Dreaming spires, revisited

I checked off an item near the top of my to-do list last Sunday by getting to go back to Oxford. Although I certainly had fun there with my kids in September, I knew I hadn't seen as much as there was to see there. And I was right! This time, with my current guests, we took a formal walking tour of the city, and just happened to see a whole new set of colleges. Amazingly, there was no duplication of what I'd seen before!

We got to see more of the fabulous architecture from the outside and inside, as well as learning a bit more about the Oxford system and Oxford history.

We spent the most time in New College, which is clearly one of our guide's favorites, but also saw Queen's, University, Merton and finished up at Oriel. Along the way we saw a couple of gorgeous chapels and many charming quads. I'll have to spend some serious study time when I get home, sorting out the pictures I took and trying to identify where they were taken. But even if you don't know what a building is, I hope you can still enjoy just looking at views like this:


Our final stop in the tour was Oriel College, where we saw our first dining hall, and it was all laid out for dinner. I can't imagine how it would feel to study in such an environment, then take a break at dinnertime and come down to chow in a place like this! But, in another difference from our earlier trip, there were students, lots of them, all over the town, since the fall term has begun. Looking into the windows of the Merton College Library, for example, we saw a few students working on their laptops—there, in what our guide told us was a library whose foundations were laid in the 1300's!

The dining hall at Oriel had some beautiful stained glass. I focused on this section, which has coats of arms of the "Black Prince," an honored alum! Another former Oriel fellow whose picture is in the hall is one of my favorite English poets, Matthew Arnold. I was unaware until our guide informed me that he was the author of the "dreaming spires" line (here's the full poem). An appropriate finish to the tour!

However, we weren't completely finished with Oxford. Our guide was happy to tell us how to get to the Eagle and Child and we enjoyed a pleasant pint in the very room where Professor Tolkien used to meet and discuss his latest writings with his friends.

Farewell to Oxford, its dreaming spires and its honored ghosts! I'll dream of visiting it again on a future trip to England.

The Other Place(s)

Last Friday I got to see inside this building, where they make the sausages, and, wow! do they ever make fancy sausages!

I accompanied our students on a tour of the Houses of Parliament which was led by a staffer who works for a real MP. He was a delightful guide, who taught me more English history and political science in two hours than I'd learned in my whole life to this point.

Now when I watch the BBC Parliament Channel (see the picture at left; and I actually do watch this sometime—it's erudite and entertaining) I know instantly which chamber they're in. Know why? It's the colors! Green leather upholstery is Commons, red is Lords! And when I watch programs like this, I have the extra thrill of knowing that I've actually walked along one of the those rows of seats, since the day we were there Parliament wasn't in session, so we got to walk through each chamber, learning interesting, amazing, quirky, and useful history all the while.

Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed except in Westminster Hall, which is the oldest part of the place and serves as a humongous antechamber, except when someone important (like the Queen, or Bill Clinton) needs to speak to a joint session. Or when someone important needs to lie in state. It's a pretty impressive structure, as you can see in this shot of its medieval ceiling. In order to preserve this beautiful woodwork, they can't heat the Hall, which our guide says is a plus in the summer: since it's a free public space, people enjoy coming in to cool off! It's also a place where some famous protests against the government were held, where Charles I was sentenced to death, etc., etc.


I wish I could have taken notes, since I'm sure I've forgotten lots of choice tidbits of history and protocol that our expert guide presented to us. But I remember that the Queen can't go into the House of Commons, that her officials have to pound on the door to tell the MPs she wants them to come hear her speech, and that they used to pull a curtain around the speaker's chair and have a chamber pot handy since he (and it always was a he) had to stay there during all debates with no potty breaks!

Trivia question: what do you call the House of Lords when you're standing in the House of Commons, and vice versa? Answer: the Other Place. Watch the BBC Parliament Channel and you'll hear this expression all the time. It makes me feel like a Londoner now that I know what the heck they're talking about!

London entertainments

As I've mentioned before, most of my time last week was spent catching up with work (and blogging). But I did have time for some very London-like entertainment breaks.

