Day 16 Llandenny to Manchester

Jill and her husband Steve are converting an old stone barn on their property into a small rental home, and we awoke to find Steve supervising the workmen and a concrete truck preparing to pour the first layer of a new floor for the barn and Jill hunting around for all the supplies she needed for her homemade jam stall at the church market. After breakfast Pop and I headed out to find Tintern Abbey, with its ruined 13th Century church. I wanted to see it both because of its fame in literature (poem texts at the end of today's entry) and because some of the photos I had seen of it were hauntingly beautiful. As is my habit, we got lost a few times, but made it there in the end. We were doing our best to follow the Googlemap instructions, then saw a sign to Tintern, so I followed it--down a narrow country lane. I knew immediately that that wasn't the route Google had in mind, but I figured the sign knew what it was talking about. And it did, but the road was closed--handily enough right at a remote B&B/pub. So I stepped into the pub to ask for directions--a dark, low-ceilinged room with every inch of ancient beam and wall hung with bric-a-brac and every level surface piled with stuff. Two dogs, five or six men, old and young, joking around the bar. When I opened the door, one of the dogs bolted out. One of the men whistled and yelled, "Get back here girl!" and then was worried that I would think he meant me. They were the first folks I have asked for directions who have seemed to know where I was and how I should get to where I wanted to go and could explain it in a way that made sense to me, even though the instructions were complicated. Pop was dubious as I zipped round corners and down questionably labeled lanes, but we came out right at the Abbey.

Monks' Day Room

Warming Room Ceiling (only room with heat in winter)

Through Crossing into Presbytery

Presbytery and South Aisle

North Transept

North Transept

Presbytery and East Window

Presbytery and North Aisle

West Window

Looking Across Transepts South to North

Looking into Aisles and Presbytery from the South

Looking into Aisles and Presbytery from the South

Northeast Intersection (Exterior)

Great East Window (from exterior)

After I had wandered about quietly for an hour or so, it occurred to me that Pop might have lost interest and be worrying, so I went looking and found him sitting on a bench in the sun. I've never been terribly keen on the Romantic poets, and Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is rather long, but it seemed appropriate to read at least some of the Tintern-inspired poems while sitting there, so I booted up the netbook and read Tennyson's Tears, Idle Tears and a longish bit of Ginsberg's Wales Visitation squintingly aloud. The Tennyson brought tears to my eyes, but I'm afraid I gave up on the Ginsberg at:

I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—

Somehow I wasn't up to reading that bit aloud amid the swooping, squeaking  swallows and the meditatively  treading tourists in a quiet, once holy place.

[While hunting for the texts of the poems, I came across a YouTube clip of Ginsberg reading Wales Visitation to William F Buckley, Jr. during a 1968 Firing Line interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAJYceQ54  During that interview, he also sang Hare Krishna to Buckley while accompanying himself on the harmonium!]

Jill's church market was to finish at 1PM, so we headed north to Monmouth to meet her there and say goodbye, as Pop wanted to return the Skoda while the rental place was still open, since he has had problems occasionally when dropping cars off after hours, and it had acquired a hedgerow scratch before I had gotten a good sense of its perimeter. An uneventful drive north to the Manchester airport, and, God willing, an uneventful flight back home tomorrow.

St Mary's, Monmouth

Jill's Jams

Four poems:

The first three inspired by visits to Tintern Abbey.

The fourth having nothing whatsoever to do with Tintern Abbey, 

but associated with it in my mind because of the word Poe uses to describe the ringing of the bells.

---

William Wordsworth, 1798

LINES

WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE

TINTERN ABBEY,

ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING

A TOUR,

July 13, 1798.

=====

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.*—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view	10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,	20
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind	30
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight	40
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.	50
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd though[t,]
With many recognitions dim and faint,	60
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,	70
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me	80
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour	90
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,	100
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,*
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,	110
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while	120
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,	130
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind	140
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget	150
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake.	160

Footnotes.
[4] * The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.
[107] * This line has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young, the exact expression of which I cannot recollect.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1847

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Allen Ginsberg, circa 1968

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—


Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—


Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!


