Kevin and Sarah's Wedding

• I found something bigger in Britain!  Their bacon is HUGE!  It’s like, double- wide.  (I think the pigeons are probably bigger too, but it’s difficult to say if they are fat, or just poofy because it’s cold.)

It was tasty, too! Technically, this is a streaky rasher! There were about 1 million different kinds to choose from.

• There is such a thing as self- shearing sheep.  They shed their fleece!

Self- shearing sheeps! We saw these at Flag Fen. Their wool just falls out and can be picked up. They think it’s similar to a breed that would have been raised by Bronze and Iron Age people.

• Yew trees look like redwoods.

Well, these ones look like a squirrel and a … chicken?? But the leaves and bark look like redwoods.

• I’ve figured out why no one really uses the street names – they change!  For example, there is an Uppington Road, in Oakham, that goes toward Uppington.  However, halfway down, it becomes Oakham Road, because from Uppington, it’s the road to Oakham.  Luckily, while the road names are very confusing, the other signage is pretty good.

Thursday, June 14^th

Busy day today!  I have decided to not go in order today, because… I can.  So there.  We traveled first to Burghley House, then Peterborough Cathedral, then Flag Fen, and finally Cambridge.  Burghley House is a very large manor house and gardens, constructed originally in the 16^th century, and then remodeled through the 18^th century.  It was the residence of William Cecil, Lord Burleigh; he was Elizabeth I’s head of the privy council and an all around important man.  The house, however, was not open till 11, so we wandered around the outside and the grounds for a while, and then moved on.

The gates of Burghley House

BIG! And inhabited. Can you IMAGINE living here???

Peterborough Cathedral is a 900 year old cathedral in the town of Peterborough.  It’s definitely in one of the more incredible things we’ve seen so far.   The site has been home of a Celtic abbey (which was destroyed by a Danish attack), before a Benedictine Monastery was built on the site.  It had some really very beautifully decorated ceilings, and of course, the stonework was amazing.  The cathedral had an installation of modern art in it, which was actually kind of cool.  The first one was a giant sort of chandelier all out of plastic water bottles, and there were some giant draperies of broken CD’s, and so on.  A couple of really cool mirror things were meant to work with the cathedral structure, so in general, it added an interesting dimension to the whole thing.  On a historical note, the cathedral also contained the remains of Katherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII.  I was looking for some sort of giant effigy, based on what we saw yesterday, and totally walked by the panel in the floor the first time.  It also used to be the resting place of Mary, Queen of Scots until her son, James I had her moved to Westminster.

Peterborough Cathedral! Very pretty

Photography not allowed inside. =(

Cambridge was also very cool.  It actually reminded us a lot of Davis, because there are bikes everywhere!  It’s kind of funny, because you have these giant, stately old buildings, and then there are 50 thousand bicycles chained out front.  Davis has way better bike lanes, though.  You can sort of tell that Cambridge existed before cars were a thing, and so when cars became a thing, they had to carve out space in between and under and around all the existing stuff.  We wandered around the colleges, which were unfortunately closed (exams!) but we still got to see a lot.

It’s like Davis! Only less hot, and with cuter bike baskets. And significantly prettier buildings. Seriously, Davis, how do you expect to withstand the test of time with the Death Star??

The gates to King’s College

Another college. Probably Queen’s College. I think.

We also went to a funny little museum called the Sedgwick Museum of Geology.  It was really a collection of all of the stuff related to geology and fossils that the people from the college brought back from all of their research and so on.  They had a very extensive collection of fossils and rocks, and the museum was that old sort where they put out everything, so there were whole walls of fossil shells, and row upon row of little drawers and so on.  They had a very interesting thing on Darwin, who was a Cambridge student, and how he influenced the study of geology.  You always think of Darwin as such a biologist, but this exhibit was really focused on his work as a geologist.  For example, he was the one who figured out how coral reefs form rings in the middle of the ocean (it’s because they form around the edges of volcanoes, which are then eroded down into the sea.)  It was cool.