On Saturday my guests and I attended a performance of Spamalot, which I've been wanting to see ever since I first read about it several years ago. Although our seats gave new meaning to the term nose-bleed (I have never sat in such steeply pitched seats!) we thoroughly enjoyed the show. I didn't realize I would remember so much from the movie, so it was a pleasant surprise to find myself anticipating the bits coming up so eagerly. What a hoot!

It was especially welcome to indulge in such silliness because we'd spent a rather heavy whole afternoon in the Imperial War Museum. Yes, I went back there again, and still haven't seen it all. I spent most of my time this visit finishing up the Holocaust exhibit and wanted to listen to all of the video survivor accounts. I was very pleased that my guests found the museum as a whole as rewarding as I have and that they wanted to stay there that long.

The next time I go back, I want to concentrate on the World War I galleries. There have been a lot of fascinating documentaries on BBC Four (my new favorite channel in the whole world—I surely will miss it) dealing with the Great War since the upcoming Remembrance Day (November 11) will be the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. It still infuriates me no end that the war was fought at all, but it really is a fascinating subject and I want to spend some more time seeing what the IWM can teach me about it.

Backtracking a bit, I have to tell you about the other English cultural experience we had, namely, a football match. Unfortunately, it was held on probably the coldest night of our visit, but still was great fun. Another somewhat unfortunate factor is that it was between a couple of bottom-dwelling teams, Fulham and Wigan, but although it seemed not a very even contest to me (Fulham won, 2-0) the level of play was still quite pleasing for American audiences and my students and I all enjoyed ourselves enormously. The stands were full of enthusiastic Fulham fans—even though our tickets were marked as being in a "neutral" area (they have to keep the two teams' fans separated to avoid bloodshed!) and we all got into cheering for the home team.

The trip to and from the grounds was part of the cultural experience as the tube was absolutely packed, especially on the way over there, and our short walk through Bishop's Park was in the company of hundreds of Fulham fans. No chance of getting lost!

It was pretty hard to take pictures with my little camera that showed any of the action, or even the crowd, properly, but in the shot below I can point out an England luminary. The second gentleman from the right, in the blue stripes of Wigan, is Emile Heskey, who's played on the English national team for several years. He didn't have much joy this night, though, as his mates couldn't seem to get him the ball. But that was all the better for Fulham, who might just avoid relegation again this year.


Another important highlight from the match: Fulham's lone American player, Clint Dempsey, came into the game with about 20 minutes to go and acquitted himself admirably, although at that point they were playing pretty defensively, being up 2-0, and he's an attacking player. But we all cheered him enthusiastically, which had the added advantage of helping us keep warm!

Library, park, and .... snow!

I know I'm still 'way behind in my blog posting, but since I've been emphasizing work over sight-seeing for most of the last week, I should be able to catch up in the next day or two.

As you can see from this picture, taken along the Serpentine in Hyde Park last Monday, fall is noticeably here. There are leaves everywhere, but the most trees seem to have a lot more than this one still on the branches. I wonder if they'll all be down before we leave?

Monday I welcomed some new guests and it was while we were doing the "stay awake until dark" walk that we went to Hyde Park. They took off the next day for a few days in Bath, leaving me to grade papers and work on a presentation I'll be giving next week. But I did allow myself a little time off on Wednesday, and met my hitherto-virtual friend Just a Plane Ride Away for lunch at the British Library. It was wonderful to meet her f-t-f (and I wish her a speedy resolution to her computer problems, as I really miss her blog posts!) and the Library was a wonderful place to visit.


The library is the sleek modern building above, not the Gothic one peeking over its shoulder. The latter is St. Pancras Station, which does look more like a library, or maybe a castle, than a train station, I agree. The large Library building only has a small area for public view, but what a wonderful assortment of documents and artifacts are on display there! (No photos, of course, unfortunately.) Original copies of the Magna Carta are probably the stars of the show, and I learned a lot about them and their period from the informative displays.

