Bath & Glastonbury

Mike and I had a fun day in Bath walking the beautiful streets, having lunch, and hitting three museums: the Jane Austen Centre, the Fashion Museum, and the Roman Baths. They were all on the small side, so we were able to see them all without feeling rushed. I would say that the Jane Austen Centre and Fashion Museum are worth doing if you're a fan (which I am). The JAC is quite small. The nice people who run it give a little talk on Jane Austen and then let you roam around on your own. Even though I've read biographies on Jane Austen, I still learned some new things. The Fashion Museum had an area where you can try on Victorian clothes, corsets and all, a display on clothing from the 19th century and an exhibit called "Fifty Fabulous Frocks." (I just love the word "frock." So much more fun to say than "dress"). 

"Picture me with a babel of noise going all about me at a public bath house."
 - Seneca the younger, circa 60 AD

I think anyone would enjoy seeing the Roman Bath. It's a beautiful site with a very good audio guide included with admission.

A different morning Mike and I visited Glastonbury Abbey and the Glastonbury Tor. It started out quite stormy. Picture pouring rain, gusts of wind and temperatures in the 40's. Not surprisingly, we had the place all to ourselves.

 But all that wind blew the storm away, so we even got a little blue sky for some of our pictures.

Glastonbury Abbey was destroyed at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Supposedly the purpose was to cut off the pope's power in England, but it was probably tempting that the abbeys were the richest entities in the land.

There is a grave for King Arthur and Queen Guinevere at the abbey. While there is doubt about the truthfulness of this claim, it brought a lot of money and pilgrims to the site.

Glastonbury Tor is the tallest hill for miles around with a ruin of St. Michael's church on the top. Glastonbury Tor is said to be the isle of Avalon from the King Arthur's legends. It's known for being a windy spot on the best of days. It felt almost dangerous on the very windy day we were there, like any moment the wind might pick us up and blow us down the hill. It's such a pretty view of Somerset though.

Town and Country

Our rental was near the city of Wells, the "smallest city in England", so we decided to drop by for a visit.

I really didn't know much about the town, except that it has a cathedral and Bishop's Palace. We walked through a small door in a big gate and this was the sight greeting us. For some reason I was so surprised. I expected the Bishop's Palace to be more like a big house, not a castle complete with turrets and moat.

Then we started walking around the path around the moat and find green fields with sheep grazing in the background! And swans gliding along the moat! I found it all overwhelmingly idyllic.

Is this not one of the cutest streets you've ever seen? It is a cobbled street built in the 1360's.

 And the cathedral itself is not bad either.

 Other bits of Wells I can't resist sharing.

This picture of Camille walking through the town of Wells was actually taken a different day. We decided our girls would enjoy the drama and compactness of Wells. I won't comment on how that went.

We passed this village on our way to our next stop, Cheddar Gorge. I took a picture of the sign because I thought their village motto was so cute - some town council sometime had sat around and decided that they as a village were going to focus on being thankful. But I looked it up later and found there's more behind the sign. In World War I, every village in England sent men to fight. Out of more than 4000 or so villages, only 42 had all their men come home. Those villages were designated as "Thankful Villages."

The same day as our Wells visit, we headed over to nearby Cheddar Gorge. It's the largest gorge in England. Actually, compared to the many canyons we've been to in the United States, it seemed a little quaint. But size isn't everything. It was definitely pretty and worth a visit.

We had every intention of walking to the top of the gorge, but it was so steep! I'm not sure if the picture shows it. We were a little nervous with the steepness combined with the slippery, wet path and so only made it up partway.

As a Plan B, the drive through the gorge was pretty too. If you ever find yourself in Somerset, I can highly recommend a day in Wells and Cheddar Gorge.

Water, Water Everywhere

Our trip turned out a little wet. Southern England had a major storm and flooding two weeks before we arrived. I don't think things had really recovered yet, when the week we were there brought plenty more rain. There was water everywhere.

We started feeling uncertain about this road, so decided to turn back. I had to get out of the car to help direct the turning around process, so took the opportunity to snap a picture.

Just as well we turned around, because apparently our GPS directed us to a road "Unsuitable for motor vehicles". If it wasn't raining so hard, we would have got out and walked the last bit just to see how the road got any worse than it already was. 