Charles’ Darwin’s signature! Actually, his notebook. He went to Cambridge, so they had a lot of his things in the museum.

Shells! EVERYWHERE! There was no “one shell to be representative of the rest” philosophy here.

A giant ammonite in the museum. I like ammonites.

After the museum, we went to King’s College Chapel, to go to Evensong, which is a daily service sung by the Cambridge Boy’s Choir.  It wasn’t quite what we were expecting, but the singing was lovely, and the chapel was very impressive – a narrow, tall building, very very high.  The ceilings were vaulted and very ornate.  One funny thing we’ve been noticing all over – everything closes at 5, if not earlier.  When we got out of the Evensong thing, we went back down through the city center, and all of the shops were totally closed up.   I kind of thought that it would be different in Cambridge, it being a college town, and very busy with visitors.  But nope!  When we went into the town near us last Sunday, even the grocery store was planning to close at 4pm.

Inside King’s College

Kings College Chapel, with people lined up for Evensong

The highlight of the day was Flag Fen.  Flag Fen is an archaeological park, and is an active dig site.  What are they digging for, you ask?  Well, they’ve found some really cool stuff from the Bronze Age.  See, Flag Fen was sort of a swampy, wet area in the Bronze Age, so the people built a causeway and a platform in the middle.  They drove pilings down into the marsh, and then built up a bridge from dry land to dry land across the marsh, with a platform for some sort of building in the middle.  Well, they found the platform and bridge.  Seems that when the Romans were making their way north, they buried under the entire remaining structure, and since it was so wet, and it had stayed wet, the wood never rotted.  So they’ve got the thing excavated, under misters so that it stays wet.  The wood has been so saturated that the water is basically the structural support, and if it dries out, the whole thing will crumble.  But still!  3,000 + years old, and there it was.  They think that this was probably a site of some religious significance, as they found a huge number of Bronze Age and Iron Age artifacts in and among the pilings.  A lot of them appear to have been purposely broken, why exactly they don’t know, but they think it was ceremonial.

The dig at Flag Fen. There are misters because the wood is surviving only because it’s so wet, so it has to stay wet. They’ve actually made an artificial lake there, so that anything still in the ground is wet.

It was pretty neat to be able to see things from the bronze age, just right there. Especially something like wood. There were little specimen bags down in the dig every now and then. We were quite curious what was in them.

They have also built a replica Bronze Age roundhouse on the site, and a replica Iron Age roundhouse, as they site was in constant occupation throughout both time periods.  They have also had to do a lot of work on the site to preserve any future archaeological remains.  Specifically, they built an entire artificial lake under the museum, to keep the area flooded.  Because the remains are mostly wood, keeping them wet is essential to their preservation, and the nearby developments are dropping the water table.  It was pretty neat to be able to see something that old.

A reconstructed Bronze Age roundhouse, what people would have typically lived in around this place. The dig is not actually a roundhouse though, but a bridge and platform.

In the roundhouse. Pretty comfortable, actually. A bit smokey.

An Iron Age roundhouse. Not, I know, very obviously different, but there are some technological innovations. The thatch, for instance, and inside it’s divided into little spoke- like roomlets.

It’s starting to rain like crazy, and weather is supposed to be pretty icky.  We will have to see what tomorrow brings!

Wednesday, June 13^th

We woke up this morning to blue skies!  Even though it did rain on us twice, it was definitely a lovely day.  We started out our morning at Wroxeter Roman Town.  It’s a partially excavated town (mostly the baths) and it’s also got a modern Roman villa.  The original Roman town was HUGE.  It was first a fortress, then a town, then housed soldiers again, then disappeared and no one knows why.  It goes all the way underneath the nearby town of Wroxeter, and we noticed that English Heritage owned all the sheep fields around the Roman City, so we figure that it’s underneath all the fields as well.

