Friday: Stourhead Gardens, Stonehenge, and Jane Austen's House

"This landscape I'm looking out onto is totally manmade, but I feel like it does a fabulous job at inspiring the beautiful and allowing it to thrive. It may have once been more apparent that this place is totally fabricated, but over the years and generations the land has reclaimed much of its own, growing into a mesh of the two kinds— natural and manmade— a whole new beast.

"I'm even now sitting on the steps of the temple of Apollo, a constructed granite column edifice not for the gods but simply for the beauty of Roman looks and a display or “shoutout” to the Roman culture. Likewise there is a constructed grotto (beautiful!) with statues of a river nymph and Neptune, the water god. Again, tributes to Rome and Greece, planted long after the actual people who worshiped these beings ceased to walk the earth. But yet they are beautiful and mystical and they please and entice the eye. I know they are fakes, but cannot help enjoying looking at them nevertheless.

"I gain such great peace from sitting in nature— contemplating these things. I feel that this trip has allowed me to experience life and many new things/situations, allowing me to fully understand (or at least better) myself— my likes, dislikes, my opinions. It has been a blessing, though sometimes a hard blessing to experience mentally and emotionally; turbulence is how we learn; without friction we would never get anywhere!”

The three paragraphs above are a direct excerpt from my journal. I wrote that as I sat in the temple that overlooked the ground at Stourhead Gardens. That temple features in the new, short version of Pride and Prejudice, in the scene where Darcy first asks Elizabeth to marry him and she refuses, and it's raining and sad and so dramatic! We took a lot of pictures up there, trying to look like Keira Knightly did in the movie, but I'm sure we all failed to reach the perfection Hollywood cameras achieve.

After visiting Stourhead gardens, we drove to Stonehenge. If I could say one thing about Stonehenge it is that I really liked it. Yeah, it was a rip off paying seven pounds to get in just to see the thing close up, and yeah, there were like a million people all walking around, taking pictures like mad, but at the end of the day, I spent about twenty minutes sketching it and, like nothing else does in the world, sketching something makes you either love it or hate it. I really enjoyed just looking at the stones and sketching them. It was fun. Maybe I liked it more because I had had a hard time sketching anything worth even looking at the day before, so my success with Stonehenge (I guess anyone can sketch some rocks though... hmm), made me feel better about myself or something.

It was definitely an experience, and I had almost as much fun in the gift shop afterwords as I did while I was out there looking at it. PS, it was a lot smaller than I expected it, but after staring at it for a while, I realized that the reason it seemed smaller to me was because in all the pictures, the camera somehow makes the stones appear more spread out, forming a circle with a larger circumference. However, in real life, the stones are all squashed together more, pretty close together without such huge gaps between each stone and the next. They were pretty big though, probably 15 or 17 feet tall, I don't think they went up to twenty feet, but maybe. Cool to think that people could move such massive stones into positions like that with just ropes and horses.

After going to Stonehenge, we drove to Jane Austen's house in the city of Chaucer. It was really fun to take a tour of the house and there were a bunch of old ladies inside ready to answer any questions we had about the house or the authoress. It was very fun, probably even more so because we were a group of 40 girls and going to visit Jane Austen's house is just such a girly thing to do.

Well, after the house, we drove another hour and a half back to London. And that was the end of our Southwestern trip! And our next big trip is Paris! Then we have three more small trips- two overnighters and one day we go to the Temple. And then I'm home. The end of this trip marked the half-way point of the semester. Halfway there. We've already done so much, but at the same time, there is so much we aren't seeing- that we have missed. I guess it's just a good excuse to come back, eh?

