Thursday: We had to be packed and into the bus by 6:45 AM this morning to make it onto the ferry back to the mainland. Our first stop after making the crossing was Thomas Hardy's cottage. Kristine scheduled another poetry reading, which the students did out in the lane beyond the cottage while we waited for it to open at 11 AM (we'd thought it opened at 10 AM). The cottage was picture-postcard pretty.
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| Thomas Hardy's cheery cottage |
Hardy apparently had an idyllic childhood and a happy marriage. Makes it hard to figure what drove him to write such dark novels as Tess of the D'urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, not to mention poetry like "Neutral Tones." We were followed into the cottage by a very unruly tour group--of senior citizens. They wouldn't wait their turn, they ignored the guides' request for only ten people at a time on the upper floor, and they went up the down staircase. I actually got a little panicky as the floor groaned under the load of at least twenty people and hightailed it out of the house. Note to self: Don't be like that when you're old.
Our next stop was Lyme Regis, where Jane Austen set an important scene from Persuasion (my favorite Austen novel). It was a popular seaside resort in the 19th century, and it clearly still is today.
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| Here's the scene that greeted us at Lyme Regis (and made us wish we'd brought our swimsuits). |
Did I mention that we're in the midst of a heat wave? It was in the high eighties today. (I know, I know, but the humidity is higher here.)
After we walked out to the cobb, Kristine read the students the scene where Louisa Musgrove jumps off the stairs and injures her head. And then I reenacted it.
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| Kristine reading the scene from Persuasion where Luisa Musgrove falls |
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| Catch me! Hey!! Catch-- |
We got in early to our next hotel in Exeter. Mike and I ate dinner at Yo! Sushi, one of those places where the food is on a conveyor belt and keeps chugging past you. These kinds of places encourage you to spend way too much money. But the sushi was pretty good.
Friday: Lots of travel today. First we drove out to Tintagel, a spectacularly scenic ruin on the north Cornwall coast.
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| Tintagel in Cornwall, looking like it grew naturally |
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| Another view of the ruins at Tintagel |
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| Mike and me at Tintagel |
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| This is "Merlin's cave," named to support the legend that Tintagel is where King Arthur was born. |
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| The clear sea at Tintagel |
We were all dying to swim in the beautifully clear turquoise water. And a couple of students did get wet. Jessica dipped her head in the water, and Preston slipped in after climbing out to a place he couldn't retreat from, completely soaking his jeans and long-sleeved shirt.
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| Students battling unseasonable heat in Cornwall |
The rest of us were saved from too much envy by spotting LOTS of jellyfish in the water.
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| Jellyfish at Tintagel |
The janitor assured me that almost all of them do sting. Eeek!
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| View from Tintagel |
Mike and I hiked back up the steep path to the village a bit early to buy Cornish pasties for the students to eat on the bus en route to St. Michael's Mount. We'd been told that Pengenna Pasties was the best place to buy them. Given their enormous size, I figured twenty would feed our bus load of 33. I nearly cleaned out the shop. The baker said, "I have six steak." "I'll take them all," I said. He said, "I have three steak and stilton." "Give me the lot," I said. I bought all their steak, steak and stilton, and lamb and mince pasties, and a good share of their cheese, onion and chive and vegetable ones. As the baker wrapped and loaded each one (a process that took about fifteen minutes), the line behind me--and the faces on the people in the line--grew longer and longer. I kept assuring them that more were in the oven, and by the time I was finally done a tray full of steak pasties was indeed cooling on the rack. So no one tripped me on my way out the door.
Mike and I had a steak and stilton pasty, and it was GOOD. I hadn't expected that. The pasties I've had before were adequate, but badly in need of some seasoning or sauce. The stilton gave the steak a wonderful tang, and the crust was perfectly browned, flaky and flavorful. The students, and even Kristine (who had, like me, had bland pasties before), were duly impressed.
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| Tintagel Honey Shop |
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And this gentle suggestion, for the Doc Martin fans.
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From Tintagel, we drove south across the Cornwall peninsula to St. Michael's Mount. It is an island you can walk to via a causeway, but only during low tide twice a day. On the top of the island is a castle, formerly a monastery dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, who is said to have appeared to fishermen at the island in the 5th century AD. After the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII's reign, the monastery was converted to a castle, and it has been in the St. Aubyn family since 1659.