One really fun thing – when we drove in, we did not take the main way (by mistake) and ended up on this TINY little road.  We could have stuck our hands out of the windows and both touched hedges on the same time.  Well, when we got to Wroxeter, we figured out why.  One of the reasons Wroxeter is so darn big is because it was built along Watling Street, a Roman road that went all the way to Rome.  The street we drove in on is built over Watling Street.

The site itself is pretty neat.  It is the excavated (and sufficiently restored to not come crumbling down) ruins of a giant Roman bath house.  There was the foundations and column supports of the indoor exercise arena, which was about 75 yards long, and then there was a lot of the front entrance wall to the actual baths remaining, as well as foundations for the cool, warm and hot rooms, the furnaces, and the nearby market stalls.

The view from the visitor center. The red was where the wall was, the white gravel shows the inside of basically a huge Roman gymnasium

The largest piece of wall remaining. The large doorway would have been from the gym area into the baths proper.

The stacks of brick in the foreground are part of what is called a hypercourse. The floor would have been built on top of these bricks, and hot air fanned in underneath, for central heating. In the hottest rooms, they also had hollow bricks in the walls, so that the heat could go up the walls as well.

Looking across the baths, towards the wall.

More Romans! Taken standing outside of the baths, where they think there was a row of rather fancy shops. Tiny, but apparently for selling jewelry and perfume and so on.

Across the street from the excavated ruin is a pretty cool project – they took 6 modern builders, and gave them the raw materials that the Romans had, and said “Build a villa!”  They had to make their own tools, cut their own wood, make their own A- frames to lift all the stuff, and so on.  They’re still working on some of it, but it was cool to see how they built it, and how a real building might have looked, because it’s hard to imagine such enormous buildings from just tiny walls.

The re- made Roman Villa. The thing in front is another part of the ruins, running right along the Roman road, which is right under the modern road.

Pretty posh!

After Wroxeter, we went on to nearby Blist Hill.  Blist Hill and the general area of Irongorge are interesting because they are one of the very first truly industrial places.  Blist Hill had (has) three giant blast furnaces, that allowed them to smelt and work iron on a huge scale.  The blast furnaces are large enough to probably contain a small two story house in each one.  They are fed with air by this giant double pump called David and Sampson.  It’s a steam powered bellows, and the bellows themselves are probably a full 20 feet high.  The flywheel for this thing stuck out the top and bottom of a 3 story shed thing.  At the center of all of this is the foundry itself, where they purified and worked the iron ore coming out of the nearby mine.  Iron could be heating to melting, poured into molds, and if they didn’t feel like pouring it, they could hammer on it with a steam hammer that took 5 people to work.  Let me rephrase – the things they were hammering took 5 people to control.  The hammer… well, it weighs some 20 tons, without the force of the steam behind it.  Doubt any one person could control it.

The blast furnaces for the foundry. They do not look as huge in this picture as they should look. They are huge.

(not my picture. do not know where picture went. suspect ghosts) The giant bellows for the foundry. The red tubes on the far right are the actual air- chambers. All the stuff to the left of the stairs is the mechanism for working them. Note the giant fly wheel!

(not my picture. Do not know where picture disappeared to.) This is the giant hammer. They weren’t smelting on the day we were there, but they still work this thing.

There is also a clay mine, and tile, brick and china factories in the nearby area.  But one particularly cool thing is that they have re- done the little town to how it would have been in the Victorian era when all the mining and so on was in its heyday.  So they had all the shops open and people were selling things and making things, and there were little historical things all over.   You could change your money into really old English money, with ha’pence, and shillings, and it was very confusing, but kind of fun.  We went into the bakery, the apothecary, the post office, the tinsmith, the bank, the forge, the haberdashery, the plasterer, the sweet shop, the butcher, the fish and chip shop (where Kevin got fish and chips for lunch for the 3^rd day running), the printer, and a variety of other little houses and shops.  There was also a very cute little Victorian style carnival, and we rode this fun double swing.  It’s like a boat, and you sit facing each other, and get a rope attached to a beam way up high.  By alternating pulling, you could really get the swing going.

Main street! They were celebrating the Diamond Jubilee… of Victoria! It worked nicely.