All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave


A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—


No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—


Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,


Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.


What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Edgar Allen Poe, circa 1845

The Bells


I

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.


II

Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!


III

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now - now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale - faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells!


IV

Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people - ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls: -
And their king it is who tolls: -
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells: -
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells: -
To the sobbing of the bells: -
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells, -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
______________________________________________________________________________

Day 15: Dolgellau to Llandenny

[photos to be added]

I had left the window open and the curtains wide when I went to sleep, so as to enjoy the bleating of  the neighbor sheep, the bird song, and the bright morning sun, so I woke first just after first light--perhaps 4 o'clock--to the faintest of grey light. Then again around 5:30 to bright sun filling the room and bird song and bleating. Then again at 7:30. Heavenly to notice the blooming of the day and then fall asleep again easily and without concern about all there is to get done.

Driving south from Dolgellau, the mountains were at first dramatic stunning forbidding climbs of green and rock and purple haze, then gradually becoming gentler with more varied vegetation, and then gentler still with  good pasture land and then hayfields and even a few fields of brilliant yellow rape. The road became wider and less tightly wound, so that I felt comfortable taking the straight bits at 60 and the curves at 40-50mph. I still haven't broken our little Skoda to my will, but it has become somewhat more docile, and I was having fun with the curves and beginning to wish for something a little more fun--perhaps an Aston Martin DB4 or a 1960's Mercedes SL convertible.

We found Jill's place without too much difficulty and sat in her kitchen getting acquainted while she made picnic sandwiches--in my web search for interesting things to do in Monmouthshire, where Jill lives, I had come across a listing for Midsummer Night's Dream to be performed out of doors at the Blaenavon Ironworks, an 18th-19th Century blast furnace complex now a World Heritage Site. I didn't really expect the acting to be all that great, but summer Shakespeare out of doors usually makes a pleasant evening, even with iffy acting. So we went, even though it was threatening rain. We went early, planning to look around the Ironworks before the performance, but it was closed--not to reopen for at least an hour. So we drove about a bit looking for something interesting to fill the time, and after a few false starts--a brewery that offers tours but was closing shop for the evening, a 19th Century coal mine that had already closed for the evening--we wandered into a the Blaenavon Workmen's Hall, built in 1895 as a social gathering place with money collected (by the workers themselves) from the workers' wages. It had a theater on the upper floor and a library and billiard, recreation, and meeting rooms on the lower floor; a cinema was added in 1930. When we wandered in, a group of local teens was preparing for a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the theater (the stage and its lighting and rigging modern, but the hall itself still the original, or at least quite early). The downstairs cinema is still in use, showing first run movies for 3GBP, the recreations rooms still house one snooker table, but the rest have been replaced with ping pong tables.

http://forgottenlandscapes.org.uk/2013/02/27/our-proud-history-the-workers-self-funded-blaenavon-workmens-hall/

When we returned to the Ironworks, we discovered that the play was to be done in promenade, which complicated picnicking a bit, so we ate quickly. The play turned out to be a generally excellent and occasionally hilarious production, judiciously cut, with crystal clear enunciation, sweet music, funny interpolated asides in modern language, and a bit of well-integrated audience participation and silliness. The skies held off, but a rainbow began to fade in above the actors' heads just as the Mechanicals' play was ending.

My camera battery died just at the end of the play, so I wasn't able to get any pictures on the drive back to Jill's--the sun was setting and the light on the mountain moors was gorgeous, as was the sunset behind Raglan Castle--all of which we drove past far too quickly to enjoy properly. But all in all a fitting end to a fine vacation.

Day 14: Lymm to Dolgellau

I awoke to the sound of the neighbor cat Tooksie mewing and pawing at the (second floor) window, which I had opened just a tiny crack, as Sue had warned me he would try to come in. I wasn't certain if I should let him in, but I finally did, hoping he would visit with me for a bit, he had other plans in mind and slid out the bedroom door and down the stairs. The house was silent and I wasn't sure anyone was awake, but in a few moments I heard Sue's voice welcoming him to the kitchen.

