isabel-does-blogging

[isabel-does-blogging]

The end

Eventually the Last Day of any trip must come, and here it is.

Having realized that I’d used every piece of clothing I brought with me except my swimsuit, I set out to remedy that with a highly abbreviated dip in the Solent before packing up and leaving Portsmouth.

On the way to the train station, found the last in a set of several fish and chip shops named after my cat.

On Portsmouth Hard the tide was out, leaving this sailboat standing on its multiple keels (?, or are they there so it stands at low tide?).

I got the train to Chichester, where I met my friend Jeanmarie (who I met in the Antarctic) for a lovely afternoon of getting shown around her town. We took a nice rambling walk on the city walls and had fun peeping into people’s back gardens from above.

There were also some very nice gardens around the cathedral and the bishop’s palace.

And there’s the cathedral itself! We had a good look from the outside.

We also stopped in at the local history museum, which had quite a bit of Roman stuff, including fragments of this mosaic floor.

We went back to her house to enjoy the late afternoon, meet the cats, and have dinner. Here’s Percy, who’s not too sure about visitors.

Eventually I had to get back to London to be able to fly out today, so I got the train back up after dinner. Arriving at Kings Cross in the gloaming gave a nice view of its clock tower.

I had a little time this morning before heading to the airport, so I took a last walk along Regent’s Canal. On a Sunday morning it’s peaceful and a little lonely, unlike when I walked here at lunch on a weekday.

And that’s it! At the airport waiting to board. What a fantastic trip it was.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Portsmouth, part 3

Having had my fill of museums, I headed out to meet up with a walking tour of old Portsmouth. We learned (amidst the ghost stories) some interesting stuff about how the town and seaport have developed between the original Roman port and today. Here’s one of the many historic pubs in this sailor town.

Here’s the Isle of Wight ferry again! It’s been fun watching the ferries come and go—reminds me of Seattle, though there’s a greater density of ferries here than any specific location in Puget Sound.

Since I seemingly can’t go places without finding Malvinas/Falklands memorials, here’s the one in Portsmouth.

Did some wandering of my own after the tour, checking out the fishing boats in the inner harbor and the pub for dinner. Here’s a fun mural of the rollicking Portsmouth life in the early 1800s.

Walking home, I ran across a plaque in the sidewalk about the Nelson trail, so naturally I doubled back and walked that, with the aid of a brochure I found online. That was mostly pointing out buildings that remained from 1805, or locations of ones that didn’t (Portsmouth got pretty well bombed during WWII), and it was fun to wander a bit in a more guided way. This isn’t Nelson related, but I just thought this front door and garden were very cute.

A church sans roof since WWII.

Strolling home along the beach back to Southsea, and watching the ferries come and go, twinkling in the dusk. A lovely end to a lovely day!

[isabel-does-blogging]

Portsmouth, part 2

Along with the historic ships, the dockyard ticket lets you take a harbor tour, which of course I couldn’t miss.

Portsmouth is still an active naval shipyard, and it’s wild to see the size of modern ships compared to what people were going to sea in 200 years ago.

Also impressed watching the Isle of Wight car ferry turn on a dime to fit into its dock in Portsmouth inner harbor.

Back at the dockyard checked out a couple museum exhibits. Here’s a very large painting of Trafalgar.

And here’s a piece of the mast of the Victory, complete with cannonball hole through it!

An extensive and almost hagiographic exhibit about Nelson, naturally. They have a pretty big collection of his portraits, belongings, and other ephemera.

Including some of the vast amounts of mass produced Nelson merchandise, which was progressively funnier the more you saw of it. And there was so much of it to see!

Saw this colored version of this very funny cartoon about the battle of the Nile. I looked for it in postcard form but thats too niche for the gift shop…

There were some other exhibits about the navy more in general, by which time I was losing focus a little. I did enjoy this cute doll a sailor knit of himself.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Portsmouth, part one of several

Making up for my scanty post yesterday by taking SO MANY photos today.

Walked from my guesthouse in Southsea along the seafront to the Portsmouth Historic dockyard in some anomalously sunny and absolutely still weather. First Nelson of the day is this statue marking the approximate place he left England for the last time.

Looking across to the dockyard, and here’s one of the historic ships! She’s the Warrior, built in the 1860s. One of the earliest metal clad ships, and she has a steam engine but also is fully rigged for sailing. An interesting relic from an age of transition, and she’s in very good condition.

Looking back across Portsmouth to this modern statement piece, the spinnaker tower.

On board the Warrior having a great time poking around in all its corners. I’m pretty sure these metal swoops are for repositioning the gun, but they also make a nice pattern.

