Our Old House in Cambridge

I labeled this post Cambridge but really it was a driving day rather than a sightseeing day. We stopped for lunch with friends on the way down the A1, which was a great treat. I should mention that today was our 29th anniversary and we considered that visit with friends and a nice meal a good way to celebrate. Thanks, Teresa and David, and God bless you.

Then we stopped briefly in Cambridge so Dorothy could see the house I lived in during our year there, during the school year of 1971-72. The house has changed a bit. The portion with the eaves part way up is a new addition and the first window to the right of that is where the door used to be. Otherwise, the street looks very much as it did. The butcher shop is still there and they seem to have added fruit and vegetables to their wares.

We tried to drive through Cambridge but if you’ve done that recently, you know it’s not a winning proposition. You really need to park and walk but we didn’t have the time for that. The four of us in our car got a glimpse of King’s College Chapel but only because we know were and when to look. We headed back onto the highway and down to London, checking into the hotel at the airport and returning our cars.

St. Michael and All Angels, Torpenhow

Moss Force seen from Newlands Hause

Afternoon Tea in Keswick

The View from Watendlath

Each day of our trip to England had a character all its own and today was no exception. Mostly the character was determined by what we saw and that was true on day 12 but the weather played a bigger part today than it had on any other. It had rained a few times but it never really affected our plans, until today. It was raining when we got up and it continued to rain throughout the day.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, some days you see things that you want to see and other days you see things someone else wants to see. Today, our first stop was totally for me and I’m grateful that the others were willing to see it with me. My great, great, great grandfather, William Hartley, (born 1778) lived in the little town of Torpenhow for at least part of his life. We visited the church of Torpenhow, called St. Michael and All Angels. It’s a pretty little church with portions (notably the semi-circular arch on the right in this picture) dating to the early 12th century.

Our original plan had been to go for a bit of a tramp in the Lake District. The rain continued to come down, however, and that wasn’t going to happen. From Torpenhow we drove to Buttermere, a pretty, little lake in a pretty, little valley. We made our way to the car park where we would have started our hike, stopping a couple times to enjoy the view. We could barely see across the lake and couldn’t see the top of the hill we had talked about climbing. We turned back and headed through Newlands Hause, north of the town of Buttermere stopping briefly at the pass. Only the nutty Hartleys got out to get “a better view.” You can just make out the waves of rain, lashing from right to left across this photo of Moss Force.

We went to Keswick, which was a bit crowded with people who, like us, were brought in out of the rain. Still, we found parking spaces and took this opportunity to enjoy a proper afternoon tea. It’s something you want to do when you visit England but the timing hadn’t worked out up until now. It was also a nice thing to do on a rainy, windy day. Bryson’s Tea Room turned out to be the ideal place, as well. We ordered “tea for two” times four (since there were eight of us) and were happy to have warm tea, savory sandwiches, rich, creamy sweets, and (as much as anything) a comfortable place out of the rain.

After our yummy meal, we wandered around the shops in Keswick for a while. It was still raining but we decided to visit one more Lake District beauty spot before heading back to our hotel. We drove up the narrow road on the east side of Derwent Water to the hidden vale of Watendlath, with its beautiful little tarn and rushing beck (which was seriously rushing today) passing under a stone packhorse bridge. It was still coming down pretty steadily but I think everyone was happy to have visited and seen what view could be seen, which made up for in beauty what was lost in distance.

All in all, it was very little like what had been planned but everyone agreed that it had been a good day.

The Essence of Scotland

This post is titled “England: Day 11, Edinburgh” but we were actually in Scotland. We drove from our hotel in Gretna down to Carlisle, where we caught the train to Edinburgh for the day. Opinions of the day were mixed. Personally, besides the necessary driving days, this was my least favorite day of the entire trip. From my perspective, going to Edinburgh during the festival is a good idea only if you aren’t interested in seeing Edinburgh. First, the streets, the castle, and the entire place is jammed with people. I’m talking “make London seem quite” full of people. Second, you cannot see the castle from the Royal Mile and you cannot see the Royal Mile from the castle. They put up a temporary (but still very substantial) stadium around the esplanade below the castle and that’s all you really see. There are good people watching opportunities, evidenced by this photograph of your typical Scottish accordionist (playing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, by the Beatles), but you don’t need to go all the way to Scotland to see interesting people. So, this is one day I would have rather been doing something else. Still, when you travel with others, you see a mix of things. One day you see something you want to see, other days you see something someone else wants to see. And I wouldn’t have been with a different group of people anywhere else for anything.

Hadrian’s Wall and Crag Lough

Milecastle 39 on Hadrian’s Wall

Sycamore Gap, Hadrian’s Wall

I’ve tried to confine myself to one picture per day or at most, one picture per major sight. Not only have I already posted a photo from the morning of day 10 (Caerlaverock Castle), I’m posting three from this location (Hadrian’s Wall). I cannot speak for anyone by myself but this was one of the high points of our trip, as far as I’m concerned. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, windy and cool. The greens were greener than they had been and we were away from the sounds of the city or even town life that had pretty much dominated our trip to this point.

Hadrian’s Wall, as you may know, was built starting in AD 122, during the rule of the Roman emperor Hadrian. It is 73 miles in length, running across northern England as a defense against the northern tribes (the Gaels and Picts).

It many places there isn’t much to see along the wall. I selected this section because I thought it would be pretty even if there had been no wall there to follow. I think that turned out to be true, although the wall did add to the ambiance. The first picture shown here is the scarp on which the wall runs. It runs from the Steel Rigg car park to Crag Lough, visible on the left. The wall runs just above the cliff and most not have needed to be very high for most of this stretch. If I were planning an attack, I think I’d have come at it somewhere else.

The second picture is of the wall as it descends from the heights to the ruins of Milecastle 39 in a gap in the scarp. The wall has forts spaced roughly a mile apart. The Roman mile (mille passuum, “a thousand paces”) is estimated to be 4,851 feet, about 0.91 statute miles.

The next gap along the way is called Sycamore Gap because of the lone Sycamore Maple tree (Acer pseudoplatanus) growing there. It’s a pretty spot and the sound of the wind blowing through the tree was a bit magical.

The changing light as the clouds raced across the sky, the dramatic cliffs to our north, the sheep peacefully grazing on the rich, green grass, all contributed to a wonderful afternoon.

Our walk took longer than expected (actually, pretty much everything we did the entire two weeks took longer than expected). That meant we missed having an afternoon tea where we had hoped to have it. We did have a nice lunch earlier at the Milecastle Inn, though. Between the castle in the morning and Hadrian’s Wall and a country hike in the afternoon, this was my favorite day of the trip.

Caerlaverock Castle

As boys living in England, we loved castles. We loved exploring them and would pretend we were living in the middle ages. We designed castles of our own, as well. This is one of the castles we visited so many years ago. It’s actually changed a little, with some repairs having been made allowing access to more of the living area of the castle. It’s hard to tell from this photograph but the castle is triangular in shape.

Our first morning in Scotland started out raining. We decided we should go to the castle anyway, since we only have three days in the north. As it turned out, the rain stopped while we were on the way to the castle and it cleared up quite a bit later in the day. The rain contributed to the castle not having many visitors in the morning, which was an added bonus.

We walked around the Tower of London and we’ll see another castle tomorrow but this was our only “proper” ruined castle for the trip and I think everyone was glad we paid it a visit. I’ll put up another post with our other sightseeing visit for the day.