But my favorite item was probably the Lindisfarne Gospels, as I've always loved looking at photos of illuminated manuscripts. But this is the real book, and the illustrations are more wonderful in person than I imagined they could be. I just stood and stared for the longest time. A second favorite would probably be the Beatles display—the lyrics to I Wanna Hold Your Hand in draft form! How cool is that! But there's also tons of other wonderful stuff—Shakespeare folios, Jane Austen manuscripts, etc., etc., etc. It was amazing how much time you could spend in such a small space, and I probably would like to go back!

After lunch, when my companion had to catch her train home, I decided to take advantage of my location near the one large London park I hadn't yet visited. It was a little walk, but I had a nice lunch to dispose of, and so headed for Regent's Park. It followed the pattern I'd observed in my other park visits, in that it had a completely different look. At least in the portion I visited, which was the more formal section. Like the other London parks, it's huge, and I know I only saw about a third of it.

One thing all the parks have in common are wonderful trees, and I'm especially taken by the willows, since that's a species we don't often see at home. Here's a particularly fine example near the Clarence Bridge:


One reason I didn't venture further through the park is that, in spite of the beautiful sunshine and blue skies obvious in my photos, it was actually quite cold. My friend had reported seeing cars at the train station in her town that had a few inches of snow on top, and it was hard to miss these newspaper headlines, since London newsagents helpfully display them for you.

By mid-afternoon, when I was in the Park, there was still some snow left! I was surprised as it didn't feel that cold. And the residual white stuff was only in shady areas, but it certainly made me wonder if I had enough warm clothing for the football game we were going to attend that evening!


I have to step out of order a bit here and comment on yesterday's momentous political events in the U.S. The amount of coverage on TV here has been astonishing, as has the level of interest in our election expressed by Londoners we've encountered. There was little else on the BBC news yesterday and even less non-election news today. You can sample the online coverage here. I made it to about 2:30 last night before I had to go to bed, but things were looking good at that point and I slept easily!

The Beacons are Lit!

Sorry, I couldn't resist the ROTK (movie version) reference, here in Brecon Beacons. Especially given the views we had during our mountain hike on Sunday. (And it's not totally inappropriate Tolkien-wise either; he was a big Welsh language fan and modeled some of his Elvish languages upon it—right, Sally?)

Wow! To paraphrase another movie line, it sure made me proud to be Welsh!

Again, you're fortunate in the trails here, since there are clearly marked starting points, well-maintained surfaces, and easily doable distances (not to mention the lack of altitude, at least from the perspective of hikers used to 9,000+ feet strolls in the Rockies). The whole Beacons Circuit [Cylchdaith y Bannau] is 11 miles but there's a handy loop that catches the two big boys, and that's what we opted for. We started at the the Pont ar Daf lay-by (parking area) and struck out for the highest point in southern Britain, Pen y Fan (886 meters).

The trail's not steep, but you definitely enjoy the lunch break at the saddle leading to Corn Du (at 873 meters, the second-highest point in southern Britain; linguistic note: Google likes Corn Ddu, but the bilingual map we got at the Mountain Centre has only one "d" in the English and Welsh versions). From there, it's a short, mostly level walk to Pen y Fan and we decided to go there first, since the approach looked easier than that of Corn Du. The weather was also very changeable and we saw some clouds moving in. There's a monument up here to a little boy who got lost in the mist and couldn't find his way home, and it's easy to see how that could happen...


We weren't too worried about getting lost, since there were a lot of other people up there with us and many of them sounded like experienced Beacons walkers. But as it turned out, visibility wasn't an issue. As quickly as the mist slid over the saddle where we'd had our lunch (in the picture above), the sun came out and gave us some fabulous views. Here I am walking along the ridge. Sunny, yes, but still pretty cold, hence the bundles of outerwear, and with a gusty wind (although not gale-force, thankfully; I can't imagine what that would be like up here).


The valley below was lovely in the sunlight, and we wandered around the large plateau-like top of Pen y Fan for quite a while taking in the sights from all sides.


