peak district

lookit! melbourne! the old one! it is a funny little village near caroline's. this is one of hte largest norman churches in england - goes back to 1133.
they have the australian flag hanging up inside. v.g.

and this is the lake next to melbourne hall:

so this is all from my time visiting caroline. we went on scenic drives round, chasing history and bbc film makers. i've seen mr darcy's house!

we wandered round the park of this stately home (or was it a stately home? caroline's bro tells us there is a specific def. of stately homes):
the sheep just wander round loose there. very odd. and they have tails! and also, rolling green hills, ridiculously picturesque.

ta muchly to caroline (and bro) for hospitality and such informative commentary on the local area. and my new docs! (which i will start breaking in as soon as the snow melts)

york II

then we went back to york and dropped off the car (sorry tofu, no pics!) and spent the day wandering the v. picturesque streets - all crooked and cobblestone. the hardfarmer shouted us a cream tea in this lovely tiny two-storey cafe with little crooked stairs. and we had lunch in a ruin:
(that's me and tofu, in case we are too small to recognise). then the girls headed back to london to recuperate and buy HF's wedding gear, and i hopped on a train to the peak district.

haworth

i may have mentioned this particular excursion before. . .

poor old brontes. i am reading a collection of their letters at the moment (got for 5 pounds on special), which is very interesting, especially in comparision to mrs gaskell's work. i can also picture the rooms they're writing about. i think i'll read 'agnes grey' next, it's been ages. and 'the virgin in the garden' again, cos just finished 'elizabeth the queen'. and then backwards through alison weir's work.

anyway, haworth. this is the parsonage:they also had a little musuem and we had a nice chat with the very talkative woman in the gift shop.

it is not as desolate as it was (as well as cram full of tourists), but you can still see, especially with the graveyard all round. we went for a bit of a wander through the surrounds:

this is the pub down the street that branwell drank at:

and this is the YHA we were staying in:

caroline tells me it's quite common for old mansions to be used as YHAs or hostels, if they're too old to be knocked down but not old or special enough to be a tourist attraction. there was the most fabulous wallpaper and cherubs on the ceilings.

and thus, haworth. it was cold and windy and raining, which felt right, and i feel very special to have been there.

christmas

merry christmas everyone! haha.

tuchfrau (nee tofu) found an ingenious way of wrapping presents with apposite pieces of newpaper and we had a little christmas tree and a little christmas pud and a little bottle of bubbly. huzzah!
this is the hardfarmer with "the be good tanyas" cd i got her:
tofu with "middlesex", which HF gave her:

and gtg with the *signed* copy of lauren child's latest, which tofu gave me:

me and the hardfarmer on the lake windermere ferry

enjoying some particularly good christmas cake

work in progress

have begun posting the (fab) hol. stay tuned for our next installment.

ps. read from the bottom up for chronological order.

amazons forever!

we left york and tofu, despite the cold from hell, drove us to bowness-on-windemere, with HF navigating. the hardfarmer had organised to rent a little flat, which was lovely. we spent our time in the lake district eating marvellously, working our way through our great stack of books and going on little rambles. very relaxing. the lake district was very pretty.
we went for a lovely walk around tarn hows (a tarn is a little lake on top of a mountain) and played swallows and amazons.
that's the hardfarmer in the red hat:
HF and i also went for a ferry ride across lake windemere (tofu was crook). we sat up the top for the trip home, which was fabulously cold and fabulously beautiful. i have a vid i'll put up later.
and we had an amble round ambleside too:
i also nicked off to dove cottage (tofu and HF were crook), where william wordsworth and his women lived. here's another virtual tour. i took an actual tour of the cottage. it was very small and dark. people were smaller back in the day. they had their actual four poster double bed and it was very little. i also whizzed round the attached museum. they had lots of original manuscripts and letters and things. i've seen ol' wordie's ice skates! i'm not a huge wordsworth fan, in itself, but having done that romanticism subject i was keen to see this stuff. the relationship between william and his sister is also interesting. resisted the urge to buy a stuffed albatross (tie-in exhibition about the rime of the ancient mariner).
here's the environs:

york

we got up very early and caught the train to york (via several monolopy places like kings cross station) which was packed out with christmas travellers like us:
we caught a taxi out to the car hire place and the driver had a lovely yorkshire accent and said things like "nowt", "lasses" and made fun of us for having so much stuff. then (after a few exploratory doughtnuts in the carpark) the tofu whizzed us off to the YHA .

we spent the afternoon in yorkminster, which, as i may have mentioned, was stunning and old. parts of it date back to the 13th century. we went on a tour lead by a nun and learnt stacks. the whole thing was covered in beautiful carving, with humerous/grotesque details. there was stunning stainglass and huge arches. i recommend the virtual tour.
this is two of the kings in the 15th century quire screen. that's william on the left. i like his corkscrew curls. two sculptors did them, and they are known as thin face and fat face. thus:
we also went on an explore of the crypt and undercroft, which has the remains of the roman fortress built on the same site. when we emerged from the crypt it was pretty late, so we stuck around for evensong. it was great to see the cathedral in use, and hear the choir's voices ringing round the great space.

here's some streetscapes round york as well. this is an entrance to the wall around the city:

and here's an example of the little crooked city streets:
we also bought out the little apple bookshop. joy!

