A Day in The City

Thank God for Portia (our GPS).  Yesterday she faithfully steered us from the quiet calm of Bronte's Hathersage thru Sheffield's maze of city streets to our little motel on the far edge of town.  With heavy traffic, bewildering road rules, non-existent street signs, and the infamous roundabouts, it was a bit of a trial.
Mom can't understand how she & Gary managed driving in England 26 years ago without a Portia!

We booked into a Travelodge Motel on the recommendation of some local friends.  They offer great early booking deals of £19 and up per room which is a fantastic deal. We were a little unsure of what quality the room would be but we're thrilled with what we got.  It doesn't have the character of a farmhouse but its perfectly impersonal.

We drove northeast this morning to the City of York.  It's the only big city on our trip, and one we've both been to before but it's been 30 years for me so of course I don't remember a thing!

Portia brought us right to our hotel, another Travelodge, which luckily is inside the city walls, just a stone's throw from the river.  We weren't allowed to check in till 3pm so we locked up everything in the car's boot and headed off sightseeing.

The Shambles

York is a tourist's delight: lots of medieval buildings, pedestrian streets, and tourist shops.  Yet it still feels like a locals' town, with neighborhood pubs, street markets and nice clothing stores.  And everything is on sale, so calling all shoppers!!  We wandered around for a bit, slowly making our way up to the cathedral.

York Minster

York Minster is England's largest medieval church, circa 1220, and has the most magnificent collection of period stained glass windows.  This has been a religious sight since at least 627, and there's even ruins of both Norman and Roman structures beneath the church. We're often overwhelmed by all the history that we're experiencing...

This was just a side aisle

This medieval couple was either really pious or true busybodies who wanted to spend their eternity checking everybody out!

We had to scurry through the church as there was a special BBC televised service (St. Somebody's Day) in the afternoon and we didn't want to get locked in to sitting through it.  After touring both the Minister and the museum-like crypt we felt that all our sightseeing needs were met so we opted to wander the town.  However, upon exiting the church to an overcast sky and a chilly wind we headed over to Betty's Tea Room, a York institution since 1919, for a warming cup of tea.  Once the rain started falling we scurried directly back to our hotel for lunch and a good read until the sun shone again.

By 4:30 we were touristing again, wandering about, snapping pics, watching other tourists so busy looking into their cameras they were playing bumper cars with the locals.  Business people returning home from work, teenagers in their mini-skirts and cell phones, oblivious to the cold breeze, half-timbered buildings and overflowing  flower baskets.  We liked York.

Oldest medieval hall in England

Bronte's Day

Yesterday was all about visiting Pride & Prejudice sites, today was Bronte's day.

We started off with a little tour of Eyam, a town ravaged by the plague in 1666, half of the inhabitants died.  Not that this has anything to do with literature, but the town was unique in that they self-imposed a quarantine on the town and no one was allowed to leave or enter the village as long as the disease raged.  Nowadays there are nice little plaques on all the historical buildings, and a really old Saxon cross in the churchyard.

8th century Saxon cross

Then it was time for some scenic driving up to the north of the Park: up,  around, and over Mam Tor for fantastic views, and we were surprised by paragliders taking off right beside us and soaring overhead like giant condors riding the thermals.

Next we drove thru the amazing Winnats Pass to Castleton for a Cream Tea lunch.  The idea was to hike up to the ruin of Peveril Castle afterwards but the scones weighed heavy in our bellies so we drove on to Hathersage - Bronte territory.

I found on the National Park's website a Jane Eyre/Hathersage walk that seemed to give us a good taste of the scenery and a good workout too, 8km in about 3+ hours.  Goodness knows we needed some exercise after all our feasting on the cruise!

We started right from town at The George Inn where reportedly Charlotte Bronte had frequented, and walked along a public footpath out into the fields, right alongside a grand estate's backyard!  In England the walking paths are sacred rights-of-way and cut across farms and private property, as long as you're respectful of their holdings, they have to let you pass.

Anyway, this first megalith with a forest of chimneys is reputed to be Vale Hall, owned by the Oliver's, the wealthy family of the little village where Jane finds work as a teacher after running away from Mr. Rochester.   We then walked a short way up a private driveway to pass by Rochester's Thornfield (actually North Lees Hall), a small crenellated manse, not quite as imposing as we had imagined from the book's descriptions.  But how cool was this?  Obviously Charlotte came this way for a visit at some time and here, all within a mile or two, was the infrastructure of her novel!  Coincidentally I had just finished reading "Jane Eyre" on my Camino, not realizing I'd soon be walking in her footsteps!

"Thornfield"

Then we hiked up and up thru heavy woodland till we popped out at the base of Stanage Edge, a magnificently cruel cut in the earth, where the world just falls away ....60' to the valley below. 

Here Bronte meets Austen, for another favorite P&P movie scene is where Kiera Knightley stands on the edge, looking so glamorously into infinity, I could have sworn it was done on a movie set, but look....

We tried to replicate it but Hair & Makeup failed to show....

We walked a kilometer along the Edge, me with a tight hold on Sheila as she has a height-thing, heads bent into the blustery wind that buffeted us about.  The sky was blanketed with billowing grey clouds and the occasional spotlight of sunbeams breaking through. So Bronte-esque. 