The printer’s shop. You could get signs and things made, and they had some rather funny ones up in the windows.

Inside the chemists! This place actually featured on a BBC series about re- imagining the high street chemist of Victorian times. I liked it.

Inside the dressmaker’s shop. It was very… busy

One of the streets in Blist Hills, and the post office!  There was a secret postal museum-let above the post office. 

Part of a little carnival down on the green. We went on the swings! You sit opposite someone in a little boat thing, and you have crossed ropes, and by pulling in turns, you can get it going pretty high.

The rest of the carnival – some games, and a spinning swing ride

After Blist Hill, we had one more stop, at the ruins of Wenlock Priory.  It is a very beautiful ruin, with flowers growing everywhere – the grass is full of daisies, and the walls were covered in places with these gorgeous little sprays of purple flowers.  It was first founded as a monastery by the Saxons, and then was a college of priests, and then a priory.  It was dissolved and partly torn down by King Henry VIII, in his Dissolution of the Monasteries.  Nevertheless, very very beautiful.  Also – what used to be the house of one of the Abbots, and is attached to the remains of one of the walls of the abbey – it’s totally someone’s house now.  Seriously.  Who even does that???

The entrance

Part of the transept

There were flowers growing right out of the walls all over the ruins. SO beautiful. Also – Look how thick that wall is!

The walkway around where the monks lived – the doorway is to the inner courtyard

The courtyard. Someone has maintained the yew tree topiary. They’re all animals, like squirrels and so on. Kevin and I decided that yew looks a heck of a lot like redwood.

Such a cool ceiling! and this was not even technically “indoors”, just a covered walk.

Flowers and ferns in the wall

The entrance to the chapter house. Totally carpeted with daisies! Also, see that roof in the back on the right? Remember that…

Beautiful carving on the arch

I like these! All wall should have these growing all over them.

and daisies!

This is someone’s actual house. Remember I said to look at the roofs in the back? Yeah, it’s attached to the chapter house. Look on the right, and you’ll see the ruined wall of the back of the chapter house. Can you imagine living with this in your very yard???

Very lovely

Today was a day of castles and farms.  We went to Warwick, and Stratford upon Avon.  We started in Warwick, with Warwick castle, supposedly one of the largest in Britain.  It’s been in action since the Saxons, then the Normans made improvements, then the Earl of Warwick built up the whole thing, and people have been tinkering with it the whole time.  It’s definitely castle-y, with a giant tower and rampart and the steepest spiral stairs I have ever met.  The whole thing is done up as a total destination event, which to us made it less interesting, but it was still a good time.  There were groups of kids running around everywhere, and there were a bunch of exhibits about the castle though history.

We climbed all the way up to the tower to get a view of the entire castle and grounds. Heck, if the weather was better, we could have probably seen all the way to the next county over. England is very flat…

The view from the castle tower down into the grounds of the castle

On the wall

Spiral stairs… so many spiral stairs!

A view from the castle wall of Warwick town, and the church

We watched them use this trebuchet to chuck a rock or something into the woods

A peacock! One of about 5 wandering around in the gardens

The conservatory on the grounds. Obviously a later addition, and much more impressive on the outside.

After we’d gone through the castle and the gardens, we went out into the town of Warwick, where we stumbled upon a very cool church.  Down in the crypt you could see the original Norman ceiling vaults, the Dean’s chapel had an altercloth used at the coronation of Elizabeth I, and in an anteroom off to the side, there was the tombs Earl of Warwick, nickname:  Kingmaker, and his wife.  There were effigies on top, beautifully decorated.  You could see every tiny detail, down to the hinges on his armor, and the buttons down her dress.  There were also tombs and effigies to Lord Robert Dudley (favorite of Queen Elizabeth I) and his wife Lettice Knoylls (who used to be a lady in the court of QEI, until she started hanging out with Dudley, whereupon things got a bit ugly)   There was also an effigy to their son, who died as a child.  All in all, the church was gorgeous, and it was a fun discovery to find people we’d read about.