The breakfast gods took pity on us, and we had our first sensible-sized breakfast in two weeks--a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee each. Such kind people! Erwin was all a-dither about our finding our way back out of Lymm (as he had been concerned when we showed up on the doorstep without having called for help finding them), but it wasn't any more or less confusing then any other navigation challenge so far, and we headed west into Wales. At first not much different than the English pastureland, but gradually shifting to more mountainous terrain with scattered castles and glimpses of sea. I had chosen a route suggested as one of the "most scenic" drives in Great Britain, and it was beautiful--steep green mountains and deep blue glacial lakes; valleys with isolated stone farms and scattered sheep. At one scenic lay-by we heard a cuckoo calling incessantly far away across a lake.

Uncertain if we had missed a turn, we stopped at a roadside cafe to ask directions and share a sandwich--a thick slab of excellent fresh whole grain bread with smokey, thick sliced ham and sharp cheddar, home made crisps with the potato skins left on, a nicely dressed mixed salad and ginger beer--far better than your average US roadside fare. I hadn't been sure before we left home how quickly we would progress in our post-Wall wanderings or how much walking we would be up for, so I had not made reservations ahead of time for tonight, and I had printed out instructions for several walks of various lengths and difficulties in Snowdonia National Park. By the time we had reached Osmotherley, it didn't seem likely that we would make it to Jill's at a civilized time if we tried to get from Lymm to Llandenny in one day, so I called around trying to find a B&B in Dolgellau on the southern end of Snowdonia. The first one I found that had suitable rooms available was a five star B&B at almost twice what we have been paying per night, but I didn't feel like putting in huge amounts of time finding something cheaper, so I went ahead and booked two singles plus dinner.

After looking at our hiking options, we decided on the "Precipice Walk"--3 miles/2 hours around an oval mountain top near Dolgellau--supposedly a "moderate leisure walk" with not much up and down and stunning views. It did not disappoint. The views and ecology shifted as we walked round the mountain and all of it beautiful. The Snowdonia Precipice Walk webpage has a very nice video flyover view of the walk (http://www.eryri-npa.gov.uk/visiting/walking/Moderate-Leisure-Walks/precipice-walk/precipice-walk-video), but it can't compare to the experience of walking. The warm late afternoon sun and a drying wind on the western flank of the mountain, cooler breeze and a patches of dappled shade on the eastern flank. distant mountains a patchwork of conifer and deciduous trees in new leaf, green grass and low shrubs, deep brown heather and pale green bilberry, crag and scree.The river Mawddach River winding below and opening out into the Irish Sea in the distance.  The growing, pleasantly teasing edge of sweat and tired muscle and thirst. Not as peaceful and quiet as the Wall, since there was a thrum of jets overhead and distant buzz and banging of road building along the river far below.

I haven't found the star rating system particularly accurate at home, but it has been quite accurate for all our B&B's this trip. The one three star hotel was perfectly adequate, but not pleasurable; the four star B&B's have been quite pleasant. Tonight's five star accommodation has far more really nice touches. Tea in the conservatory when we arrived--served in bone china--not the finest, most delicate of bone china, but still pretty and approaching translucent. A back garden tumbling down to a stream edged with cedars, crisscrossed with rustic bridges, and planted about with benches. A tiny bedroom, but peacefully decorated in white and mauve, with a spacious bathroom with heated marble flooring and a shower big enough to move about in and with decent water pressure. Dinner was what dinner was--no menu to choose from--but the chef's creation was very fine. Cream of parsnip soup with tiny savory croutons and micro greens (Pop even thought it tasted good until I told him it was parsnip). Pork medallions topped with a mild cheese and bits of fresh tomato and served in a puddle of Calvados sauce with a side of rich scalloped potatoes, plus a small  platter with tiny servings of broccoli, cauliflower, carrot batons, sweet and sour red cabbage, and mashed potato with carrot bits. Moist, light sticky toffee pudding with meringue, soft whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream. The coffee in the drawing room. Pop headed off to bed rather than having coffee, but I took my bone china cup and saucer and wandered out into the garden and down the road to exchange bleatings with the neighbor sheep. On the way back, I noticed a decaying tire swing hanging from a massive beech above a carpet of wild allium in full bloom, so I set my cup and saucer on a stump and spent a few minutes shoving off from the beech tree and skimming and spinning back and forth above the alliums.

