The End?

Well, we leave tomorrow.  It seems like the time passed so quickly.  It's sad, but I think we're ready to sleep in our own beds.

  On Saturday, we left Chagford and drove out to our next stop, a little village called Leigh-on-Mendip.  On the way we stopped at a coast town called Seaton.  Seaton is on the Jurassic Coast, where many fossils have been found.  It's not too far from Lyme Regis, the home of the famous fossil-finder, Mary Anning.  We picnicked on the beach, and I did find two fossils myself!

I'd say almost half of the rocks on that beach are agates, also.  I found some really big ones.

    We stayed in a little stone cottage on a farm.  It was very nice, because I had a room of my own.  And I found my favorite Avengers cartoons on TV for some down time.

    On Sunday, we headed out to Bath in the afternoon.  The city got its name from the first century Roman Baths that sit on the natural hot springs there.  Like every tourist before us, we tour the the Roman ruins and the exhibits.  We learned a lot.  For example, did you know that Roman women had 70s hair?  I don't have a picture of the statue, but it's true.

The main pool with the Bath cathedral in the background.

After that, we took a quick peek at the Royal Crescent, a Georgian era elite resort.  I couldn't get the whole thing on camera, it's so big.

And that was about it for the day.  Yesterday (gosh, only yesterday) we left the lovely little cottage and headed out to Bristol to catch our flight.  But on the way, we stopped at Wells Cathedral.  Wells Cathedral was built in the 13th century, on the site on an older church built in the 700s.  It is a working church.  Probably it's most famous feature is the Scissors Arch, added in the 14th century to provide support.

The Wells Cathedral was badly damaged by Cromwell's troops in the English Civil War.  Some of the statues smashed, some stained glass windows were shattered.  These windows were later put back together, but they couldn't quite figure everything out, so they look like kaleidoscope patterns rather than Bible scenes.

But they're colorful.

 Finally we continued on to Bristol, where we caught our flight to Dublin.  It was a bit cloudy, but I was able to get some good photos from the air.

                                                     England from the air

It was a prop plane, as you can tell.

   Dublin!  Our grand finale.  We didn't do much that night, just walked around and got the lay of the land.

   Today, we headed out early to Trinity College to see the book of Kells.  We got there just before the exhibit opened, and the queue was already huge.  But we eventually got in.  First you go into an exhibit called Turning Darkness into Light.  It talks about the history and making of the book, and also similar texts.  Then you getto see the book.  Actually, the books of the Gospel are all bound separately.  Two are on display, along with two other books in the same style.  There's no photography allowed, of course, because the books are so old.  But then you go into the Long Room, an old library with an exhibit on preservation of old books and documents.  

                     Two stories of books!

After a quick snack, we went to the National Museum of Archeology and History.  This is one of the things I have been waiting for.  Bog bodies!  They are housed in an exhibit called Kingship and Sacrifice.  It talks about the bog bodies, and other items they have found preserved in the bogs, such as clothing and treasure.  There are four bog bodies on display-Baronstown Man, Clonycavan Man, Oldcroghan Man, and Gallagh Man.  None are perfectly complete.  Some are missing body parts, some have been badly preserved.  I'm afraid that the camera connector is already packed, so I don't have photos of them right now.  Check back tomorrow, I'll have them then.  If I'm awake enough.

     That's about all the important stuff we did today.  Tomorrow we leave, early.  But I don't think I'm quite done.  I know I'll do one more post with some of my favorite photos from the trip, ones that I didn't have room for earlier.  And we've talked about going abroad for Christmas.  I don't know how real that idea actually is, but I just might have to start up again.  But for now, I'll just use one of the all-purpose Irish words I've learned, the one that means good health, be safe, and goodbye.

                                                                     Slainte!

A Little Bit of Everything

Okay, now I have WiFi, so I can post.  The last two places we stayed didn't have wireless, so I was stuck.  But I'm here now.