Outside the church in Warwick

Dudley and Lettice Knowles

We took the long way back through Warwick to get to the car, and then drove on the short distance to Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace and part time home of Shakespeare.  There was a pretty little shopping area around the birthplace house that is pedestrians only, so we went wandering around there.  We didn’t go into the house, because it was packed full of people, and they wanted like a million dollars to get in.  Plus, we don’t really care about where Shakespeare was born, so much.  =).

Shakespeare’s birthplace

There are a few properties in Stratford that are associated with Shakespeare and people in his life.  One, just outside of Stratford is the farm of Mary Arden.  We decided to get out of Stratford proper, and headed for the farm.  What a find the farm was.  It’s totally done up as a mostly working Tudor farm, complete with period breeds of animals, and the rooms set up to show what life would have been like.  It’s a HUGE farm, or at least, there were tons of rooms, by Tudor standards.  I think I counted beds for at least 12 people, and then there was an apothecary, a dairy and all sorts of things.  The gardens were all going strong, and you can really see how around here, things would just grow like crazy.  When you hear about some of the farming stuff, the one thing they never talk about is irrigation… because they don’t need it around here.  Everything is very green.

Mary Arden’s farm included a bunch of animals. These are breeds are as close to period breeds as can be, but a lot of them are basically gone, due to new breeds being better for food and so on.

The garden outside the farm

The main bed..

And the upstairs beds! There were way more in the next room, but just pallets on the floor for the help.

Look how tiny that door is behind Kevin! Not a trick, you have to skooch from one room to the other.

We also watched a woman do a falconry demonstration with two owls.  The first was a little white owl.  Seriously, it was ADORABLE.  Owls aren’t normally something I think of as cute, but this one was CUTE.  They got a treat when they came to her when they were supposed to, but this one was cheating, and every time she’d put it down, it would fly over, and hope to get treats.  She didn’t let it land on her one time, and it landed on the ground and looked up at her with this total look of “Treat?  Pwease?  I’m cute…”  I totally would have given it a treat.  Also, it totally fell off its perch once.  HILARIOUS!

The second owl was a huge Eagle Owl.  He was funny, because she kept trying to make him fly over to her so she could demonstrate that he was totally silent in flight, but he was not having it, and kept walking/ running/ flapping/ waddling over to her.  Waddling owls are very funny.  You could really tell that the owls liked her a lot, and that she liked them.  The farm was definitely a highlight of the day.

This show was very entertaining. And that owl was CUTE!

AWWWW!!!

Big owl! Still cute!

P.S.  Not dead.  Just too lazy to go up and post last night.  =)

Monday, June 11^th

Today we went to Leeds!  This was something that Kevin REALLY wanted to do, because in Leeds is the Royal Armories Museum.  It’s basically where they put all the stuff that doesn’t fit into the Tower of London.  We got up fairly early to quite grey and rainy skies, and headed up to Leeds.  We got there just in time to make the opening of the museum, got all the way up the main stairs to the 4^th floor… and then got kicked out for a fire drill.  <Sigh>

Giant central stairwell, filled with weapons and armor

The museum is really very neat, though.  It’s organized into five huge, multi-story galleries- War, Tournament, Oriental, Hunting and Self Defense.  All of them have different places and ages represented, as well as weapons and things associated with that particular topic.  There is a TON of stuff in there.  Self Defense was probably the least spectacular, but they did have a neat thing on dueling, and modern fencing that made Kevin happy.

Hunting had a LOT of guns.  And I mean a LOT, ranging all the way from practice clay pigeon air guns, to decorated hunting sets presented to the Empress so and so, and elephant guns so long I’m pretty sure they would not be able to be lifted by one person, let alone aimed.  Some of the work on them was pretty incredible, though, with lots of inlays of various things, and some very pretty metalwork.