Thursday: St. Michael's Mount in Penzance

St. Michael's mount is a gorgeous rocky island off the tip of Penzance, reachable by boat in high tide and by foot along a cobblestone causeway during low tide. We walked on the pathway, just wide enough for a car to drive on, as the water was still receding from the bay. I took off my shoes and waded in the inch or so deep water at one point. The island is a beautiful silhouette against the sky. I love it— it has been painted and drawn many many times by hundreds of artists for this very reason. It was very foggy the day we were at St. Micheal’s mount. As we crossed over to the island, the sun had started to peak out and heat us up, but, after hiking up to the castle and walking inside for a bit, we emerged and the whole bay was covered in thick, white fog.

The island is it's own little fortress city. There are about 8 houses where people actually live, a tiny little dock and a little restaurant and a gift shop for tourists. And then there is the castle, which is the heart of the island. Touring inside the castle was nice— very interesting. St. Micheal’s Mount has a long history of being captured and sieged and such. It is su

ch an enchanting place and has many stories and legends. One legend says that St. Michael, the archangel, came to the island and appeared to the sailors who lived there. And that's it. Funny little story. I kept thinking, and then what? Why did this angel appear to the sailors? Sounds a little fishy to me. :D

The pathway up to the castle at St. Michael's mount. The island has hundreds of tropical plants growing there that have been imported from as far away as Madagascar. Even in the middle of October, the flowers were still blooming.

After touring the castle, most of my time there was spent writing in my journal and sketching and trying to think up ideas for a short story I have to write for my Creative Writing class. I wasn't very successful at any of these. But, after about two hours, my friends and I decided to head back to the coach. This time, as we went back to the base of the island, we saw that the tide had receded so much that we could walk down into the dock area and through what looked like a boat graveyard, all the boats sitting in the sand, beached like small whales in the low tide, or lack of a tide I guess you could say, and then make our way across the beach that was now exposed to the air, all the way to our coach.

A sweet car in the car park by the beach at St. Michael's Mount.

This was awesome, because, as we walked, our bare feet squelching in the soft, wet sand, we found dozens of sea-shells. I soon began gathering all that I could find and the trip back to the coach ended up taking about twenty minutes for every other step I was bent over, pawing at another sea shell I spotted in the sand. It was great fun, and as I collected I knew that I wanted to use these shells in a sculpture or a project for art, so that was my reasoning behind being such a shell-glutton.

The giant's heart stone on the pathway up to the Castle at St. Michael's mount.

We were supposed to go to Stourhead Gardens this day as well, but the timing of everything didn't work out properly, so, after returning to the coach, we just drove to Salisbury, dropped our stuff at the youth hostel, and took a walk to the Salisbury Cathedral to see it lit up in the dark of the night.

It was quite beautiful, and some of our group were sad that we weren't going to be able to do a tour of it the next morning like we had scheduled to do (instead, we were going to the gardens in the morning because of the time mix-up, so the cathedral tour got booted) but just seeing the outside was enough for me.

Wednesday: Tintagel Castle and Penzance

Tintagel Castle (or, King Arthur's castle) – a mere ruin of rocks on the cliffs. Beneath it, by the sea and reachable by crossing the beach, is Merlin's cave, a hole in the rock that spans the peninsular island. You can walk into the giant cave from one side and cross out to the other, stepping from stone to stone, avoiding tiny pools of water and emerging on the other side in the fresh sea air and blinding sunlight to see a new landscape of jagged black crags that emerge from the ocean waves like teeth from some great monster foaming at the mouth.

The land here is so beautiful and grey. It is somber and melancholy and mystical— I can perfectly see why the natives of this place believe that it may have been home to the mysterious King Arthur and his wizard, Merlin. As we climbed from the beach and Merlin's cave, up the cliff-side to the top of the peninsula where the castle ruins were, my professor, John, standing high up on the steps, pointed down towards the bay and the warm grey water. There was a seal playing in the waves.