Day 13: Osmotherly to Lymm

[photos to be added]

Rained a bit over night but bright sun with scattered clouds all day. Our breakfast companion was a businessman up from London--makes the trip every week for a few days. He and his family are planning a trip to the West Coast in late August-early September--fly into San Francisco, drive down to Carmel along the coast, then inland to Yosemite and Death Valley, then down to Disneyland and San Diego. A lovely trip for much of the year, but perhaps not in August! Our hostess was perfectly done up in tight and artfully distressed and patched blue jeans, sheer white blouse,and deep tan, bubbling at the prospect of taking thee next two days off to go relax at a spa in York. I asked who would look after the puppies for her, as she clearly doted on them and worried about them. Her business partner was going to take care of them. I suggested maybe Ruby, the puppies' weary mother, might enjoy a spa respite as well, which Di thought was an amusingly good idea, and we discussed which spa treatments would benefit Ruby most.

From Osmotherly, we drove north and west, through the Pennines--low, moorland mountains--to Long Meg and her Daughters. I had worried that I would regret a second trip to Long Meg, as it is so often hard to re-experience the magic of a place once visited. It did feel different--more hurried and busier than in my memory, in part because the neighboring farmer was haying--6 men with big machinery chewing through the fields and packing down a mountain of green hay large enough for two giant tractors to drive about on top of at the same time. But there was enough magic there to draw me still, and I am glad we went.

Then south and further west, for a quick drive through a bit of the Lake District, haunt of Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets. En route, we stopped in Penrith just long enough for me to ship a box of toffees and fudge off to the Health Service Walk-in Centre staff and pick up a box as a hostess gift for Jill. The proprietor of the shop wasn't aware that it was listed in a Lonely Planet article on 20 gourmet specialty foods in Britain, so I sent him the link.

The shifter and I are still at odds; I continue to cycle through my small and unimaginative repertoire of four letter words, and Pop continues to grip the map, white-knuckled. Got rather lost (due to a confusing roundabout) trying to find downtown Penrith and the Toffee Shop. The roundabouts can get positively baroque in their complexity: some are quite simple and subtle, so that you hardly notice you've passed through one (as in at a three-way intersection in a quiet village), but others can be two or even three adjacent  circles strung together, with two or three or even four lanes, multiple traffic signals on the periphery and within the roundabout, and painted lane designations to funnel vehicles into the proper position for shooting off onto the desired route. Woe betide the soul that doesn't know precisely which route is wanted! It reminds me a bit of the Los Angeles freeways, where the entrances and exits are so closely packed and come and go from both the right and the left, across many lanes of traffic, so that we referred to them as "braided lanes."

We didn't do the Lake District anything like justice, just drove straight through from Keswick to Kendal and eye-balling the mountains without stopping except to use a wayside WC. The mountains at the northern end of the drive were spectacular, and I would like to have stopped and hiked, but the central section was less rugged and a bit overrun with tourists for my tastes. Then onto the M6--4, then 6, and briefly up to 10 lanes of divided highway--down to Lymm, near Manchester/Liverpool. The smaller highways--the A and B routes--have their stresses--narrow bridges, view-obliterating hedgerows, sharp and winding turns, farm vehicles, horse crossings, cryptic and absent markings, but they are far more interesting than the large M motorways, which are pretty much indistinguishable from their US counterparts. But the M6 did get us where we needed to go quickly and efficiently.

