England trip

[lauradi7dw]

We were in England for the past two Tuesdays and the days in between.
Number of all-you-can eat vegetarian buffets consumed: 4, at 4 different restaurants.
Number of towers rung at: 18 for me, 15 for Arthur (we nearly made it to two more)
Number of miles walked in the road, being scratched by brambles, because there was no sidewalk or shoulder (outside of London, clearly): 3 for me, 1 for Arthur
Number of National Trust sites visited: 6 for me, 4 for Arthur (including a place that the NT just owns the land around the Ridgeway, and including one we were too late to visit but looked through the gate)
Number of churches visited not for ringing: 4? One of them has been turned into the Museum of Gardening History, so maybe I should count it as a museum, of which I visited 4, I think.
Number of miles driven in a rented car on Saturday: 254. Cost per liter to refill the tank: $2.32. Side of the road driven on: left.

Tuesday the 17 we landed at dawn, went into London and dropped off the luggage, and then back out to Kew Gardens.

We'd never been. It was nice. Later Arthur did some Economics stuff and I went grocery shopping. Practice night at St James, Bermondsey.
Wednesday
Arthur at a conference, me to mid-day service ringing at St Botolph, Bishopsgate. They've done some work since last year, and it's not so loud in the ringing room now. There were only four ringers, which was a shame because it was St Botolph's day and the church was making a big deal of it, with special music and balloons, and the clergy handing out lollipops to passersby before the service. I went to the exhibits at the Wellcome Collection,
then out to dinner with the conference economists. The most expensive dinner I've ever had (by dividing the total bill by 20), even though we didn't eat or drink much of it. It was a pre-set meal with a heavy focus on meat and alcohol.
Thursday
visited the site of the famous pump from which John Snow removed the handle to stop the spread of cholera. There wasn't a pub named after him then.

Mid-day ringing at St Giles, followed by pub time with geezers, mostly, and long time hanging out in a cafe with two women from the Ringing chat list, representing 3 continents among us. Quick supper, then Arthur and I went to practice night at St Dunstan's, Stepney Green.

It's a bit of an oddity in a mostly Muslim neighborhood (although the church was there for hundreds of years before the mosque) and among all the low-income housing there are lovely garden plots.
Friday
visited a modernist house in Hampstead
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-2willowroad/
that I didn't like much, then a long time wandering around the Heath.

I had never spent much time there except on the edge near Belsize Park, and discovered that it is full of meadows and forested areas, some dense and thick enough that the automatic woman alone in a deserted place frisson popped up. Not true (the alone part) - every time I felt that way, someone would show up walking a dog.
Saturday
Tower grab day in Warwickshire, with a visit to the Tudor era house Charlecote http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-charlecotepark.htm
between a couple of towers,


and a quick stop by an old Quaker Meeting, the third or fourth we've visited in England.


Sunday
I went to the service at the Unitarian Church in Hampstead, and then we took the train to Tring to do the last bit of the Ridgeway walk in 30 mile an hour winds,

plus visiting the windmill at Pitstone

and cutting across fields on footpaths and walking down a road and then a towpath for the Grand Union Canal,

and then back via train.
Monday
Arthur with economists, me back on the train for a day in Kent. I started out in Hastings. Based on our experience of English seaside resorts, it's pretty much like the archetype. There is still a commercial fishing fleet, but there are rows of hotels (some classic Victorian, some more modern), mini-golf, lots of gift shops for sand shovels and beach mats (even though the beach is the little pebble sort, not sand), a pier with arcade games, etc.

There are also castle ruins, nice flower gardens (including one at the site of a hotel that was bombed out during WWII) and in the old part, I viewed several of the places used as filming locations for the series "Foyle's War."

Back on the train, to Etchingham, closest railway station to Bateman's, former home of Rudyard Kipling. I'm not a big fan of his, but I'd seen the made-for-TV film "My Boy Jack" on PBS, and wanted to see the place.

It turns out that the only filming they did there was outside shots, and since they don't allow inside photographs, I can't show what it looked like. A lot of the furniture is from the same time period as the house, including a really nice clock that is keeping good time after 350 years. I have no idea how much of its guts have been replaced in the meantime.
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-batemans/
It's 3 miles or so from the station to the house, and since the bus that gets within half a mile only runs once an hour, I thought I'd be faster walking. Nope - the bus passed me eventually, after I'd done 2 mile section that involved a lot of jumping into the brambles to avoid being run over. I took the bus back, thereby missing the train I'd hoped to catch (the bus got there one minute after the train left), but it was a pleasant enough place to wait for the next one, with views of fields with sheep.

Tuesday
Arthur to a seminar in the late morning, me to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth. I'm not in favor of empires or wars, but I thought it was an excellent museum, with a heavy focus on the two world wars, with background, artifacts, interviews, and both battle details and lots of exhibits on how people coped on the home front. I managed to explain rationing to a kid who just didn't get it, and pointed out a nearly lifesize version of the famous Archduke Ferdinand in a car photo to some teenagers who were looking for it but couldn't find it. I guess it's rude to eavesdrop and join in, but I think I was helpful. As far as I can tell, all school field trips in England involve carrying clipboards with history scavenger hunts on them, whether we're talking about kids who are 7 or 17.
The section on the Holocaust (almost two whole floors) was better overall than the museum in DC, I think.
After that I wandered around outside a bit, did a very quiet and modified version of the Lambeth Walk on Lambeth Walk (which is off of Lambeth Road),
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/history/gfx/lambethwalk.jpg
walked across the bridge, and took the bus back to pack. Thence homeward. Airplane travel is uncomfortable, but it's very fast.

Comments

[dvmp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well you think you had an adventure, during the same time period in Dallas I mowed my lawn twice. YEEE HAAA.