Well, after returning to Tintagel, we crowded back into the coach and drove down into Penzance, stopping briefly at two neolithic standing stone structures on the outskirts of the city. The first one was basically Aslan's stone table— in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if really was :D

And the second (called a men-an-tol) was a circular rock with a hole in it. I really liked that one. There was a story that went along with it saying that back in the day people would crawl through the hole nine times and it would heal them of their back problems. Yeah, nine times crawling on the ground thru a tiny hole would do that I suppose. :D

After stopping at the two sites we took a two mile hike across the beach and up a hillside to Land's End, the Southernmost point in England.

By the end of all this, though, everyone was tuckered out. I believe we all had windburn and or sunburn because we'd been outside practically all day with the wind blowing in our faces. At our youth hostel we got a surprise free dinner— I was so happy. We were going to have to go into town to get food— a 15 min walk in the dark at 6:45pm after a long day to get (probably) expensive food, but instead we were able to sit and relax and just hang out at the hostel the rest of the night after a good hot dinner. That was a happy occurrence.

After exploring the top of the peninsula for about an hour, stopping to write in our journals for about half an hour, we headed back to Tintagel. The wind was strong up on the top of the cliffs and many of the girls were getting cold. It was so beautiful. I cannot capture the beauty of God's creations either in written word or in drawings or in paint or sculpture. I am nothing compared to Him and to the immensity of his power. I even try to mimic and fall vastly short of even coming close to the majesty He creates in even the tiniest flower bud or smallest drop of water. So, why do I try? Why do we even try, us makers? For that I am— I am a maker of things. I create. Just like a dog barks or a drinking fountain spews water, I am made to make things. So, I guess it's simply in my nature. I cannot help it— or if I can, I don not wish to help it. I merely can express it.

Tuesday: Glastonbury Abbey and Boscastle/Tintagel

Glastonbury Abbey

Day number 2 on our Southwestern tour. We were determined to make the most of every minute. Wow, looking back at everything that we did in a single day, it's no wonder I felt justified in just skipping out on running all week long. At least we hit the ground hard in the first half of the trip and then it wound down a little bit more near the last day or two.

The second day we drove to Glastonbury Abbey in the morning- located in Glastonbury. The tour here may be my favorite tour yet. The abbey is just a remnant of what it once was- vast walls, ruined archways, weather stones, lonely pillars scattered among flat green fields. I thought it would be boring, but I was wrong. Those ruined stones are a monument and a layered tapestry full of colorful, mystical and mysterious stories. Stories dating back to Jesus Christ and Joseph of Aramathia and the Romans.

Our tour guide was a skinny older man with a spring in his step and a crooked smile. He was full-out decked in period clothing from Henry the 8th's time, including a short sword and a knife. Our group was broken up into two separate halves, half going with our guy, and the other half with a younger woman also dressed in period clothing. We got the better guide by far, I

discovered, after talking and comparing experiences with other girls who had the woman. I felt grateful because I thoroughly enjoyed our guide's excited take on the whole experience. Though it was a windy, overcast day, none of that touched us as we listened to our guide tell us stories interlaced with true facts known about the abbey.

Glastonbury Abbey may have been founded by Joseph of Aramathea in 60 AD ish- making it one of and perhaps the 1^st place of Christian worship made after Christ's death. (our guide, at this point, made it very clear that the founding of this abbey is so laced with superstitions and stories and is so old that no one knows for sure how or who actually founded it, so these stories of it's founding are all just that: stories— which we could choose to believe or not believe). Later on, King Arthur may have lived in this land, for it is speculated that it could have been Avalon

because of the Tor here. A Tor is a tower on a great big hill (sometimes man-made). This land, way back when, was probably mostly under water, and the Tor, being so high, would have been

an island— Avalon. Also, some monks “Found” king Arthur's grave and his and Guinevere's

bones (supposedly). It's said that Joseph of Aramathea brought the holy grail here with him and if that's so, then it figures that Arthur would be drawn here too.

It's all superstition and myth, but it's really neat and fun to think about. Even today lots of people (hippies and spiritualists,etc) come on their own quests for King Arthur.