Looking at Corn Du from below, I was planning not to try and climb it, since the final approach looked really rocky. The hills around here are capped by hard-to-erode slate; that's why they have flattish tops. In Corn Du's case, a bunch of the slate was jumbled around near the top. But I decided to give it a go and it wasn't too difficult. The lovely Welsh slate formed steps most of the way that made it much easier to climb than expected. At the left here is a view past some of the slate ledges just as we started the climb down.

What a wonderful hike! And it was short enough that we felt we were able to get started back to London early enough that we might make it before dark. Even with the shorter day that we were facing, and by surprise! We didn't realize British Summer Time went off this morning, a week earlier than in the U.S., which meant a later breakfast than we were expecting, an hour more in Wales, but a much earlier sunset this evening.

As it worked out, it was dark before we got home, but I couldn't blame the darkness for the difficulties we had finding the car rental return office. After much driving about and straining to see familiar territory, a very nice concierge at a Heathrow hotel took pity on us and printed out a map showing us the error of our ways. After that, it was an easy drive to return the car and then an easy tube ride home. Top that off with a delicious Italian dinner at our neighborhood Strada, and we were able to look back fondly on our too-brief trip to Wales. Wish we could go back!

Water, Water, Everywhere

Late afternoon Friday found us in Wales. If you miss the welcome to Wales sign along the M4, you'll know it anyway, as the highway signs immediately become bilingual! Our destination was Merthyr Tydfil, near Brecon Beacons National Park [Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog], where we'd made a hotel reservation (more about this later). Watching a weather forecast for the next day was one of our priorities, since we hoped to climb the highest mountain in the park.

However, the forecast gave us pause: gale-force winds in the mountains! Better move to plan B, although we didn't have one. So we hoped to find some information and suggestions for a different hike at the Park visitor center. And our hopes were more than realized at the friendly Mountain Centre. Although we were there well before their opening time, a friendly employee let us come into the warm and made us tea while we waited for the hiking experts to arrive. And they gave us great advice.

Because of the wind, they suggested we stay low, and it just so happens there's a fantastic hike that would allow us to do that: Wood of the Waterfalls [Coed y Rhaeadr]. A handy, well-marked circuit trail allows you to see the best 4 of these falls, so that's what we did (the picture above is of Henry at #3).

First there was a little detour down to a fantastic underwater cave, that we ventured into only a short distance:


Note the crystal-clear water!

Then off to the main trail. The weather cooperated for the most part during our hike, which lasted most of the day. There was only an occasional drop of rain until we got close to the finish, when a constant drizzle meant that everything required a severe drying out back at the hotel. The mud was something of a problem, though, with periodic patches of trail being nothing but mud and puddles. However, after returning to the hotel for Henry's forgotten boots, we were appropriately shod and just ploughed through the stuff.

Part of the time the trail led along the river (three of the falls were on the Afon Mellte, one on the Afon Hepste—fun fact: Afon/Avon means river in Gaelic-rooted languages, so River Avon means River River!) as you can see above on the right. The main rock in the area is this gorgeous black slate, which makes long flat tables around the streamcuts.

Sometimes, however, the trail led high above, so you could get top-of-the-waterfall views, and appropriate warnings were definitely in order.

The first fall we came to was Sgwd Clun-Gwyn (please don't ask for pronunciations from us, but as awkward-looking as Welsh is, when you hear folks that know what they're doing pronounce these names, they're really beautiful).

Here is a view of it from the top. As you can see, these are real waterfalls, not just sets of rapids, with plenty of water flowing. We learned later that they had a very wet summer and so the falls were all performing at top capacity for us.


On to number 2, Sgwd yr Eira, which we remember the ranger telling us means Falls of the Snow. This one is the most popular to visit because of the attraction that you can go behind it! Here are two views of this powerful falls. The first one I took as we approached. You can see someone about to go behind the falls. The second one Henry took from behind the falls (at great risk of camera lens damage!) after we'd gone through one way. You can see me (with umbrella, which was some protection) heading back out the other side.



