London, Revisited

After two quiet nights in Cardiff, we were back to London, primed to do all of the museums and activities we'd skipped six weeks earlier.

After checking into our hostel near Hammersmith Station, we walked to the Natural History Museum. The museum is housed in a gorgeous Victorian building, adorned with carved stone animals on the outside and stuffed animals on the inside (sad, when you think about it). The museum also boasts lots of plastic models, and a huge display of dinosaur skeletons.

That night, we took the tube to the City and crossed the river. We'd bought tickets to Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus at the Globe Theatre, reconstructed to resemble its Shakespearean-era self.

We had floor tickets, so we stood in the crowd at the foot of the stage and looked up at the players and at the rings of balcony seats stacked up to the ceiling. Highly recommended if you're in London and have a soft spot for old Bill and his contemporaries.

We woke up late the next morning, and by afternoon we'd made it to the British Museum, where the vast collections represent nearly the whole world and tackle many, many eras of history. Essentially the place is full of booty. British explorers and adventurers collected the valuable objects - be they fossils or Peruvian gold or whatever else - and then donated them to the museum. Among the many displays, there are rooms full of sarcophagi and statues from Egypt and Persia, and many, many mummies of all sizes.

Sometimes this game of finders-keepers doesn't go over well: many governments around the world have unsuccessfully demanded back the treasures taken from their lands, and the biggest squabble is ongoing. The British Museum has a whole wing of sculptures and carved marble from the Parthenon in Athens, taken in the early 1800s when Greece was under Ottoman rule. Greece has been trying for years to reclaim them, but the museum and each British government have refused. The pamphlet that is distributed in the museum to explain the situation basically argues that the priceless artifacts are safer in London.

Our final day was spent at the Tower of London. It's worth the expensive entrance, primarily because it includes a free tour from one of the Beefeater gaurds - yes, those guys in the blue and red uniforms that decorate gin bottle. And yes, they do wear those fabulous puffy hats.

Our tour was fantastic. Our guide was engaging, very knowledgeable and obviously enjoys his job. Especially trying to scare people (children) with the Tower's many horror stories.

For the whole hour, though, I couldn't quite get past the feeling that I knew the man leading us around, with his confident storytelling, his slightly morbid sense of humour, his love of British military history... I felt like I'd spent an hour with my dad! So I was not surprised to learn that all of the Beefeaters are decorated sergeant majors. Sergeant majors always have that special knack for being both fearsome and lovable.

After the tour, we wandered through the castle and around the walls, learning the colourful stories of its royal inhabitants. Up until Queen Victoria's reign, the Tower had a collection of royal beasts: at various times it held everything from lions and monkeys to a polar bear who was allowed to swim in the Thames. Now the only animals are the ravens that hop all over the grounds, wings clipped to keep them here because an old Welsh prophecy foretold the Tower's fall if the ravens were to leave.

At the end of the day, we grabbed our bags from the hostel and headed out to a hotel right beside Heathrow's Terminal 5. Despite the planes taking off over us, shaking the windows and drowning out whatever bad movie we were watching, we were excited: the next morning meant a fight to Istanbul and the next phase of the trip.

S.

Manchester

We padded gently around the wide, spacious rooms, gazing with respectful envy on the vast collection of leather-bound books laid cozily to rest on the dark, glossy shelves. Down the dusky corridors with their tall, vaulted ceilings were more libraries, waiting with hushed dignity for inquisitive minds.

This is the John Ryland Library, a red brick Victorian-era edifice in central Manchester that was built specifically to house a fabulous and growing private book collection. Now, as well as acting as a library and study area for the University of Manchester, it's a museum, showcasing many important ancient texts and first editions, of which I found most impressive to be a small piece of a Greek bible dated to 125 AD.

Outside the calm of the library, Manchester was vibrant and bustling. A jazz band was ripping up Albert Square in front of the city hall, Piccadilly Garden was blanketed with sleepy sunbathers trying to avoid the inevitable footballs flying about the grass.