The guide told us a story that there's a well on the side of the tor that has a spring running out of it that turns the rocks around it red (probably from minerals in the H2O) but he said people thought this well might be the place where Joseph of Aramathea buried the holy grail and the two jugs (one of Jesus' blood, the other of His sweat) to hide them from conquering Romans. The red rocks were believed to be red from the water running over the blood and then staining the rocks. A neat little story.

Also, it is said that the Tor is where Joseph landed when he sailed here and he planted his staff on the top of it and it grew into the Holy Thorn, a tree which blossoms in April and in December, 2 times a year— one time near Easter, and one time near Christmas. Soo, the stories as well as architectural and historical facts, made the abbey come alive.It's neat to believe in King Arthur. I'm not a devout “Arthur follower” or anything, but I do think it's nice to have a great mythical person to believe in, to cater to the idea that he actually existed. I mean, I do that with Jesus Christ (except that I know He's real and He lived and walked the earth). It's interesting, because, after I thought about this very thing, our class had a discussion on how cultures around the world and in every generation, have this need to form some sort of hero/king figure to believe in.

We talked a little about it what it means, and I personally came to the conclusion that it is merely a testimony that we all have the light of Christ in us and that because of this, we unconsciously (or consciously) seek out the giver of that light, our creator. And, also, it just shows how the truth from the beginning can become watered down and transformed and changed until it's unrecognizable, but that some key elements always stay the same.

Boscastle and Tintagel— two sea-side towns located in the Cornwall region of England.

We drove first to Tintagel (emphasis on the “tag” when saying it out-loud), which is a little town filled with white-washed stucco and slate cottages poking up like stray sugar cubes in a green, weathered wilderness that falls off into the sea, giant ragged grey cliffs yawning and slashing at the frothy white waves that break against them.

On the hike between Tintagel and Boscastle

Beautiful. Awe-inspiring, grey solemn place, where the colors are very much subdued— expect for the yellow scrub-brush flowers that grace the hillside, and the clear, turquoise water near the cliffs (as the water gets further out into the Irish sea, it greys).

The group of us (49) split into two separate bands— one hiking from Tintagel to Boscastle and one from Bostcastle to Tintagel. I was in the former.

So, we made our way to Bostcastle. The hike was about 5 miles and took us 2 and a half hours, but that was with a lot of picture taking and slow-going because the views were all soo beautiful.

I loved it. I discovered that I am obsessed with rocks with holes in them. I just find them so aesthetically pleasing. I'm obsessed. The hike was wonderful, refreshing, and every time you came up and over a hill, the whole landscape was completely changed and a whole new picture-taking opportunity!

When we finally reached our destination, though, we were thoroughly worn out- we started at 3 pm and didn't get to Boscastle until 5:30.

Boscastle!

Boscastle is adorable. You know those figurines of villages and people that come out at Christmas? People collect them and they're so cute and some light up or move around and stuff and they create little villages with them, etc? Well, Boscastle looks just like that, except it's for real.

It is hidden in a little inlet that comes from the sea, piercing the cliff-faces and creating a crevice. The little town sits at the bottom of this, and as you approach, you see only a sea-break wall, then the path turns a corner, and the pictures que cottages come into view.

Emily (bottom) and Me (top right) in the Irish sea at low tide!

Later, after a delicious homemade meal Peter cooked for us all (a pasta dish with garlic bread, fresh green beans and grapes), my friend Emily and I went out to the harbor, in the dark, at low tide, and waded in the Irish Sea! It was really fun but rather scary because we were barefoot with no light. It was cold but not freezing— I think much warmer than the pacific ocean.

Southwestern Tour; Part 1- Bath

Emily, Nicole, Me, and Lynne (in order left to right) in front of Bath Cathedral.