      Where was I?  Oh, yes, our last day in London.  Mom and I went to the tower of London.  It's a very busy place, more foreign tourists than British people, I think.  The first thing we did was go to see the crown jewels.  I'm glad we did that first, because the line later in the day was crazy.  But unfortunately, this is another place you're not allowed to take pictures.  Then we took a tour of some of the most famous places in the Tower.  After that, we explored the White Tower, the original tower built for William the Conqueror.  They have and extensive collection of weaponry and armor, stretching from medieval times to probably the 19th century.

                                                Realistic looking horse, isn't it?

After lunch, we headed to the theatre.  This time we went to see Top Hat.  A pretty corny show, but with some great song and dance numbers.  And the lead's "American accent" was quite funny.

                         The Aldwich Theatre

  For dinner that evening we went to a pub that Dad had found that morning.  A favorite of Charles Dickens, the Cheshire Cheese is an interesting place.  It is four stories (two underground), and has three different bars.

   And that concluded our stay in London.  The next morning we took the train from London Paddington to Oxford.  Didn't see any bears, but we did see a statue of Gromit.

At Oxford, we stayed in rooms at Keble (pronounced keeb-el) College.  It's a very pretty Victorian college, with a dining room like Hogwarts.

      Continuing our famous authors dining tour, we lunched at a pub called The Eagle and Child.  This pub was a favorite hangout of the Inklings club.  Probably the most famous members of the Inklings were J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

     The rest of the day we explored Oxford.  We browsed through Blackwells, one of the largest bookstores in the world.  Then we walked around, admiring the architecture, until we popped into an exhibit on magical books at the Bodleian Library.  There were some pretty cool things in there, but it was strictly no photography, because of their age.

    That's about all we did that day.  The next morning, we took a very long walk around a nearby park and into town again.  Then we hopped on another train and headed out to the Cotswolds.

      If you did not read my first post, the Cotswolds are the quaint, thatched roof, more sheep than people part of England.  The towns all have great names, like Moreton-on-Marsh, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, and my personal favorites, Upper and Lower Slaughter. We stayed in Stow-on-the-Wold, in a cute little B&B called The Pound.  

It reminds me of a hobbit house.  The ceiling is only about six feet high, maybe less.  I felt very tall.

   The next day, we did some hiking.  Trails in England are very well marked, but they go interesting places.  We tramped through a few cow fields, some occupied, on our walk.  In Lower Slaughter we stopped and had cake and tea.  On our way to Upper Slaughter, we encountered an interesting repurposing. 

             Not your average telephone booth

I guess there were enough phone booths already.  At Upper Slaughter, the sun came out.  We had lunch in a graveyard.

    The next day, we took a long train ride to Dartmoor.  We're staying in a little town called Chagford.  We explored the town that day, but by the time we arrived, everything was already closed.  On Thursday, we went for a seven mile hike.  Dartmoor is a great place for hiking, as long as you stay out of the military firing ranges, which we did.  We walked out to a place called Fingle Bridge.  Our walk took us up a ridge, then down along a river.  It's a little disappointing to walk all that way, only to find a parking lot and hotel at your destination.  The ice cream was good, though.

       Today we hiked another seven miles.  This time, it was much harder.  The landscape is remarkable.

                                                 Taken from the top of Haytor

We walked from here to the nearer hill on the far right, then to the hill just to the left of the pile of rocks in the center of the photo.  It's seriously hilly terrain.

   I must clarify some terms now.  A tor is a mountain of rock that juts up out of nowhere.  This photo is taken from the top of Haytor.  A cairn is a stacked pile of rocks.  So using the new words, we walked from Haytor to a cairn on Black Hill, down to Grey Tor, up to Hound Tor (Hound of the Baskervilles), then back to Haytor.  We really earned dinner.

                                                    Dad and I atop Haytor

  I must take the time to thank you all for reading my blog.  You've been patient while I've been lazy and not posting.  According to the Blogger site, I have a lot of viewers in Russia.  Hello everybody!  Nice of you to read my blog.  Oh, and either Martin or Malaina, can you send me the address of Noah's school?  I'd like to send him a postcard.

    Now I'm finally all caught up.  Tomorrow we'll be staying in a little town called Leigh-on-Mendip.  Until then!