Somehow, I had gotten it into my head that Pop's acquaintance in Lymm had been a colleague at DESY, but it turns out that they had been at Cornell together--Erwin a postdoc when Pop was a grad student. Sue and Erwin were in Ithaca 1962-65, so I was a newborn when they met. We had a bit of difficulty finding their house, hidden behind hedges and another house and a maze of construction barriers--the local gas pipes are reaching the end of their useful lifespan and, apparently, starting to rupture here and there, so their street and driveway are partially blocked and torn up to replace the old metal pipes with new plastic ones. Pop and Erwin reminisced and caught up on physics news and colleagues, but Sue made it quite clear that didn't interest her much, so I asked to see her garden, as she had been hacking at the shubbery when we arrived. So we poked about and discussed the birds and plants and the the neighbor cat and the toads in the little pond, and also a bit about the house, which was built in 1904 and still has Edwardian quirks about it. Then another physics colleague arrived and we strolled into the village for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding all around at the local tapas bar (don't ask me why a place that calls itself a tapas bar is serving such traditional Spanish staples as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding).  More good conversation about accents and history and healthcare systems, plus war and gun control and Reagan and Thatcher and Obama and Sue and Erwin and John and Pop's assorted adventures in Ireland and Wales and Switzerland and Russia. Then home again the long way round through the village and along the canal, lined with long, narrow canal boats (used now as pleasure craft, though they once carried coal and other goods in the days before the railways--apparently Britain, unlike the US, didn't abandon most of its canal system when the railroads came along, and it is still possible to navigate the system).

Day 12: Lindisfarne to Osmotherley by car + Osmotherley Ramble (5 miles, 3 hours)

[photos to be added]

Sunshine again!
Sean is definitely a character—almost worth the price of admission just by himself. He ran the same patter by everyone in the breakfast room and the same patter by newly arrived guests that he ran by us, but it felt quite genuine nonetheless, and he is quite funny and helpful and energetic.
With some ambivalence, I had planned for us to stop at Durham Cathedral on our way south to take a quick look around and have lunch in the restaurant in the crypt there (ambivalence because it was hard to decide how much to squeeze into our schedule and the focus was to be on scenery, not architecture and history, but I do find cathedrals centering, and it seemed a pity not to stop at at least one). But, having just barely managed to get out of Newcastle alive yesterday, I didn’t fancy tempting Fate again by hazarding central city driving with my still shaky British driving skills. And Pop didn’t seem to have strong feelings one way or the other, so we bypassed Durham and headed straight for Osmotherly on the western edge of the north York Moors National Park, where I had picked out a 5 mile “ramble” that I hoped would give Pop a bit of the “Yorkshire Moor” experience he had requested. It turned out to be more pastureland and woodland and mudland than moorland, and involved a great deal of up and down. I would have preferred a more bleak and gloomy or endless heather and wind-filled moorland experience, but the walk was enjoyable nonetheless.
Then to Moon House B&B in Osmotherley (pronounced Oz-mother-ly), where the proprietress was lounging in the sun in her back garden with her gently protective and long-suffering brute of a Dogue de Bordeaux bitch and eight wobble-kneed, short-sighted, pug-faced, plump, teething, tumbling, fussing, nuzzling pups. Dinner at the Three Tun pub next door (seems to be a favored name for pubs)—much more pretence than the other pubs we’ve eaten in—very nice custom Arts and Crafts/Mackintosh-inspired décor, attentive service, crooning torch song in the background. Pop had lamb (again); I went for a Middle Eastern-spiced puy lentil, chickpea, tomato, and courgette (zucchini) shepherd’s pie with a side of some mild, sturdy green (not quite spinach, not quite collards). We shared a starter of local artisan breads, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, tender sun-dried tomatoes, assorted olives, and nicely dressed baby greens. Quite good with a glass of sparkling white to start and a pint of Guinness to finish.