To our left a flat field of low scrubby windswept heather extended as far as the eye could see.  Bronte envisioned Jane struggling through this moor for 2 days & a night when she ran away from Thorncliff, and a more brutal environ could not be imagined.  The only relief to all the relentless brown were the small tufts of cream sheep's wool attached to the odd bush from the poor animals' huddling against the cold.

Eventually the trail sloped down again from the Edge (I actually asked a rock climber about how to get down but his offer was a bit too quick).  Down thru a fern forest,

past Moorseats (Moor House, where Jane lived with St. John and his sisters), with the current owner's Mercedes and Land Rovers in the drive and helicopter landing pad in the lower field, and thru steep woods to finally end our hike in Hathersage's churchyard.  Charlotte Bronte's imagination brought the world the story of Jane Eyre, and Hathersage and the Peak District brought her story alive for us.

Saw this in the church graveyard...

is another literary walk in order?

A Stately Day

Strong clear sunshine greeted us this morning, a great start for our first full day in England.  I had to plan each  day's activities for this part of our vacation as it was necessary to pre-book our accommodation (high season), so today's itinerary involves touring the stately homes of Chatsworth and Haddon Hall, both a stone's throw from our base in Baslow in the Peak District. 

Chatsworth House is the home of the Duke & Duchess of Devonshire; one of the most visited estates in England; and, most importantly, the movie home of Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice"!  We wanted to walk a bit so we parked in Baslow's main lot and walked the 2kms through the estate's parklands to the main house and gardens.

One of the memorable scenes in the movie is when Lizzie approaches Pemberley and past the elegant fountain, at the far end of a long reflecting pool, she sees the magnificent mansion.  She then realizes that just perhaps she was a bit of a step-down for Mr. Darcy.  I so wanted to take a picture of that same view so I rushed Sheila thru the garden only to find I was foiled in my photographic efforts by restoration scaffolding completely enclosing the whole front facade!  Drat, how could they?!  So I took a picture of a postcard instead...

Other scenes in the movie shot here include Lizzie's entrance into the grand staircase hall and her viewing the sculpture gallery but another house stood in for most of Pemberley's 'interior'.  So we had to settle for learning about the kings, queens, lords and important 'real' people who stayed here.

We ended up racing thru the rooms as we only put 3hrs on the parking meter but we had enough time to stop and gawk at the priceless silver service and Van Dyke paintings in the dining room.  It looked like a museum display but the family actually used the room for a celebration dinner just a few weeks ago!  Cozy, eh?

We rescued the car with 10 mins to spare and then Portia took us on a little hunt for ice to refresh our mini-bar, so we had a breather before hitting our 2nd stately home of the day: Haddon Hall.  HH is rather unique in that it's a medieval home that's almost perfectly preserved so we see it pretty much as it was 600 years ago.  It's been in the same family since 1567 but they never lived there until the 1920's, the family preferring their other much grander estate, so it never went through the many renovations that successive generations seem to do to a house.  We loved it. 

Used as the Lambton Inn in P&P

Jolly Ole England

Sunday -

We had to jolly old England along this morning, long before we ever set down in Great Britain.  Our transfer to Frankfurt airport left the ship at 7am (naturally I didn't get any sleep past 3:30am), so we had an early start packing Sheila, finding ourselves cups of life-sustaining tea & coffee, and winding up our accounts.  Then, at the crack of 6:50am (never late in Germany!) we jumped into our van for the hour ride to the airport with another couple flying back to Delaware, and Dorothy, a pint-sized, fragile little 85-year old Brit, who was the charmer of the cruise.  Dorothy was a little unsteady on her feet, so we jollied her along, and took charge of her checking in/checking baggage, getting to the gate, etc. while she teetered along beside us, clutching to one of our arms or the other.  She was cute going thru Security:  I asked if she had any toothpaste or liquids that needed to be removed from her bag, she said she only had sunscreen but that was at the bottom of her bag and she wasn't going to go digging for it.  Well, Security didn't care about the suntan lotion, it was the litre of wine at the top of her purse they had issue with!!!  We left her chatting up a storm as she passed thru UK immigration control, while we impatiently waited in the non-resident line to be stamped in.

Then it was pretty easy sailing.  Manchester airport is quite small and so easy to navigate.  We picked up the rental car without problem except that it's huge!  I reserved a compact car with automatic shifting, and got one a good 3' longer and wider than the manuals!  I hope my lefty-driving skills can deal with this behemoth.  Portia (our GPS) was a bit stubborn reporting for duty so I had a slight panic attack that mom might have to navigate :-)  luv you mom!  But crisis was averted and the 3 of us headed off for the Peak District.

The day could not have been more super.  Sun, glorious sun; brilliant blue skies; emerald green fields = heaven.  We stopped a couple of times for some photo ops...

Peak District is manna for bikers

and then sometimes we didn't actually stop...

our southern view, Chatsworth in distance

Bubnell Cliff Farm is a working dairy farm and our B&B for the next 2 nights.  It has just two guest rooms, both with wonderful views over the countryside, but ours has a bathroom you could play football in!

 

We organized our bar, and then settled in for the evening with a nice little picnic dinner in our room watching the cows come home...