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| Here's a borrowed image of the causeway and island of St. Michael's Mount off Cornwall |
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| Castle at St. Michael's Mount |
The old chapel on the mount was lovely. Our very funny guide (with a beautiful Cornish accent) pointed out a little door leading to an underground cell near the altar. Rediscovered during a renovation, the cell held the bones of an anchorite whose body was sealed up in the cell after he died there. (Our guide also claimed the anchorite was 7 feet 4, which was why they couldn't remove him from the tiny cell for burial.)
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| I loved this modern sculpture of St. Michael fighting the devil |
Our guide said the one priceless treasure the staff has been instructed to save if the place goes up in flames is this sculpture of the castle, made of wine corks by a former butler.
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| Wine cork sculpture of the Castle |
Like Glastonbury, St. Michael's Mount is supposed to be crossed by "ley lines," sources of power that tend to attract New Age mystical types. When we finished our tour of the castle, our guide pulled out a couple of dousing rods and walked back and forth across one of the lines, marked by stones in the pavement. And the rods did swing open and shut each time he crossed the line. The students were fascinated, and many of them took a turn. Mike and I did, too, and the rods swung for both of us.
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| Mike dowsing along the ley line |
They swung, a lot or a little, for everyone except one student--the one who really wanted them to! Our guess is that there really are lines of some kind of magnetism running through the earth, and that the student's own body polarity just didn't work with this one. Who knows?
Saturday: We spent a second night at the hotel in Exeter then drove to Winchester. Kristine sang us a very fun rendition of the New Vaudeville Band's one hit, "Winchester Cathedral." Very catchy, actually. We inadvertently arrived in Winchester on a "Friends of the Cathedral" day as well as a local street fair, so it was very crowded. The cathedral was built to be the longest one in Europe, and it does seem to stretch on forever.
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| Winchester Cathedral interior |
A church has stood on this spot since the sixth or seventh century. This particular building was built in the twelfth century, with updating to the "vertical gothic" style in later centuries. Mike and I actually like the plain old Norman style better, although the gothic is breathtaking.
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| Winchester Cathedral, interior |
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| The land that the cathedral stands on was once a swamp, and the water table is very high. As a result, the crypt floods every time it rains. This modern statue stands in the empty space. |
Remember the vibrant colors at Dover Castle? Medieval cathedrals were once riots of color as well. You can see remnants of the original paint in some spots, and others have been restored to their former glory.
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| Winchester Cathedral, with restored medieval paint |
Winchester was England's capital when it was first united under the kings of Wessex, including Alfred the Great. Many of the old Anglo-Saxon kings are buried there, not in tombs, but in mortuary chests containing their bones. Strike "their." During the Civil War, which hit royalist Winchester very hard, the parliamentary troops knocked down the chests from their shelves and strewed their bones every which where. Locals gathered the bones up and placed them back in the chests, but there was no way to tell if they had gotten the right bones in the right boxes. When we visited, the placard telling about the chests was in place, but the bones had been removed to the lady chapel at the back of the cathedral, where DNA testing was taking place to try to sort the bones into their right places!
My favorite part of the cathedral were the vast western windows.
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| Borrowed image of western windows of Winchester Cathedral |
When I saw them, I thought, "What beautiful modern, abstract stained glass windows!" Turns out they predate the English Civil War, during which parliamentary troops shot out all the stained glass of the cathedral. Locals picked up the glass and, unable to recreate the original images from the destroyed remains, made a collage.
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| Borrowed close-up view of reassembled western windows at Winchester Cathedral |
Isn't that wonderful? More information on the windows appears here:
http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/visits/southtrip/winchcath2.shtml
Winchester had other treasures as well, including many carvings of the medieval "green man" figure, representing the life-giving force.
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| The Green Man at Winchester Cathedral |
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| Pre-Raphaelite memorial at Winchester Cathedral |
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| A very old, but still used (while we were there, in fact) baptismal font at Winchester Cathedral (I love this so much!) |
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| Jane Austen's tomb and memorial |
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| Medieval Great Hall at Winchester |
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| Alfred the Great statue at Winchester |
After a quick visit to Winchester's reconstructed medieval Great Hall and to a statue of Alfred the Great, the king who managed to unite England and drive out the Danish invaders (for a while, at least) we headed a few miles down the road to Jane Austen's home at Chawton. She actually died in Winchester, where she had moved to be close to her doctor. But she spent some of her best writing years in this cottage given to her and her mother and sister by their brother Edward, who had been adopted by a wealthy, childless aunt and uncle.
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| Jane Austen's charming home at Chawton |
There was a copy on one wall of a lovely, tender letter by Jane's beloved sister Cassandra describing Jane's last days and how much she would miss her.
We finished our tour around 3 pm and headed back to London. Happily, it took an hour less than we expected. A tiring, but rich week.