Day 11: Newcastle to Lindisfarne (by car now)

[photos to be added]

Monday morning. Glorious weather for driving north. But first to get the car. We had driven past the Alamo car rental place on our way the the National Health Service Walk-in Centre, and if I'd thought about it a bit, I would have known better than to get confused by the Googlemap directions I had printed out. So, instead of walking a block and a half round under the Tyne Bridge, I crossed the river into Newcastle and wandered in vain, looking for Church Street. I finally asked three young women opening up their flower shop for the morning. None of them knew, or seemed any clearer after looking at my various maps, but they eventually agreed on where it must be and then Googled the way for me. Finally back on the right side of the river and at the rental desk. That went smoothly enough. But I had overestimated my muscle memory for driving a stick shift and stalled out at least six times just trying to get out of the rental parking lot. Not good on a Monday morning in an unfamiliar town with hills and a mix of medieval and 18th century streets, modern highways, and six-way roundabouts in a left-handed car on left-handed roads with impatient drivers. But somehow we made it out of town alive and heading north (after first heading south and then later west and having to double back each time). I had printed out driving instructions to Lindisfarne, but the route signs were often confusing or hard to find, and the roundabouts, though marvelously efficient once you get the hang of them, are a terrifying slalom if you don't know where you are going and don't really have control of your car.

The countryside, what I dared to see of it, was beautiful--flat and green with the North Sea peeking between dunes when the road curved near enough. We stopped in Amble to take a look at the harbor, as it had seemed from my researches to still be active as a fishing village. A little hard to tell, but we poked about a bit, then headed up the coast to Crasters, where there is a fish smoking concern that is supposed to produce excellent kippers and smoked salmon and have an onsite restaurant. But the counter lady said no--neither the salmon nor the kippers would last long enough without refrigeration for us to take any as house gifts for our hosts later in the week, and Pop and I have both reached the point that we can't keep eating three large meals a day, however tasty. The coastal route was winding, at times dropping down to 1.5 lanes (if that), many of the villages not on the map. And there was a detour (amazing enough well marked). The causeway to Lindesfarne was open an hour earlier than predicted, and we drove across with the receding tide just inches below the road edge. Patches of red sand on the roadway and patches of deep sky blue water still on the road and on the red sand mudflats stretching to either side. Lindisfarne village was acrawl with tourists, and it took a little slow and careful wandering down narrow streets (I'd gotten a little better at the shifter) before we found our hotel. Sean the proprietor welcomed us cheerfully and brought us tea in the gardan, then sent us off wandering. He poopooed the castle and priory and museum in the village and urged us to head north into the nature preserve. But we did want to see the museum, which turned out to have nice, though small exhibits on the island's history, the Viking desecrations, and the Lindisfarne Gospels (now in the British Museum, but scheduled to make a trip north to Durham Cathedral at the end of this month).

Sean had assured us that the north end of the island would be peaceful and empty, but the walk to and slightly past the Castle wasn't reassuring in that regard. The crowd did, however, drop away rapidly as we headed up the east coast of the island. By the time we reached the first cove and sand beach, we were alone, save for the birds and the wind. When I had first exchanged emails with Sean in making reservations, he had suggested skinny-dipping with the seals in the island's northern coves as an experience not to be missed, and that sounded very fine to me. And it was, though I took only the briefest of dips, nothing like a proper swim or even a proper float, as the water is still very chilly. But the sand was clean and firm and rippled and the water pleasantly salty without bitterness and the sun warm and the wind quick-drying, so it felt quite lovely to sit at the foot of the dunes and eat crisps and cookies in the sunshine while my hair dried out a little. The shingle was clean and smooth enough to walk barefoot and the dune paths either sandy or carpeted with stiff moss and stiff, short-clipped grasses, soft enough to continue barefoot on to the next cove. Then shoes back on for wandering back through the dunes and sheep pastures to the village and dinner at the Crown & Anchor (fresh crab salad for Pop, pan-fried lemon sole with lemon butter on a bed of just wilted spinach with a side of new potatoes for me). By the time we returned to the village, the day tourists had gone, and the streets were empty and quiet except for the cooing of the pigeons. We wandered through the churchyard, with its close views of the priory ruins, and then back to the hotel, where Sean handed us a still warm pile of freshly laundered (and ironed!) clothes we had left with him earlier. Now Pop has just tucked in, and I am heading out to watch the sunset (again following Sean's so far excellent suggestions).