When we left the highlands, we spent a few more nights in Glasgow with Piper, as well as her fiancee Danny and his mom Beth, who were visiting from Canada. After a day of intense planning and washing the highland mud out of our clothes, and a tasty meal at the Indian restaurant underneath the apartment (thanks, Beth!), we grabbed a bus to Manchester.

We spent quite a bit of time in the free museums because, well, we like free stuff. Although transport and accommodation can be frustratingly expensive in Britain, many of the excellent museums are entirely free, which is an amazing break for the wallet.

The Imperial War Museum North hit many of the same notes as the other war museums we'd seen in Britain and on the continent, but had a fantastic array of personal stories - to me, these glimpses of humanity during war years are far more gripping than any overriding narrative could be.

The Museum of Science and Industry was also a hit. There is a big collection of both steam and combustion engines, which kept Dan very happy, and the displays about the city's time as the heart of Britain's Industrial Revolution are excellent. Science is fun!

The winner, though, above the informative science bits, was the big exhibit on the evolution of Manchester's sewage systems right from Roman times. Slightly gross, but neat. And we walked through a reproduction sewer that was complete with fake rats.

Just outside the doors of the museum are the physical remnants of the Industrial Revolution:the area known now as Castlefield is full of old rail bridges, big factories and canals.

Although we didn't get to sample any of Manchester's famous nightlife, we did patronize several pubs.

I like British pubs, and so does Dan. I like the bar-style service (rather than table service, and this usually includes ordering food at the bar) because I like the relaxed atmosphere. I love the couches and low tables that make the place feel like a livingroom. Sometimes it actually feels like someone's home: pubs can be a family affair. While we were taking in some afternoon pints at a pub near the science museum, we watched a flock of kids flit between their parents, on the patio, and the park next door. In Tobermory, we watched three generation of family dance to a local cover band. In Cambridge, the proprietor's twelve-year-old son brought out our toasties and did a quality check.

Whether this is good or bad or neither, I don't know, but in the latter two cases it's charming, and undeniably it's part of the pub culture.

S.

Southern English History Lessons

Lying on the concrete seawall, eyes closed, listening to the gulls screech as the sun beats down on my face. I can taste sticky, sweet ice cream on my lips. I can smell the salt water and the breeze is just faintly tainted with scent of decaying shellfish.

Have we gone back south?!

But wait - I'm wearing a jacket because the sun is just lukewarm. That greasy rock in my belly is most certainly from the pre-ice cream fish and chips.

This isn't the Mediterranean! This is England!

We were in the seaside village of Whitstable, County Kent, seven miles from Canterbury. We'd rented bikes and cycled the 'Crab and Winkle Way,' formerly a rail line (one of the first in Britain) dedicated to distributing the shellfish caught in Whitstable to the rest of Merrie Olde England.

The smooth, rounded stones of the beach lead up to the seawall, and the seaside pubs (where we'd had a few pints). Here and there, walking up the coast, there are piles of big oyster shells - the bounty harvested here since Roman times.

We returned the bikes the next morning and, sore-bottomed from the thin bike seats, set off to explore Canterbury's pious side.

The ornate cathedral has been a famous pilgrimage site since the gruesome murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the late thirteenth century - this is the destination in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.' The original crypts below the cathedral are largely accessible, and in one of the chapels, the wall murals dating from the early years of the church are still visible, the familiar figures depicted with big, almond-shaped eyes, angular features and faded colours that were once bright and expressive.

On a whim, we took a peek at a Pilgrim's Hospice set up by Becket's nephew to provide lodging for the poorer pilgrims. Still used as a senior's residence today, original murals are visible in the chapel and the common space.

Finally, we went to the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey, the place where the celebrated saint first set up a church to begin his mission of re-Christianizing Anglo-Saxon Britain. The original abbey has been excavated and is partially visible, along with the outline of the Norman abbey and cathedral that replaced it. As we explored its grassy paths and red brick ruins, the site gave us an intimate picture of Britain's relationship with the church - with far fewer tourists than the overrun cathedral next door.