jetlag of doooooom

urg. stupid timezones. (stupid asthma). going to see friend types now. hopefully will keep me awake. bleeeggh. . .

sleepy

back in van. flight was okay. i'm completely wiped though, will post tomorrow.

bed now.

congratulations to tofu and the hard farmer!

at 11.30 in the bath guild hall the hard farmer and tofu were joined in holy unionisation. aw. . .

the ceremony was very beautiful and so were the girls and they have lovely rings. i got to be a witness. it was neat. the hard farmer's bro came, and his partner and they were beautiful as well.

after the photo shoot we went out for luuuuuurvely grub. mmm, bubbly is good. oh so much food. (three hour long lunch, big kudos to Hf's folks for shouting us)




bath was speccy and romantic. oh, the whole thing was romantic. *sniffles*



love to them both!

the brontes make gtg sad

hellooooo it's me, it's cathy i've come hoooommeee ooooh etc. *wails*

haha guess where i am??? england is still cool though i am everybody's favourite asthmatic again *squeaks* i forgot about smoking in pubs and restaurants.

currently staying with the lovely caroline (who is currently checking her blog) and went on a nice drive today round to historical sites in the peak district including a prehistoric stone circle, several stately homes (though closed cos new years but fab views) and eyam, which is that plague village _the year of wonders_ is based on. that was a little sad/creepy, but it was a very pleasant day and i feel all sort of settled in time now, y'know.

had lovely chrissie with tofu and the hard farmer which consisted almost exclusively of eating masses of wonderful food and reading the huge stack of books we had between us. v. g. books for christmas. had some very nice rambles round the lake district and had a quick tour round dove cottage (william wordworth and his harem lived there). very small and dark. huzzah for that romanticism subject i did last year.

went to haworth and stayed in a YHA which was this enormous mansion-style building built in 1884. and went to the parsonage. oh it was so sad. so sad. but wonderful to be there and see charlotte's tiny dress and their writing boxes and keeper's collar and all the old manuscripts. oh it was lovely. did my only souviner shopping (england is *expensive* plus). the parsonage is sort of stuck in the graveyard, and all the gravestones mossey and off on angles. we went for a bit of a wander on the moors and i feel over and got genuine haworth mud on me. very atmospheric. we tried to have lunch in the pub old bramwell drank himself to an early grave in but it was so smokey we turned up our snotty noses and left. tofu and HF also crook, poor things. hope they are feeling better for their big day.

had another quick day in york. oh, i didn't write about the first one, did i? oh, yorkmister is *fabulous*, just stunning. we went on a tour given by a little nun and learnt such a lot. it took them 200 years to build it and you can see all the different styles of architecture. beautiful carvings and stained glass. we stayed for evensong, which was good.

lots of photos, will do later. good to see all commentors, sorry i don't have time to reply individually. but am still alive and stuff and having a fabulous time. not really looking forward to getting back to work, i'm enjoying this history, literature, eating, rambling, gazing-in-awe business far too much.

love to all

london is cool

,




eee! spent entire day sight-seeing, what fun. have been on lots of red double-decker buses and been on the tube and seen bobbies in hard hats. it's kinda like travelling on a big monopoly board. ooo, went to paddington station too. anyways, today i went to trafalger square and saw the lions then to the portrait gallery. the portrait gallery was *amazing*. the benefits of a (post) colonial literary education. i was muttering things like "_pamela_ sucked, you know" and "ooo, they left all the good bits out of that george elliot blurb". and i saw the brontes, poor old things, and masses of tudors. god the paintings were fabulous. lots of good elizabeths and baby kings and hundreds of henry VIII's wives. a bit dusty but.

then i went for a bit of a wander down the thames (cold and foggy, which is appropriate), over the bridge with a quick gawk at big ben, and to the tate modern, which had some very cool stuff in, including these enormous slides people were going down. then i went for a wander over to teh globe theatre but it was closing so i walked over the millenium bridge and up to st pauls, which was pretty speccy. and then i managed to get the tube home and change lines and everything. good ol' london a to z.

now i am tired and have a lovely stack of postcards. we head off to york tomorrow, very early. very lovely to be back with the girls.

p.s. sorry photos are all out of order. they are all of things i've seen today, so you can match them up yourselves. . .

eee!

guess where i am!

london is cool, the girls are fab, going to art galleries tomorrow!

i am doing so much better with this flight than the last one. i remembered to confirm my flight (100% improvement) and am packed already:the pile on the left is for taking on the plane (the little clear plastic sealable bag is to put my less than 30ml of liquids in). note the smallness of the other bags - less than 15k! huzzah!

and this was going to be a sort of reflective pre-adventure sort of shot but it didn't really work. so i am putting it in cos i like how weird looking my arm is. enjoy!

travel details

dear all,

as i may have mentioned once or twice i'm skipping *this* country tomorrow. yeah. i'm leaving here on the 20th in the arvo and arriving in london 21st midday (local times). back in canadia on the 5th of jan.

i expect interweb access will be intermittent, so don't be worried if i don't post too often. i'll do my best to keep the blog up and running. otherwise look forward to masses of photos when i get back!

love

more winter wonderland stuff

those mountains are so cool. nothing on HF's, of course, but this was taken from the eng dept window. it is only snowing up high - raining downtown.