Sunset pretty; not spectacular. But the beach at sunset was well worth the visit--a few people came and went, but quietly, honoring the peacefulness. The tide still out, the mud flats yielded treasures. Two stalking herons, a dabbling red-crested white and black grebe-like water bird I haven't yet identified, a mottled brown duck (perhaps an eider?), limpet shells, empty bivalve and snail shells, sea glass, a mussel clinging tight when I nudged it, a ghostly crab skeleton beneath the surface of a tide pool, a tiny bird preening itself and a creeping woman in a flowing skirt watching it (she was disappointed when she asked if I thought it was a pipit and I had to say I'm afraid I don't know British birds). And all around, increasing as the sun set, the moaning and keening and barking of seals on the distant mainland shore and on nearer exposed shoals of mud. With my binoculars I could make out individuals in the groups closest to me--some lounging, some galloping along in their flailing, humping way, one lying on its back, waving its flippers in the air.

Day 10: Newburn to Segedunum (12 miles, 5 hours)

When we arrived at the Keelman's Lodge in Newburn last night, the pub garden was packed with Saturday evening revelers and the bar as well. I was certain we'd get no sleep, as it looked like the sleeping rooms were just up the stairs on a landing above the bar, but it turned out there was a separate small building with four bedrooms, and we slept well enough.

We traded boots and pastures for sneakers and asphalt for our last day of walking. I had anticipated a quite urban walk through grungy streets and abandoned industrial buildings, but was pleasantly surprised at how well the Path avoided that. Abandoned (and a few active) industrial buildings did peek through the foliage from time to time, but the Path was, by in large, through passable urban woodland along the river front--hardly countryside, but pleasant enough nonetheless, though the inattentive cyclists were a bit frightening at times.

It was Sunday morning, and the church bells rang in the suburbs across the river--Newcastle's rapid growth as an industrial center in the 1800's shows in the orderly ranks of narrow row houses lining the hills on the south side of the Tyne. As we approached the central city, the woods opened out into promenade, and fishermen appeared along the edge, casting bits of worm and chopped fish on lines weighted with large lead sinkers to anchor them to the bed of the fast-moving river. I stopped to chat with one small group, apparently having a bit of a contest, and admired a tiny flounder they were measuring out--no more than four or five inches and a soft, muddy brown. I hadn't seen a flounder alive and up close before and marveled again at the bizarreness of design--to have your eye migrate from one side of your head to the other during development! I asked how the fishing was and how big was the biggest fish they had caught. One held out his hands about two or three feet apart and said one of the group had caught an eel that long earlier, and another chimed in to say that the record was a nine pound eel caught closer to the Tynemouth. Not something I would want to try to wrestle to land and bludgeon and then extract a hook from. Never mind eat.