Oriental had Kevin’s favorite find of  the day –  a full suit of plate armor made for an elephant.  The stuff was HUGE, and I can’t even imagine how much that suit must have weighed.  There was lots of different types of armor and weapons in the Oriental section, including some of the more ridiculously impractical swords of the day.  War was really awesome, because a large part of it focused on suits of armor, so they had a bunch of different suits of armor from different places and time period, and kind of went though it all chronologically.  You could really see where some of the changes came about, particularly where there was some advance in either weapons or armor technology.  For example, the early plate armor is really pretty thin stuff, made to me extra lightweight so that you can do things in it besides look pretty, but as soon as guns start to be a thing, all of it gets all dark and heavy very quickly, before disappearing entirely as guns get more powerful and armor gets too heavy to be practical.

Yeah, that would be scary

Elephant Armor!

Tournament was fun – mainly focused on jousting and so on.  Lots more armor here, and some pretty spectacular decorated armor – not that it wasn’t functional, just that the people who were in tournaments were also rich enough to show off a bit with the armor.  So there is gold plated armor, and engraved armor, and etched armor, and so on and so forth, and it all looks quite lovely until you remember they could barely see and couldn’t turn their heads.  We also heard a bit of a talk from one of the museum people, who talked about the beginning of the tournament, and how it used to be melee form combat practice.  Literally, a group of men would receive a where, and when, and a Team A or Team B assignment, and then they would all meet up in the middle of some farmer’s field or something, and whack the crap out of each other

Well, it turns out that the farmers REALLY did not like having their fields all trampled on, and towns sacked and so on, so they complained to the church, who went and said that anyone who died doing this would be excommunicated, so that pretty much stopped all of it right there.  Fast forward a few decades, and here is Richard the Lionheart, who wants lovely trained soldiers for his Crusades.  Well, he can’t do melees, because no one wants to be excommunicated, and he really needed money so he decided to do two things that basically made the joust what it is today.  1.  He put up a fence around the whole thing, which meant not only did the fighters not go places they were not supposed to, and get on the wrong side of angry farmers, but it gave people a safe place to stand and watch.  2.  He made people pay to compete, so now you have rich, noble people competing for an audience, and voila!  A tournament!

Hello!

Being silly

We spent quite a while in the museum, because it was really huge, and pretty awesome.  We ventured out around noon, in search of food and happed to spot a church steeple off in the distance across the river.  We decided to head towards it, and find food somewhere on the way.  Luckily for us, right next to the church was a pub called The Palace, so Kevin had fish and chips, and I had sausage and mash(which came absolutely drowning in some sort of gravy, and with three entire sausages.  Who the heck can eat three sausages in a go?  Furthermore, I’ve come to the conclusion that people here really REALLY like potatoes.  There was a whole aisle of frozen potato things, though they do not seem to have invented the tater tot, and just about every meal is offered with some sort of potato.)  In general, very tasty, and it felt massively British to be sitting in a pub in the rain next to some giant old church eating sausage and mash.

Mmm… fish and chips

Next to a church!

A cool bridge we walked by in Leeds

On the way out of town, we had decided to swing by somewhere called Kirkstall Abbey.  Kirkstall Abbey is not so much an abbey, as the total ruins of an abbey.  The thing is HUGE!  It included an infirmary and kitchens, and was first built in 11-something.  It’s in a park.  People were walking their dogs around it.  Beanly would have loved the lawn growing in the infirmary, as well as the adorable little puppy we met/ were love- attacked by.  Two swans and 4 cygnets were chilling nearby.  Just this sort of attitude of “Pshaw!  This old thing??  Heavens, this abbey is from ages ago!  I’m sure everyone else has better abbeys by now…”

The Abbey from the front

Down the middle of what would have been the main aisle

Boo!

A neat floor; no idea what it says

The ruins were really, really big. The abbey itself, not so much, but it also had kitchens, and a hospital, and the whole thing together was pretty enormous

Swans!

Sunday, June 10th

A lovely day in Rutland today!  We had a bit of a lazy morning, and Kevin slept in, which was nice because he didn’t sleep too well last night, what with the time being weird and all.  We went up to the main lodge to find internet, check mail and plot out our time.