New Year's Day we purposely headed out in the rain for a little country walk. We both felt the countryside was so beautiful, that it made the walk enjoyable, rain or no rain.

I put my bargain-priced Target rain boots to the test, and they came out swimmingly.

One day we stopped by the town of Bradford-upon-Avon. Can you see how high the river water is on the bridge, and how it's spilling out onto the sidewalk?

Some of the shops near the river had boarded and sealed the bottoms of their doorways. I'm not sure if it was leftover from the previous flooding, or preparing for the next day's flood warnings.

We managed to travel safely around and keep to our vacation plans, with the exception of needing to cut out a trip to Avebury due to a flooded road. (This isn't the closed road - we managed this one fine).

Our hike up to the Glastonbury Tor showed us flooded fields in every direction. I hope the flooding isn't causing too much pain and trouble for the people living and working in Somerset. As tourists, we managed to have a fun vacation even with all the water.

Salisbury and Stonehenge

Holidays are some of the hardest times to be far away. As this winter vacation was going to be quite different than our usual traditions, we decided the best strategy would be to take a family trip rather than sitting at home. Ever since we found a place to rent in Somerset, I've had the line from the movie A Room With a View stuck in my head where one of the characters rhapsodizes, "Somerset! I've dreamed of Somerset!" 

On our way down to Somerset, we decided to stop by Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. Mike recently read the book Sarum, so he was especially curious to see it after reading 900 or so pages on the topic. We arrived during one of the blue sky moments of our trip, making the buildings and grounds stand out as especially beautiful.

My second favorite part of the cathedral is the cloisters, pictured here. My favorite part is the Chapter House, with its beautiful shape, stained glass windows, pillared ceiling and original copy of the Magna Carta on display. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed there.

I'm not sure the pictures can quite capture the grandness of it. It's amazing to think of 13th century craftsmen building such a place. What an impression it must have made on the people who had probably never seen a building above two stories.

Anya is writing her grandmother's name in the cathedral's prayer book.

Our next stop was Stonehenge, a short drive away.

It's kind of funny to me - in the background of this picture you can see a crowd of people on the left side. That is the closest spot to Stonehenge from the parking lot. If you move just yards further away, it feels like you have the place to yourself.

As many people know, Stonehenge was designed so that the winter soltice sunset and the summer soltice sunrise would be framed by the two largest stones. You can see from the sunset location that we were there only a couple of weeks off from winter solstice.

They used to have a parking lot right next to Stonehenge. They've since moved it to a non-visible spot about a 30 minute walk away. Mike and I were at Stonehenge years ago with my parents. Due to the unseasonably cold weather, strong wind, and lack of winter jackets, we all remember it as the spot where we were colder than we'd ever been in our whole lives. This time we had proper jackets and no wind, but with the December temperatures and 30 minute walk, it was still pretty darn cold. But so pretty and inspiring.

Lavenham, Suffolk

Mike and I were lucky enough to have the use of a friend's car today, so took advantage to check out the medieval town of Lavenham. It was a prosperous wool town in the 13th and 14th centuries, and is still full of half-timbered buildings and old world charm.

This building was used as the Potter home in Godric's Hollow in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm not sure how easy it would be to identify in the movie, as they said it was altered for the movies with CGI. Some other buildings in Lavenham were also used as part of Godric's Hollow, but I'm not sure which ones.

 "There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house."
I had this rhyme stuck in my head today, and lo and behold, when I got home and looked it up on Wikipedia, it says it was said to be inspired by the town of Lavenham!

We have this sort of running joke in our house about the auberge du Cheval Blanc, or White Horse Inn, because Mike claims the only thing he learned in high school French was how to ask, "Where is the White Horse Inn?". As we finally found it, we had to take this picture.

There are many, many opportunities to take picture of crooked houses.

I love the look of the winter vines on English buildings. The bare branches look even more fairy tale-like to me than when they're full and green.

Yes, we took a picture through a window of one of the houses. Before you judge us too creepy, know that it was empty and for sale. 

I'm a little bit disappointed that hedgehogs are apparently difficult to spot in the wild. For now, I'm settling for spotting the Hedgehog Cottage. 

And lastly, I like the leaded windows.

There's a lovely 3.5 mile country walk around the town of Lavenham. We didn't have time to do the whole thing, but the part we did walk was so pretty.

Mike and I are already fretting about giving up our English country walks. So pretty, and so plentiful.