The last week has been busy with traveling--to and from Somerset, a day spent in Leicester, and two evenings in Birmingham. That plus my usual volunteering at the church and a very fun night out to see the new Indiana Jones has kept me away from this blog, so I feel the need to apologize for my silence. I also feel the need to spell apologize like "apologise." Something even more frightening is that when my "English sis" Julia and I were watching an American sitcom the other day, I watched the star get into the left-hand side driver's seat. "That looks weird now," I commented, then gasped. Julia merely smiled ominously. "You're becoming one of us," she said.
Here are photos from the bank holiday travels to Somerset, a southwestern county about three hours' drive from Nottingham. As mentioned below, I stayed in Cheddar with my friend Hannah's family, with views of the lovely Cheddar gorge from nearly every window in the house. We also took side trips to Bath and Bristol.
I climbed up the gorge one misty morning, which was an exhilirating, if slippery, experience.
We visited a friend's grandmother's home, which was once a manor house and is still a beautiful example of country living.
We awoke once more to rain and wind lashing the windows, and although I was sad that our planned trip to the Devon seaside was out of the question, we did take a fun little jaunt to Bristol. Emily and I explored once more while Hannah met up with an old school friend, and we were very happy to take shelter from the winter-ish weather in Bristol Cathedral.
We were, of course, also eager to explore the cathedral, as well as warming up. Although much of the main building is 19th-century, there is a beautifully preserved room that was once the 11th-century chapter house for the Augustinian monks who resided there. Emily is a musician, and she sang a pretty fair imitation of an ancient chant that echoed within the delicately carved stone room and made shivers run up and down my spine. Although the church is Norman, an ancient Anglo-Saxon stone depicting Jesus pulling a woman out of hell was discovered on the site in the 1800s.
The good eating continues. After a very filling, tasty meal of jacket potatoes (baked potatoes) served with butter, cheese, baked beans and cole slaw, we enjoyed trifle and walnut-chocolate tart. I told Hannah's parents that their daughter neglected to warn me about gaining half a stone (about 7 pounds) on this weekend! It's time now for a final cup of tea before we get back on the road and head north to Nottingham.
It's a bank holiday weekend here in England, which back home we'd call a three-day weekend. The only difference is that we get three-day weekends in the U.S. because of a national holiday (Americans, obviously, are off tomorrow for Memorial Day), while in the UK the bank holidays come arbitrarily. I was explaining this to my mom and she kept saying, "But what's the holiday that makes all of the banks close?" and I had to tell her that there is no special Holiday, just the bank holiday, though according to one slightly dubious source, the bank holidays were carefully chosen by a 19th-century British noble who wanted to make sure the masses could get off work to enjoy cricket matches.
At any rate, I took advantage of the long weekend to travel with my friend Hannah to her family home in the county of Somerset, in England's southwest. In fact, Hannah's hometown of Cheddar is where the famous cheese was first concocted, although it's equally famous for being the town built along the stunning Cheddar Gorge. After sitting in very non-pastoral bank holiday traffic for several hours, fellow visitor Emily and I were keen to explore the area when we first arrived Friday evening, so after enjoying a delicious meal of creamy coronation chicken with Hannah's hospitable parents and sisters, we set out walking.
It was a truly perfect evening. As night slowly fell, Emily and I strolled down the hill to Cheddar Village's high street, then along the windy road carved through the gorge. We gazed up at the mighty cliffs, growing slightly dim in the twilight, and laughed at the furry brown sheep dotting its green ridges. I didn't feel as if I were in England at all, but as if I were back in Austria wandering through the Alps as I did one wet summer's day in 1999. After climbing a sizeable hill and sitting on the bluff chatting, Emily and I walked back through the town, getting only mildly lost in its hills and curving streets before finding our way back to Hannah's house. This is a place of absolute beauty and peace.
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you may get the impression that I’m living a free and easy expat life, traveling at the drop of a hat around Europe and spending every evening at the pub.
That’s true in some ways. I have been able to travel, but my travels are very dependent on my limited income (and where my friends have relatives). Yes, it’s been lovely to escape the freedom of a 9-to-5 job this year, but that also means I struggle sometimes with a sense of purpose and validation when my housemate comes in exhausted from her teaching job and I’ve just been sitting around the house all day working on articles and tidying the kitchen. It also means that I don’t have regular income or health insurance!
And yes, I do often end up at the pub with my friends of an evening, but that’s only after I’ve finished stacking chairs, emptying the bathroom trash cans and vacuuming up after a church service; or helping to lead a small group for young adults; or running a Sunday morning program for 45 hyper pre-teens.
For the real truth is that I’m doing real work here in England, and I thought it might be time for me to start sharing some of the emotional and physical struggles that have accompanied this experience. I made a major life change to spend a year in England, and the transition hasn’t been without its difficulties.
My trip to Ireland may have been short and centered around Dublin, but I saw and did an amazing amount of great stuff in three days.
Dublin itself was a vibrant and compelling city with a fantastic vibe. I could've spent days exploring the museums and historic sites, along with eating my way through the restaurants and hanging out in the shops. It was, however, expensive, but this view over the River Liffey, running through the city centre was, thankfully, free.
The trouble with keeping up this blog is that I'm supposed to post regularly, even when I don't think I've got anything to say. Now, the idea that I have nothing to say right now is quite ridiculous, considering my last few days. I've seen marvelous things. Maybe not quite as marvelous as all that Howard Carter saw when he first peeked into Tutankhamun's tomb (I think "marvelous things" is the phrase he reputedly used), but pretty darn marvelous anyway. It's just that my last few days have been so chock full of experiences it is difficult to put them into words and not to simply resort to an itinerary. And since I've been going now for several days straight, I am very tired and my frazzled brain wants sleep and order and time to let these experiences "marinate," as my 7th-grade algebra teacher used to suggest when we'd learn a new concept like FOIL.
Probably the most marvelous sight was viewing the Book of Kells and the Long Room in the library at Trinity College Dublin. But I also saw the prehistoric sites mentioned before, including the engineering marvel of Newgrange, with a stone roof so carefully constructed that not a drop of water has leaked in during the 5,000 or so years it's been around. I saw the Georgian Dublin Castle, which was pretty cool, but also the remains of 11th century Viking castle built underneath it, which was very cool. I walked about a vibrant, verdant, expensive, bustling city, popping into shops and eating at great restaurants. I saw an impressive display of stone and bronze age items at Dublin's Natural History museum.