We decided to go for a wander around our little area and see what there is to see.  We found way to get down into the sheep pasture, where there was what turned out to be a loop trail all the way around the lake.  We did not make it all the way around the lake, as it is a pretty good sized lake.  The walk was lovely.  There were sheep all around, and the wildflowers were really pretty.  I took some back to the lodge, to try to press them.  We shall see how they turn out.

SHEEPS!

Rutland Waters

We hadn’t brought anything with us, so when we were almost to Oakham, we decided to turn around.  We headed back and had some lunch, then drove into Oakham.  In Oakham, we wandered around for a couple hours, and visited the church, which was very pretty, and the castle, which since it is a Norman castle, looks a lot less like a castle so much as a sort of hall.  The interesting thing about the castle is that every peer who visits Rutland is supposed to bring a horseshoe to hang on the wall of the castle.  Well,  some of them have gotten a bit carried away through the ages, so some of the horseshoes are like, 4 feet across, painted gold, and have crown-y things on top.  We didn’t get to spend much time because, like everything else in Oakham, it was closed on Sunday (more on that in a bit) but they were setting up for some sort of ceremony thing, so we snuck in.    There is also some sort of very posh school in Oakham, and one of the funnier sights of today was a little girl with a tennis racket playing wall ball off the wall of the (very old) church nave, which was right next to the castle, and the school.

The church in Oakham

Apparantly, Oakham believe strongly in the  “Sunday = day of rest” doctrine. Nearly everything was closed today, and those few things that were open, like the grocery store, were only open until 4.  Restaurants were closed, shops were closed, the whole 9 yards.  Definitely the kind of place where if you need something, you’d better do it during the week.  We will have to make time to go back during the week sometime, though, because there were a couple shops and a bakery that look interesting

When we got back, we went walking the other direction around the lake, mostly because we missed the turn and discovered a sort of nature preserve a little way down the road from the Hall.  It turned out to contain more sheep, and a wood with a nice walking path.  We turned back eventually, because the sky was getting increasingly grey, and dinner was calling. I’m typing this as the pasta boils, and after dinner we have plans to head up to the main building, find some internet and sit in the spa for a while.

The path through the woods. Did you know that horse chestnut trees, when you pull a leaf off, leave a mark on the branch on the shape of a horseshoe, complete with nail spots? True fact!

Bunny! Very cute little fluffernutter. Bailey and Paisley would have run themselves silly out here.

From the top of the hill, overlooking the lake and forest

Sheep wool, stuck on the fence

Yay!

Sarah and Kevin

Went in to Oakham today to see the castle and things, and stopped by Tesco again to get some juice and Ziploc bags.  Asked the clerk for zip top sandwich bags and they looked at me like I was CRAZY.  Found them at a Wellington’s, which is like Rite- Aid.  Who doesn’t carry sandwich bags at a grocery store???  We didn’t even see foil.  So weird.  Also – the hardest part of driving on the wrong side is that the blinker lever is on the wrong side.  I keep turning on the stupid windshield wipers….

Friday/ Saturday June 9th

Hello! I am typing this from the living room of our little lodge on the Rutland Waters (which is apparently English for “Lake Rutland”, or possibly “the lake that belongs to Lord Rutland, who is a real person who owns 4 castles.” Seriously.). There are ducks sitting on top of the eight foot hedge next to our lodge, and sheep in the meadow closest to the lake. It is very lovely here, and we’re looking forward to exploring the environ later today.

Our lodge!

