we have reached exhaustion.
(I got to try salad cream, It's not bad: I take back the aspersions I was casting on it. I also got to try Brown Sauce. It was bad.)
Now we entered the historic dockyard and found it was £55 for the family: to see the Warrior, the Victory, the Mary Rose Museum (minus the hull of the Mary Rose, which has been removed for refurbishment), Action Stations (a kind of recruitment festival put on by Royal Navy for kids, except you pay them to participate), and a Harbour Tour. We got over the sticker shock by reasoning we'd come all this way (across the Atlantic, as well as from Newhaven). Nonetheless the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard was in the end perhaps the only museum we've been a little disappointed in.
We went to see the Victory first, becaue that was at the top of Galen's list (and he looked like he might expire any minute). It was very magnificent, very dark, massive, and very crowded with other visitors. However, a great moment: at the spot marked on the deck by a brass plaque where Nelson fell, shot by a French sniper, Galen asks me to turn on the video camera, and he very dramatically collapses on the deck with a loud THUMP! You'd have thought a dead body had been dropped on the deck. People turned around and gasped. I was killing myself inside, but I kept a steady hand on the camera. Oddly we were not thrown out for our irreverence on the holy site.
We visited Action Stations next, drawn by the lure of "simulators,", but it was really just a big warehouse full of science-museum crap: some of it quite good, it must be said, but nothing that you would see only in Portsmouth. Will was so excited that he walked into a pillar. Poor guy! Good black eye coming up tomorrow.
(It appears that in England spreading excitement about the military comes without the nefarious overtones it would carry in the USA. Small island, must be defended, actual threats out there--that sort of thing. Indeed, even weapons contractors seemed to have a free hand to present and explain their stuff in this exhibit, something that in the US would raise eyebrows and invite cynical commentary.)
Galen was now pretty exhausted (and did he have a fever?) and it was hot and sunny, so we decided to peruse a couple of gift shops and sit down for the Harbour Tour. The gift shops (there are at least three in the dockyard, along with three restaurants, further contributing to the Disneyland-like impression that you have, in the end, really just been lured here to be parted from your cash) were nice, but ultimate just more stuff.
But the Harbour Tour for 3:00 p.m. was now full! So instead we went out on the wharf next to the Warrior, a steel wind & sail warship from 1860. Will and I explored the Warrior while Galen and Kate sat on a bench and watched the fantastic & varied water traffic in the harbour. Ferries going to the Isle of Wight, to Gosport, to the Channel islands, to Brittany, and of course all sizes of military craft. Inside the Warrior (which was vast and far more comfortable than the Victory, and never took put in an actual naval engagement) Will encountered a station for making a paddle-wheel boat from cardboard, paper clips and a rubber band. (Another half-term bonus!) He made one and it was really fun. Just his thing.
Also kept encountering a group of children speaking what might have been Ukrainian, and wearing hats that said "Chernobyl Children's Lifeline."
Tottled to the railway station to catch the 4:29 Southern train to Brighton. Nice ride home. Had forward-facing seats and decent air. Galen seemed to be sleeping on his tray table. At one station I saw a confident Oxfam ad out the window that I'd like to see in Canada: Climate Change is killing people--"Let's sort it here and now." Also saw two great examples of the British use of a plural verb with a collective noun: "When England win, you win!" and "We are an agency that become excitable when..."
Drove home, still not a cloud in the sky. Beautiful blue sea on our right hand. We decided as we approached home to fill the car with petrol, as we have to return it tomorrow morning, so we pulled into the Sainsbury's near our cottage. Guessed correctly on which side the fuel cap was! Filled up with unleaded ("the green one"), and the price, for those of you interested in the price of fuel, was about what we would pay in Canada per litre if you simply substitute the £ for a $. (This is a recurring impression we have: that prices here are the same numbers they would be in Canada, but with a £ instead of a $.)
I go in to pay, and while I'm in there Will comes running in and says, "Dad, I need the key! The car alarm is going off!" With me and the magic key away from it, the car had decided it was in danger, and when Will, who had helped me fuel up, bumped the door on the outside, it slammed on all the door locks (locking Galen and Kate inside) and began honking the horn! Not very snazzy behaviour from an otherwise snazzy car. They were great and kept their heads: they sent Will to get the key from me. It was the best mishap of the day.
Home, dinner of mac and cheese to use up the pasta, Galen lay on the couch and watched British Talent on the telly, which was an education for both him and Will.
Tomorrow we leave to return our car, and take the train: Brighton--Clapham Junction--Exeter--Barnstaple. Not sure when we will be back in Internet land again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)