This is our first stop on our southwestern trip. We got our good old bus-driver back , Tony! And a nicer, more luxurious bus— way more leg room! We drove about 3 hours on Monday, October 10^th, and got to Bath at 11am, dropped our stuff (which, I am proud to say, I was able to consolidate everything into one backpack!) and hiked downhill from our youth hostel to the Holbourne museum. There is a great little exhibition there by Thomas Gainsburough, a famous English portrait and landscape artist. The show was lovely and I really enjoyed it. I feel

like I learned a lot from just looking at his compositions and brush strokes, etc. I think I want to use him as inspiration from some later paintings/art.

Bath is where Jane Austen lived for a time, and right outside the Holbourne museum is the house where she lived, #4 Sydney Place. We actually had plans to see another of her homes later in the week (a house she spent the majority of her life and her writing career in).

Lynne and me at the Roman baths

The whole city is built out of yellow sandstone, so it's quite pretty, seeing as all the buildings match, in a way. Some are dirty though, the stone blackened with soot and pollution; those are sorta gross to look at. But, overall, the whole is very pretty. It's fairly hilly here— the town is nestled in a sort of valley and sprawls onto the hills around it too. It reminds me of ski towns in the summer, a little bit, oho it looks. Except no pine trees or ski runs making slashing crisscrosses over the hillsides— just yellow stone houses, Romanesque colonnades and pillars bedecking their porches which peep out from the trees.

Roman Baths— we took a tour thru the Roman baths located in Bath. The city used to be a Roman outpost way back when, like 400 AD or something. It fell into disrepair and was buried though, over time. Then it was rediscovered in 1727 and unearthed. It was a really neat place— it has a hot spring that bubbles up from the beneath the earth- the only one in all of England. Interesting, that, because we have so many in the western US. It was also kinda funny because, when the people in the 1720s unearthed the place, they commissioned sculptors and artists to specifically redo a lot of the place, like put in fake Romanesque statues and carvings around some of the baths that were really worn down, though there are still some original carvings from the Romans.

The Fashion Museum— after the tour in the baths (and no, we didn't get to go in the baths; they even told us not to touch the water :P ), we went up (hill) to the Bath Fashion Museum. It's a museum entirely dedicated to fashion. And when I say fashion, I mean clothes— dating from the 1600s all the way to the latest scraps of cloth they call “clothing” that came off the runway this spring, in the 2011 Spring European fashion shows.

Me participating in the interactive exhibit :D

It was really fun— they had a wedding dress exhibit and an interactive exhibit (which was everyone's favorite) where we got to try on corsets and hoopskirts. We all bonded over that one— huffing and puffing to get the corsets round our ribcages.

After dawdling in that room for about half an hour, we finally dragged ourselves from the strangely attractive (strange because, really, if you think about it, we were starving our lungs of oxygen on purpose!) act of corseting ourselves and went to go explore the remainder of the museum. This being our second museum, with an audio-toured ruin exploration of two hours in between that, I feel justified in saying that at this point my attention and faculties were beginning to tire and wander.

We wondered 9physically :D ) upstairs to the Assembly rooms— rooms in Bath which feature in several Jane Austen books I believe— and sat for a little bit before we went to go meet up with John and Peter at the Royal Crescent.

The Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent is a little col-de-sac type deal— except way cooler. The houses, tall and skinny, are all connected in the front facade so that it appears to be one big house in a half-moon curve. The only thing separating the houses are the picturesque pillars that flank the front doors.

This place is home to some celebrities, including Nicolas Cage, who ons one of the flats/houses. It also featured in the BBC movie, Persuasion, at the end of the movie as the main girl character, Anne Elliot, runs towards her love to try and get him back.

Well, we had a meeting there and talked for all of 5 minutes because the wind really picked up and we were out in the open and in the cold. So, we split up and went our separate ways— some off to dinner, others to the giant Sainsbury grocery store to get food for lunch the next day (I was w/ the latter group). After our trip to Sainsbury's, we made our way back into the city's heart, guided only by a print-out map. We were looking for a shop that supposedly sold really delicious buns0 but after a half hour of getting lost, backtracking and finally finding a nice man who gave us directions,w e got to the palce and discovered they had run out of buns hours before. Luckily, we had a back-up plan. The guy who gave us directions had also told us abut an Indian food place, family-owned, near-by. So, we went there— the food was great, probably the best Indian I've had yet— and they even gave us warm damp towels (real hand towels!) to wipe our hands on after we finished eating. Pricy, but really nice and delicious. Jamuna's, I think it was called.