Lovely large windows

The main building of Barnsdale Hall

Our flight here was pretty nice. Dad dropped us off at the airport, where we thanked our lucky stars for the internet check in that allowed us to bypass the GIGANTIC line of people trying to check in with like, 42 bags each. Margaret and Kyle met us to see us off, before we headed for the gate. When we got to the gate, we only had about 10 minutes before they started loading people, and we discovered that over half our flight was continuing to Mumbai, which sort of explains the giant line, and why the guy who checked our bags in kept accidentally saying that he would send them to Mumbai (we have our bags.)
The flight was really full, and there were LOTS of families travelling with kids. We got dinner on the flight, which was pretty good, though Kevin ordered the kosher meal, and while most of it looked human, there was this weird… thing. It looked like a slice of bread, and was served with a carrot and two olives on top, and was cold, wet and spongy when poked. Neither of us ate it. The in- flight entertainment was definitely entertaining, and both of us got a little sleep, though there was a baby a few rows up that kept screaming bloody murder, so that was a little hard.

We made it through customs and so on with NO problems – we barely even had to wait in line, which was great. Getting the rental car had a little hiccup, in that the car we were supposed to get refused to align its own headlights properly, and since it was way too smart for its own good, it refused to stop telling us about it, so we had to get a different one, which is a bit bigger, but oh well. Made it out of the airport and only had to go around 1 roundabout once and a bit. I’ve now got roundabouts totally worked out.
The drive out was very nice, and Kevin and I decided that it looks like California in the spring, crossed with Washington state. It’s got plenty of rolling grass- with- oak-trees (there is a giant oak tree out the window), but then the streets are all lined with trees, and instead of the grass being all brown, everything is green. There are lots of sheep, and a surprising amount of nothing given how small this country is. We went through a few little villages, which were a lot like the villages in Alaska – Gas station, house, house, little store, house – and we’re done.

Curse you, wrong-sided blinker lever!

We are staying at the Barnsdale Hall Hotel, which is really kind of in the middle of nowhere, and has a golf course. When we were first getting checked in and so on, there were people wandering about all dressed up, wearing hats and the whole nine yards, and we had a definite moment of “Heavens, we’re severely underdressed for this place…” but then we figured out that there was a wedding taking place slightly up the hill from us, so that turned out fine. The non- wedding involved people here dress totally normally.

The view from our little lodge. You can see Rutland Waters past the tree

We went into Oakham, the nearby town, to get groceries and to prevent ourselves from falling asleep, because it was like, 6, and we were sleepy. Oakham is pretty close by, and has a Tesco, which is a large chain grocery store. We got some provisions for ourselves (though the store was a little weird. Not sure if that’s all English grocery stores, or if this one was… special. All of the produce is tiny – we got melons that fit in one hand, and pretty much everything is in little plastic containers. Like, potatoes come in little plastic containers. They also did not have broccoli. Who doesn’t have broccoli? Oh, or garlic salt. This was a pretty sizeable grocery store, and their entire spice section was like, a shelf and a half. They did, however, have an entire refrigerator section for cream cakes. Who even knows.) The girl at checkout needed help with my card, because apparently everything over here is chip and pin, and my card does not have a chip, but totally worked once the other girl told her there was a swiper on her screen.
We managed to stay up till 9:30 when we got back, before falling totally asleep. I slept pretty well, though Kevin woke up at 3, and couldn’t fall back asleep till 5 or so (he’s still sleeping) Our plan for today was to take it easy anyway. We’ll probably go for a wander around the lake, and Oakham apparently has a rather huge castle (like you do) so we’ll head that direction later today.

Oh my goodness! I can’t believe how time is flying. Somehow 18 days sounds like a LOT less than 20. =) We’re super excited. Just a quick reminder – Grand Island Mansion is in the middle of NOWHERE, so please make sure you allow sufficient travel time. Those levee roads can be unforgiving if you get going the wrong way (“I shall make a turn! Into the river… Ok, no, how about here! Over this bridge…hrm”) We really want to make sure everything gets started right at 6, because we have a LOT of fun stuff planned! See you soon!

Sarah and Kevin

We’re going to have a casual pre- wedding picnic the Saturday before the wedding, May 19th. It will be at Mace Ranch Community Park, at 5pm. We’ll provide chicken and burgers for the barbeque; please bring a side dish or dessert. There will be games and cotton candy, and good times all around. Hope to see you there!

Sarah and Kevin