We packed up our tent for the final time and decided it was time for a special treat: a bed and breakfast! Fluffy towels, a television, a chocolate on the pillow, a superbly artery-choking breakfast. Amazing!

We had come to Portsmouth to spend a whole day at the historical harbour, where three famous ships now rest - Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose, Nelson's yellow and black checkered Victory and the greatest of the Victorian battleships, the cast iron-hulled Warrior. The ticket for these also includes a 45 minute harbour tour, which was a welcome interlude between ship-wanderings.

The Mary Rose is not available for viewing. Having sunk off the Portsmouth coast in the Tudor era, it was recovered from the sea floor a few decades ago and is now being painstakingly conserved. The museum is nice and has some eroded artifacts on display.

The Victory

The Victory and the Warrior, however, are both restored and functional - you can climb all over both as you learn about the ships, the technology and the lives of the crew.

Our final stop before the long journey north to Scotland was to Salisbury - or rather, a small village outside of Salisbury named Cholderton. Our hostel, which was a big YHA hostel built on a farm, was advertised as four miles from Stonehenge. Turns out this is only the case by highway, but we adventurous souls struck out on a Saturday morning in search of the most famous of British monuments anyway.

Although longer than anticipated at a 12 to 13 mile round trip, the walk took us along the Avenue, the ancient road approaching Stonehenge from the east. We passed a number of burial mounds along the ridge facing the site, arranged so as to line the horizon and then plodded through the cow fields towards our goal.

Although the famous sarsen stones and bluestones are just as enormous as I had imagined, I was shocked by how tightly packed together they are, rendering the site itself quite small and compact. From most angles on the ground, it's actually somewhat difficult to see the familiar horseshoe patterns in the pack of stones.

The magnitude of the stones themselves remains impressive: they are huge and took centuries of serious dedication to carve and move and arrange. That they were obviously once incredibly important to a thriving culture cannot be denied, but it is unlikely we will ever fully understand why.

Although smaller than I had thought, the ancient site is nonetheless intriguing. The stones will remain charmingly enigmatic, ripe for the romance of the imagination even as they stand steadfastly evasive. It was worth a visit to see the stuff of legend.

That said... the audio guide is great, but save yourself the seven quid. Read the Wikipedia article and then observe from the highway!

S.

Celebration in London

It was the perfect Canada Day weekend. We met up with friends to revel in the summer heat and drink beer. We went to an outdoor concert. We drank beer. All that was missing was the barbecued hot dogs and the fireworks.

And somehow, we did it all in London: the cosmopolitan, bursting-at-the-seams British version, not my gentle-but-enthusiastic Ontario hometown, which for those of you who weren't aware, does in fact have a Thames River to back up the name.

We had arranged weeks before that Stefan and Laura, who you will remember from Cologne, and Stef's girlfriend Hawley (another ginger!) would come to London to meet us for the Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire concert in Hyde Park.

I won't give a full a concert review here, but I will tell you that if you have the chance to see either group live, do it! Mumford and Sons mustered the same intensity they have on the album, and their new stuff sounds like it could be excellent. And the Arcade Fire... amazing. Old albums and new albums. Amazing. They played Power Out, my favourite from Funeral, right when Dan and I pushed through to the middle of the dancing, writhing crowd. So good!

We had a late start the next day, but Dan and I spent the day wandering the north bank of the Thames and Westminster, trying to get an idea of this giant city. It is positively overwhelming. We had a great day just looking at the buildings and the people.

We met up with the rest of the gang to check out the Canada Day celebration in Trafalgar Square - early in the day there was street hockey, and they had Timmies (!) and Molson Canadian and a sham poutine (mozzerella? Sigh). By the time we got there, they were down to Red Stripe. It is in a red and white can, granted, but it is also Jamaican.

Close enough for us.