By the time we finished, it was dark, so we made our way back to the Youth Hostel and that is the end of my stay in Bath. We really lived it up— we did a lot, maybe too much. Our professors always plan more for us to do than we have time for, but hey, I guess I can sleep when I'm dead, right?

Cambridge!

Cambridge University. It is a giant university comprised of a bunch of smaller colleges (like Queen's, Kings, Cais, Christ's- you name any saint or religious figure and it is probably also the name of a college at Cambridge). The University sprawls through the city of Cambridge and serpentines across the river Cam. In fact, the whole area was named because there was a bridge that ran across the river Cam. Thus, Cambridge. So, the correct way to say the name is Cam-bridge instead of Came-bridge (as I say it :D).

Well, in Cambridge we had a few things planned. We first went punting on the river Cam. Punting in the river is a great way to see a lot of the colleges architecture and their grounds because there are about a dozen of them that back up to and even span both sides of the river. Each college even has their own bridge on the river. We took a day trip out to Cambridge about three weeks ago (yeah, I know, this post has been a long time in coming). It is only an hour and a half to two hour drive away from London, so the trip wasn't that long- of course, I've discovered that you can get pretty much anywhere in England in the space of a 2-3 hours drive, and the max drive time from the Land's End (the southernmost tip of the UK) to the tipy top of Scotland in the north is probably only about 9 hours or so. I think I'll really have to get used to driving long distances again when I get back to the states- everything is so close together here.

Punting, if you didn't know, is where you have a long metal stick or rod that you use to push your boat along a river that is really shallow- shallow enough for a 10-15 foot rod to reach the bottom with about 6 feet to spare. There is one person in the back of the boat who stands and pushes the boat along the river, while the rest of the people sit back, relax and enjoy the view.

My view, as we went along, was fantastic, by the way. Our punter, David, was gorgeous. In fact, I believe he was named after a popular statue- the two share quite a resemblance. When our group got to the docks where the punting was, we all filed into three big raft-boats, without knowing who would be our punter yet. Lucky day, David just so happened to be our boat's punter. As I looked at my punter (hotty!) and then scanned the other two boats (one was a girl and one was a boy) I knew that we had scored! Big time- by far. The girls in the boat with the girl punter were laughing, giggling, and jealously stealing glances at our punter, and, as we all punted down the river, I think they tried talking to David more that even the girls in my own boat did.

The poor guy, he must get hit on a ton. By the end of the trip we knew that he had a girlfriend he'd dated for a year and a half, and that he had punted for 6 summers and one winter, which he hated, but that he loved his job and he recommended Cafe Rogue for dinner. It was the best part of the day, to say the least.

After punting with David, we went over to the local museum, took a quick peak at all the lovely paintings and artifacts there (about an hour and a half) and then another girl, Sara, and I, went searching for Cambridge hoodies and dinner. I know, way touristy, but I'm excited to be able to wear my Cambridge University hoodie when I get back to BYU. Yeah, it's all about how it looks. In fact, just this last week, I was asked if I went to Cambridge, but I had to say I didn't. I should have played it off (there are a lot of foreigners who go there) but I wasn't smooth enough or quick thinking enough to do that.

At the end of the day, I was quite satisfied with everything that we did. It was one of our more chill and relaxed trips; we didn't have to rush from place to place, and there was no big hurry because we only really had the punting and the museum planned, and then the rest of the day was ours to walk around and hang out. It was really fun and very much a little college town. It was neat because school was in session, so it was fun to be around other college age students like myself, but just from another school.