Monthly Archive

Since moving to this country, one thing I’ve found that I absolutely love doing is getting in the car. The act of driving isn’t what I love - rather, the knowledge that I’m on my way to seeing some marvelous sights. Take this weekend, for example. We didn’t have any worthwhile plans to see great castles or cathedrals, so we ended up taking a trip to Woburn Safari Park. (Of all the things to find in the middle of England, I would never guess a safari park would be one of them.) I’ll only say briefly on the experience - it was pretty much like a huge traffic jam, with the exception of seeing a few neat animals on the way. Worth going there once, I probably won’t return, but at least I can say I’ve been to a safari park. However the safari park wasn’t what made the day special for me.

On the way to Woburn, we passed through a collection of charming small towns, and if I had to pick a favorite thing about this country so far, small towns would be it. If I had to guess I’ve visited or passed through about a dozen of them since coming here, and each one seems to have a character of its own, not to mention a quaintness that I can’t get enough of. I grew up in small towns in Wisconsin and absolutely hated it - couldn’t wait to get out of high school and move into the “big” city. Here, I want to move out of Stevenage and into one of these towns!

One of the towns was called Richmont, in Bedfordshire. In the distance I saw a very old looking building, so I had Luke drive me over there to investigate. We found ourselves in another town called Segenhoe, but all that was left of the town was a couple farm houses and the ruins of an 11th century church. The church was small and had been abandoned sometime in the 18th century, there was not much left… but I found it to be absolutely fascinating. This was right up my alley. Obviously in the States it’s very rare to see a building that’s been around for 100 years or more. While here, it’s nothing to stumble into a small town no one has heard of and visit a church that has been standing in the same spot for over 900 years. I find it difficult to imagine someone who is unable to be moved by that experience, in whatever small way.

I guess the point I’m trying to express is that I don’t have to visit extravagant monuments in order to be truly affected by the vast history of this country. I got just as much wonder out of seeing the ruins of this small, unimportant church as I did from seeing the architectural beauty of Ely Cathedral.

I have become convinced that England is a beautiful country. Much better than Wisconsin. Every time that I drive somewhere, the rolling countryside looks marvelous, with its real green fields and historic non-striaght fences and walls. I wish that I could capture the look of the area better, but its hard. Recently, I managed to travel through the Lake District and County Durham, though the overcast skies prevented any nice photography (and the fog … there are massive amounts of fog, sometimes through the whole day blocking out all viewing of the sun).

Otherwise, I bumped into a fantastic article in Top Gear Magazine, that almost makes it onto the web version. Around the World in 80 Drives, theoretically 80 of the most beautiful/interesting roads to drive down. The web article is much more limited (cutting out some fo the descriptions and road names) but has some excellent photos.

We visited St Albans last week for a quick afternoon. My guess, is that its probably the nicest place in Hertfordshire, though we haven’t poked around enough. Regardless, St Albans at least has the most history of any location in Hertfordshire. Originally, it was called Verulamium and was the third largest city in Roman England. Later, around 250AD, a Roman citizen named Alban sheltered a refugee Christian priest, Saint Amphibalus and was executed for doing so. Supposedly, a shrine was built at the point of execution and Alban becamse St. Alban, England’s first martyr.

The local cathedral, built around the shrine, was only made a cathedral in 1877, prior to that it was one fo the largest abbeys in England (with much of the original building starting in Norman times, around 1100). However, the Dissolution of the Monastaries (blah, blah, blah, Henry VIII) act destroyed almost all of the abbey, and left only the church and a gatehouse. The church was purchased by the township, and became the parish church was upgraded to a cathedral in Victorian times.

Unfortunately, while we saw the cathedral, we missed the Roman History museum (called the Verulamium) and anything else of significance. The Good Beer Guide lists 8 marvelous pubs to visit, and we managed to miss all of them, though that will certainly change sooner or later. And finally, a couple of photos were taken:

St Albans Cathedral from the front.

The Nave; The Ceiling of the Tower

I had a wonderful couple days in London this past weekend. First off, on Friday night we put on our drinking caps and David and I headed into the trendy area of downtown London known as Camden via train. We met up with Dave’s former flatmate Jon and a couple of Jon’s exuberant work colleagues. The five of us then started off on an unexpected but delightful pub crawl, which took us all over Camden. This being my very first night of drinking in London, I had the luck of fabricating the event into, “Lets show this American how we party in London!” Which basically meant that I had drinks handed to me the entire night and I was in a whimsical state by the time I made it back to King’s Cross to catch the midnight train home. It is also noteworthy to point out that our group of five consisted of two Brits, a Scot, an American, and a Australian. Only in London…

I was also shocked to find out the very next day there was a terrible fire in Camden Market! And to think the night before we were right across the canal from where the fire started.

Camden Locks

From right: Becky, Matt, Jon, and Steve. A photo from across Regent’s Canal, left.

On Sunday, I was off to London again, this time with Luke and my father-in-law, Slawek. It was a gorgeous sunny and warm afternoon, without a cloud in the sky, which made the perfect backdrop for my camera. (Quick side note:  we had about a 7 day period with flawless sunny weather, and this quite perplexed me. I thought I was living in the UK?)

We were thinking about what to do in London that day when it occurred  to me that this was my 5th trip into the city and I had yet to see any of sights that make London famous. For example: Big Ben. Or Westminster. Or Buckingham Palace. Or Trafalgar Square! So that afternoon we trekked all around town, seeing famous building after famous building, until our feet were sore. Didn’t go inside any of them… most were closed on Sundays and besides, it was too nice a day to be cooped up in a museum. And of course, I took a bunch of photos. (Click the picture below to see the full set.)

In a slightly spiteful note, I was driving down the A1 earlier this week, and I accidently cut off a rather large lorry. I felt bad, until I saw the sign on the side saying “Cambridge University Polo Team”. Heh, I cut off the Cambridge Polo Team.

Running behind, this is a week old, but we had a lovely afternoon last Sunday visiting Ely Cathedral. It’s really stunning. Driving up from Cambridge, the Cathedral can be seen rising above the fens 5 miles away (as seen on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Division Bell).

Most of the interesting history is available on wikipedia, but to highlight a couple of intersting points:
- The Lady Chapel was a 14th century addition and is the largest chapel attached to any British Cathedral, and is huge, bright and marvelous.

- Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monastaries combined with the zealous Bishop Thomas Goodrich led to a reasonable amount of damage to the interior of the Cathedral. Many of the faces on the historic sculptures were bashed/scratched off. Also all traces of the original shrine to Ethelreda (the 7th century founder of the site) were lost. (Note: I can’t find any online clarification that Bishop Goodrich was responsible for this, though I remember this from the information onsite, but take with a grain of salt)

- There is a bunch of wonderful stained glass in the cathedral. I particularly liked the RAF window, commemorating those who protected the skies above Ely during World War II.

One of many wonderful Gargoyles.

Heh. Keep off the Grass. Also, the Cathedral from the rear, Lady Chapel is on the right.

Finally, many of the other users of flickr have better pictures of the Cathedral. I particularly liked LawrenceOP’s photos. In particular, he has a wonderful collection of the stained glass photos, including an example of the RAF window.