Peeking into everyone’s cabins below.

And then onto the Victory, the main attraction. Being entirely wooden and 250 years old, she needs a lot of upkeep, so unfortunately she’s mostly encased in a big tent for conservation at the moment. They do let you have a peek inside to see what work is being done, though. Currently they’re peeling her to replace rotten outer planking and frames.

At least they left the stern out to get this shot.

Inside looking at the kitchen. Adding this to my collection of photos of pieces of ships biscuit I’ve found in a surprising number of museums this trip…

Down in the dim, claustrophobic lower decks. Most clearance was only about 5’ so people had to do a lot of ducking!

Since she’s in dry dock, they let you walk around underneath and check out the keel and rudder.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Exit London, resume boats

Last day in London, and I went to the Imperial War Museum (specifically on the very strong recommendation of my British history prof from undergrad). It was mainly focused on the two world wars, and of course mainly from the British perspective, but there were bits of other things too. An interesting experience, though it doesn’t lend itself well to snappy blog commentary (and it was so dark inside that my photos didn’t come out well either).

I took the bus there and back, and got to sit at the very front of the top deck, so I got a great view of crossing Tower Bridge.

After that it was time to head southwest to Portsmouth! I’m staying at a very cute guesthouse that’s home to this beautiful but aloof cat.

Took a stroll along the Southsea beach in the beautiful evening weather (chilly, but nowhere as cold as it was in Whitby!).

As dusk came on, it was cool seeing the ferries to the Isle of Wight and mainland Europe come and go with their twinkling lights.

I walked home through the rose garden.

And the Japanese garden, commemorating a sister city relationship.

And saw some swans! Holy moly, these things are big when you get close to them!

[isabel-does-blogging]

THE POLAR MUSEUM

Is, of course, the reason I went to Cambridge. It is a cozy little museum run by the Scott Polar Research Institute with lots of interesting information about polar history and culture.

Here’s some cool Greenlandic beadwork!

There was a cool little exhibit about works from the SPRI artist in residence program.

Some interesting Franklin Expedition artifacts, to complement what’s at the maritime museum.

Most of the museum’s collection is from the heroic (Edwardian) age, including everyone’s favorite explorer, Shackleton.

There was, of course, lots of stuff from the Scott expedition, including many of the things people brought back from the deceased polar party. Here’s a sewing kit of Scott’s, though I think from a previous expedition.

The entrance to the museum is beautifully done: on the floor there’s a mosaic of the southern cross and the Big Dipper.

And on the ceiling are two beautiful murals of the poles, with past expeditions drawn in.

Outside in the courtyard is this replica of the James Caird (of Shackleton’s boat journey fame) that is a modern build. It got used to actually replicate Shackleton’s journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia!

[isabel-does-blogging]

To Cambridge!

For highly specific nerd reasons that will be detailed in a subsequent post, I took a day trip to Cambridge.

Leaving London in the morning and seeing—somehow—my first rain of the trip!

I went on a walking tour in Cambridge, which was a nice way to get my bearings, see some sights and hear some stories, and get some recommendations for which pubs I should check out. This is the Cavendish Laboratory, where some of the discoverers of DNA worked.

This is a wildly expensive semi-accurate clock and/or statement art piece, called the chronophage.

Cambridge dwellers seem to mostly get around by bike (it’s not too big a town, and it’s flat as a pancake), so of course every business and building has a sign about how you’re not supposed to leave bicycles against it.

The traditional Cambridge activity is punting on the Cam, which I alas ran out of time to try. But based on the absolute chaos right past the bot rental I don’t think it’s as easy as it looks.

Here’s the incredibly fancy front gate in front of King’s College. All the colleges are to some degree tourist attractions, but also still normal colleges with student residents. The students seem to still wear the fancy gowns for evening activities, and seeing them walk around on the quad really adds to the ambiance.

The chapel at King’s College ordinarily needs a ticket to go in, but the loophole is that during evensong you can attend the service for free. So I queued up at 5 to go in, and got to listen to their very accomplished choir and see what an Anglican service is like, all while also getting to appreciate the elaborate perpendicular gothic architecture.

After that went wandering about town in the evening light. Lots of churches, since the town has several and each of the colleges has one, but this is the only one that I saw that’s round.

The Norman castle is no longer around, but the mound it was build on persists, and offers a (somewhat abbreviated by the undergrowth) view across town.

I went to a nice old pub for dinner and a cask ale. The back bar of this particular place was a popular drinking spot for RAF pilots, who wrote the names of their planes all over the ceiling.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Isabel’s day of vehicles, the underground part

Next up: the London Transport Museum, which of course heavily featured the history of the underground.