Scattered along the promenade were historical plaques describing the invention and development of a hydraulic crane by a William Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong, and his subsequent development of an industrial empire based on manufacturing, civil engineering, and armaments. He had the Swing Bridge in Newcastle built (opened in 1876) so that larger ships could pass through to his shipyards at Elswick. Apparently the original hydraulic mechanism for rotating the bridge is still in place, though now driven by electric pumps (per Wikipedia).
Between the Swing Bridge and the elegant new pedestrian Millennium Bridge the promenade was jammed with Sunday market. Young people hanging out, families navigating strollers through the crowd, housewives buying bread, stalls selling everything from beautiful loaves of rustic bread and single-sourced meats to cheap leather coin purses, bratwursts, socks, Jamaican curries, cellphone covers, churros, slushies, used books and LP’s, doughnuts, tacos, knick-knacky crafts in wood and clay, pad thai, and flipflops. I stopped to talk to the farm stall minder and admire his meats—a small selection of artfully arranged lamb and pig parts. I asked how one uses trotters and whether pigs’ cheeks are tough and best cooked by braising, saying that American supermarkets don’t generally carry them. So he and his customer debated for me the best recipes for making a rich broth or soup from pig trotters, and how to lightly cure pig cheeks to use like bacon. When I said that most Americans prefer to stick to muscle meat, they marveled at the wastefulness of that, and the stall minder said there was a classic British cookbook—Mrs. Beeton’s—that gave instructions for cooking every bit of farm animals and of squirrels and other game. I recognized the name from a book on my shelves at home and asked if Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management was by the same lady. “That’s the book!” I had to confess I had never cracked its cover, but did offer that a couple classic American cookbooks do also address cooking such delicacies as squirrel and pigeon and possum. And then we discussed the mystery contents of sausage. By then, Pop was far ahead of me and through the crowd. We were supposed to call the travel agent when we reached the Millennium Bridge, so that they could gauge when to send a taxi to pick us up at Segedunum at Wallsend. Having made that call, we then had three hours to finish the walk, which made Pop a bit nervous. From there east, the Path was no longer crowded and became progressively dingier. We stopped briefly (for sodas and bathrooms) at a quayside cycling hub, where serious bikers were preparing for excursions or sitting about, minding tables full of high end bicycle parts or explaining aspects of bicycle repair to novices. Further on, a bicyclist stopped to ask us for directions—the Wall Path comes in hiking and biking versions that alternately converge and diverge, which can be confusing at times. He was heading west—just starting out—and wanted to chat—how was our walk? (excellent). Were American cities safe? (depends on whom you ask and where you go and what you do—not much different from anywhere else in the world). Did we know Winslow Homer? (Yes, of course [though not personally]). Did we know that there was a nice exhibit of paintings in nearby Cullercoats, where there had been an artists’ colony where Homer and others as deserving but less famous had lived? (No, we had no idea of that [would have been nice to visit, but we were pretty much beat and looking forward to showers and sleep]. Segedunum was a bit of a disappointment—dog-eared and without much helpful signage to explain the ruins—nothing higher or more decorative than foundation stones. There was, however, a very nice reconstruction of a Roman bath house and a tiny bit of the Wall that had been found in 1903 during a shipyard expansion and moved to the Segedunum site. The Wall apparently ended at the Tyne’s bank near Segedunum, but the river’s edge has been much altered over the last 2000 years. Across the Path from the fort, a low rectangular paving of Wall-sized stones dips down and under an abandoned building; it isn’t labeled as a remnant of the Wall, but I imagine it is. If so, or even if not, Wallsend is an ignoble end for a once proud Wall. As is the end for most of us.

Wall:

Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.

(MSND, V, 1)

Steve showed up with his taxi and our luggage at the appointed time and drove us back to Gateshead.  I nwhere we had gotten Pop’s medication, hoping to find more Tegaderm for my blisters and another camera card. Mission more or less successful, I wandered down Grey Street and then, hearing church bells ringing changes, headed toward St Nicholas’ Cathedral. In the little square beside the cathedral was this lovely sculpture of Queen Victoria in her late middle-aged splendor—a pleasure to see a real woman memorialized as she really was (at least as I have seen her in photographs)—not as some idealized young beauty. The Cathedral doors were open, and as I went in, an older woman approached me, programs in hand, and asked me if I was there for the service. At first I said no, but then, seeing a mixed choir of adults and children, thought to ask if it was going to be a choral evensong—yes, Tuesday would be the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee (anniversary of her coronation), and all the dignitaries of Newcastle would process as part of a celebratory evensong. I was less interested in dignitaries than in good choral music and cathedral acoustics, and, knowing that Pop would also enjoy a choral evensong, even as tired as he was, I stepped out into the street to call him and suggest he catch a taxi over. The music was fine (even though the choir master had been berating the choir’s Amens as “Rubbish!” during practice), the ritual familiar, the sermon thoughtful, and the procession a fitting mix of elegant tradition (the Cathedral Dean and clergy in formal ecclesiastical regalia, the Beadle in black velvet tailcoat with lace collar and cuffs and long, gold-knobbed  staff) and unpretentious practicality (the mayor and council members  in come-as-you-are businesswear of varying degrees of tailoredness or dumpiness, but all with elaborate Renaissance-style  insignia of office around their necks). Excepting a few young touristing students, Pop and I were the only members of the congregation in jeans and scruffy shirts, but no one seemed to mind, and a young curate came up to welcome us and chat after the service. He had never walked Hadrian’s Wall, but he had done the C2C—a 190 mile bicycle trail across England through the Lake District and Pennines--and we exchanged travel impressions.