We got soaked! Fortunately it wasn't too cold and we were wearing our fast-dry outwear and pants. But what an amazing place! We did talk to some locals there who remarked that you often could go behind the falls and not get wet at all; one gentleman estimated there was 10 times more water coming over than the last time he had visited.

Although we thought nothing could top this experience, we headed on to the remaining waterfalls. And though they were not this spectacular, they were definately worth seeing. Each of the four had different contours and different esthetic attractions. Number 3 (Sgwd y Pannwr) was perhaps my favorite because of the lovely little pre-fall (see left) amid the sheets of slate before the water hits the main drop.

Here is the main falls, which was quite wide, from above.


Number 4 (Sgwd Isaf Clun-Gwyn) was the hardest to get to (we think we might have strayed from the main path) and the hardest to photograph because it has several levels and the river makes a little jog part-way down. But it's another fantastic falls:


A happy surprise greeted us after we left this falls, when we found ourselves right back at the first one, when we'd thought we might have to hunt about for the trail to finish the circuit. It was a good thing that we knew where we were going the last bit of the hike, though, since the drizzle started soon and was continually, awkwardly, misting glasses. It was a ways back to the car, but we made it fine and were happy to see a little pub just off the road back, in Pontneddfechan. We were their first dinner customers, but the warmth, dryness, and sustenance surely was welcome.

We also found out we could have stayed in their inn for less than our hotel, and in much more picturesque surroundings. Merthyr Tydfil, for all its wonderful Welsh name, doesn't have a lot of personality (although it's a large enough town to have plenty of conveniences such as bakeries and grocery stores). It's an old industrial town that hasn't quite transitioned to a recreational gateway, which it's ideally positioned to be. Should we ever be fortunate enough to make a return trip to the Beacons, we'll look for a smaller place further into the mountains.

Among the stones

Last weekend we had our greatest adventure yet: driving on British highways!

After a rather exciting 10 minutes or so negotiating roundabouts, making U-turns, stalling the standard shift Golf we rented and generally getting a little hysterical, we found our way from the Sixt car rental lot near Heathrow onto the comforting familiarity of the M-4, heading west. Comforting, because we knew there'd be no more roundabouts until we had to exit for Avebury in a hour or so, and we knew that the roundabouts out in the countryside would have less confusing choices for us to make. Which turned out to be true.

We got more and more comfortable with the left-handed shifting, the roundabouts and the odd highway signs (almost all of which we were eventually able to interpret correctly) and found our way to Avebury (use a long-A pronunciation, we learned). Which is a really neat place! The picture above is of only a part of the very large, though incomplete, stone circle there. We happened to get to the tourist office soon before a tour departed and were very glad we did. Otherwise, we would have been impressed with the sights but wouldn't have really known what we were seeing. We wouldn't have known, for example, that this stone H comically tried to move weighs several tons:


Here is one of the pairs of stones they think formed a gateway in the circle:


Such impressive stones, but what's really cool is that they just sit among the roads and cottages of the little village!

There's also a very nice, and very old, church in the town, St. James', which we enjoyed visiting. I was pleased to recognize the decorative elements of black stone set in the outer walls (see left). We'd seen the same type of decoration at Southwark Cathedral in London, which, if I recall correctly, was of a similar age. The interior of the church was simple, but no one else was there so we wandered about and took pictures to our hearts' content. There's a tastefully simple war memorial, a Norman font, and some interesting windows. I felt like Lord Peter Wimsey discussing church architecture with the vicar!

Here on the right is a photo of the church tower from the tourist center. The roundish building in the foreground they call the dovecote, and it's the very oldest building in the complex, dating from Saxon times.

We spent a very pleasant couple of hours in Avebury, which I highly recommend as a tourist complement to Stonehenge. Unless you can find a tour to take, though, you really need a car to get there. Although I suppose a complicated train-and-bus-scheme like we used to get to Duxford might be possible. However, we were glad we had our little Golf, and after stopping for mid-day sustenance at a nearby pub, we were off to points west.