Two floors worth of the development of mass train transit, from the horse drawn omnibus to the present tube system, and then a lower floor all about buses.

They had a very fun special exhibit all about the art and posters that transport for London has commissioned about the tube and other services.

There were a bunch of fun tube map reimagining, including this one made of LEGO. Sorry about the glare…

After the museum closed I did some wandering around Westminster on the way home. I came across this, the last sewer-gas-powered streetlamp in the city. Huh!

I decided to get silly and take the river ferry home instead of the tube, so I could keep enjoying the beautiful evening and the scenery.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Isabel’s day of vehicles, the wet part

On my first day of solo travel… the order of business was nerd stuff only.

Meda didn’t need to leave immediately in the morning, so we went out for a nice walk and coffee expedition down around Saint Katharine’s docks, yet another former working seafront which is now bougie redevelopments.

Then we parted ways on the tube and I headed on to London Canal Museum, up by regent’s canal. This was a charming little museum that had a lot of interesting history on the canal system and its users in Britain. They had part of an old style cargo barge, including living quarters, which then had examples of these really nice painted decorative objects in this particular canal style.

Outside the museum in the boat basin there were a bunch of examples of still-lived-on narrowboats!

On the recommendation of the nice old lady at the museum I walked the canal path a bit to go check out coal drops yard, which used to be a rail to barge coal cargo transfer spot. Now it’s got a big plaza with a fountain, and lots of Londoners out enjoying the sun on their lunch breaks.

One of the very exciting inhabitants of the area is this bookstore barge! There’s space to look where it’s moored and you can go inside and check out more books inside!

And some more canal boats moored in the area, this one with eyes.

And here’s a lock, exactly canalboat sized.

This is an industrial remnant from the process of making gas (for lighting) from coal, though I don’t know how it worked. Time to consult Wikipedia!

[isabel-does-blogging]

Minstering

We had a nice morning in York before getting the train back to London!

From the hostel we walked back and forth on this nice riverside trail, enjoying the greenery and the birds.

Our morning activity (waiting till museums open at 10—so late!) was a bakery tour of old town York. We walked on the walls a bit, saw some old buildings including a castle tower, and ate some fun little treats!

We ended up walking past the minster again, in time to hear it go bing bong on the hour.

Our next activity was the railway museum! It’s free and it’s full of trains! It’s really fun to walk around all the cars and see them close up, and to learn about some fancy locomotives. They also have an interesting back room with more of their smaller collections on display.

Couldn’t resist matching the pose on these guys who are memorializing the opening of the Stockton-Darlington railway.

Then we got on a train of our very own and zoomed back down to London. Meda has to leave tomorrow (boo) but I get to stay on a couple days more (yay!). We decided to make the most of our evening and went to go walk around Hyde and St. James parks and look at birds and flowers.

There are also lots of monuments about. Most are commemorating the world wars, but this gigantic overdone arch is to the Duke of Wellington.

After a break for tandoori dinner we walked over to check out Westminster Abbey, since we’re comparing minsters today I guess. It’s a lot smaller than York minster and feels less monumental, since it’s surrounded by other famous buildings. But I think more of the appeal of Westminster Abbey is the memorials on the inside…

We ended the evening at this nice pub just by our hostel. We had some cask ales and had a great time reading the Wikipedia page about Westminster abbey and coming up with some trip stats. For walking, we’re at 137 miles over the last 11 days. No wonder my feet hurt!

[isabel-does-blogging]

From ruined abbey to ruined abbey

Another travel day! We started out exploring Whitby Abbey in the morning, on yet another gloomy atmospheric day.

We enjoyed the many angles on the ruins. This building was built between the 1100s and 1400s, on the site of several earlier abbeys dating back to the 600s. The building had its roof pulled off when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, and has been a picturesque ruin ever since.

Very gothic!

The stumps left of some very, very big columns.

The abbey was an inspiration for Bram Stoker, who set part of Dracula in Whitby. This particular window features in a lot of goth art in souvenir shops.

After that we were headed to York, first on a very large bus, which had quite a time passing another large bus on the tiny country road.

After some back and forth, both buses escaped unmarked and we made it safely to sunny Scarbados… oh, wait, the sun wasn’t out so I guess it’s just Scarborough.

From there we got a train to York. After hostel check in, we headed for a walk in the old part of town, passing by yet another ruined abbey! This one was Saint Mary’s Abbey, and it’s just in a city park hidden in the undergrowth.

We had a walk around the shambles and looked at some old medieval half-timbered buildings.

And then we went and had a look at York Minster from the outside on the way home. Someone was playing organ inside which was very atmospheric!