Our final day, Dan and I toured around the City, the oldest section of London that now serves as the financial and business district: as we were there on a Saturday, it was deserted save for some tourists. We took a look at the London Museum for some info on the city's long history, and explored the quiet streets with their old churches and pubs and squares.

We arrived slightly too late to explore the Tower of London, so we decided to save it for our second run-through before the flight to Istanbul. Instead, we crossed the Tower Bridge and strolled along the South Bank.

We didn't do much traditional sightseeing, but London treated us well - and sitting with friends on beer-drenched grass at an outdoor concert soothed the pain of missing Bluesfest and cottages and the beautiful Ottawa summer.

Miss you all, friends, and thank you to Stef and Laura and Hawley for a great Canada Day weekend!

S.

Cambridge

We passed an uneventful night on the ferry and disembarked in Harwich after a jarring 5:30 wake-up call. After a sleepy morning wandering around the cute and very old town of Colchester, with its Norman keep and Roman ruins, we boarded the train to Cambridge.

Now, I don't know if Cambridge is normally the Bermuda Triangle of British intercity transport, but on the journey in, we spent three hours in Bury St Edmunds because of a blockage on the train track (kudos to the frantic young National Express employee who was simultaneously attempting to explain and re-explain the situation to thirty annoyed and confused passengers who swarmed him incessantly, call cabs to placate said passengers and figure out what the eff was even going on). On the trip from Cambridge to London, our bus dropped all of its oil onto the road two turns into the journey, causing chaos for cycling students and once again leaving us waiting patiently (as we have nowhere to be for nine months) for the next vehicle.

Bit of a shock coming from the slick precision of German and Dutch rail. But maybe we're bad luck. After all, one of our trains in Germany WAS one-and-a-half minutes late.

Either way, we eventually made it to a campsite 5 miles outside Cambridge and set ourselves up. We were in need of a rest, so three nights turned into five and even so, we never did manage to tour the inside of any of the colleges.


We wandered Cambridge's winding streets, lined by quaint black-gabled houses and shops, and walked along the 'Backs,' the long and woodsy park running along the backside of the elaborate colleges. We took a look at the tiny but history-rich Round Church, built as a prayer-stop for medieval pilgrims, and we spent Sunday hiding from the heat, holed up in a pub to watch F1 (Dan) and to devour cheese toasties and use the wifi (me).

We spent a day at yet another war museum, the Duxford Imperial this time, located on the Duxford Airfield, which was a major base in both world wars. As you have probably guessed, it is mostly about airplanes, which thankfully weren't a major feature in Overloon the week before. I will give them this: airplanes are pretty cool.

The highlight of the day came when someone flew their restored Spitfire in loops over the airfield, the droning roar chasing behind the little gray plane as it buzzed down along the grass and then up to flip and fly back down, again and again, loop after loop. We have no idea who owns the plane - the museum can't afford the expense of keeping most of the planes fully functional, but does allow private collectors/pilots to keep historical aircraft in the hangars.

On our final day in Cambridge, we set out on a long hike across the fens - reclaimed marsh land - to Ely, 17 miles or 30 some-odd kilometres away. A long, but very flat walk between the River Cam and the train line, past long, thin house boats covered in windows and plants, families of swans and herds of cows that only begrudgingly moved off of the thick dikes to let us by, sidestepping splatted cow patties as we went.

And then it began to rain, hard and angled in the wind that whipped across the fenlands. We donned our brand-new, ultra-stylish rain pants and tromped on through the muck. Our waterproof shoes began to leak a couple hours later, but there wasn't much to do but sploosh, sploosh, (squish! Cow patty?) along, squinting against the wind and the sharp rain.

Our moment of redemption came when, five hours into the walk and three into the rain, suddenly the massive octagonal stone tower of the Ely Cathedral came into view, beckoning like a lighthouse in a sea of swampy fields. Tragically, we were still five soggy miles off - but now we had a goal in sight.

At least we know the rain pants work?

S.