[isabel-does-blogging]

Whitby wanders

We were disgorged from the bus back down by the harbor, and decided to check out the lower town before venturing back up the 199 steps to the abbey and our hostel.

The harbor is very narrow, just the estuary of the River Esk, and is bridged by this cute historic drawbridge.

We walked a ways out onto the north jetty, but the surf was up too high and they’d gated off the outer bit. In the cold wind and gray weather, it’s funny to imagine this as a seaside resort!

We climbed up on the west cliff, the one with all the Victorian tourist infrastructure, and had a look back down to the old town by the harbor.

This whalebone arch is a gift from Whitby’s sister city of Fairbanks, Alaska! It commemorates Whitby’s whaling and seafaring history.

We wound down and around on the tiny little side streets to get back to the harbor, then back up the steps to our roost on the east cliff.

We went to a brewery next to the hostel for dinner, and got pizza and cask ales to eat huddled on a bench outside because there was live music inside and it was jam packed. Pizza and beer at the brewery felt like a very American experience, until you look up from your slice to see the abbey ruins looming over you!

[isabel-does-blogging]

A walk on the coastal path

We started out our day in Whitby by walking the coastal path six miles south to the next village of Robin Hood’s Bay, where we could catch a bus back for a nice day trip.

We started out right from the door of the hostel, heading southeast along the coast. Another day of moody dramatic weather to really set the scene for the wild sea and the gothic abbey ruins!

We paralleled the coast the entire way, mostly at the far end of fields, and passed a lot of hedgerows and field gates. We also passed this (defunct?) lighthouse.

Every so often we crossed a little trickling ravine, deep in the bushes. They all had some nice rock works to provide steps up and down. I could imagine this trail would be very muddy in wet weather.

It was low tide, and lots of beaches had these interesting ribs of exposed rock jutting out into the shallows. Apparently these are called scars, which gives name to local seaside towns like Ravenscar and Scarborough.

We ended up in Robin Hood’s Bay by lunchtime, and descended stairs and stairs and stairs down into the little old smuggling town tucked into the ravine.

All the way down by the harbor there were some current and retired lifeboats out front.

We ventured out on the beach to see the low tide and check out the creatures before heading back up the hill to the bus stop.

[isabel-does-blogging]

From the coalfield to the seaside

On our last morning in Durham, we followed a little booklet walking tour of Durham coal and industrial history around the city.

Instead of the main sights, we saw lots of parts of the city that weren’t so famous, like various eras of row houses. These are still ones that the rich coalfield owners would have lived in.

This is out more in the working class neighborhoods, with a former organ factory mixed in with housing.

In the afternoon, we caught the train, first to Newcastle and then a charming little slow local train to Whitby. Luckily it wasn’t as crowded as we had feared, so we had plenty of space to have a little picnic dinner and have some craft circle time.

The last part of the train was going through the unbearably scenic North Yorkshire Moors national park. Pictures through a train window are never good, but we saw so many beautiful views! There are old dry stacked stone walls and pastures dotted with frolicking lambs and old farmsteads and tiny towns tucked into valleys. Amazing!

We finally popped out in Whitby in the gloaming, right down by the narrow serpentine harbor.

From there, we had to go up the hill to the restored abbey outbuilding (!!) where our hostel was. So, up the famous 199 steps from harbor to abbey.

After checking in, it was too beautiful to go right to bed so we went for a cliff top wander. Here’s a more modern church and churchyard built next to the abbey.

And here’s the ruin itself, which we get to check out in depth tomorrow.

And here’s the beautiful sea cliffs along the coast path, with a big dramatic swell coming in! The North Sea sure is big and powerful out there!

[isabel-does-blogging]

A trip into the past!

Unlike the normal past, which is just littered all over the place here in England, today we specifically went to a living folk history museum in Beamish, which specializes in the local history of northeast England.

We took a couple buses to get there, and enjoyed how double decker buses are just the standard on many local routes. From the very front we had a good view of the delightful English countryside rolling by.

Our first stop was a 1913 colliery and pit village, based around an existing coal mine that had been on the spot. They had lots of livestock at the museum, including these tiny little pit ponies. Much to Meda and my chagrin, the coal mine itself was currently closed, so we can’t continue our streak of mine-based vacations.

We got some lunch from a historic fried fish and chip potato shop, complete with period accurate newspaper to wrap it up in. We also got to try these unusual drink flavors.

From there we took a trip to the 1940s farm, where Meda was thrilled to find working examples of Hoosiers like the one we have at home (though, of course, these are called something different here).

The site has a great collection of historic vehicles, many of which are still used! There’s a circular tram line between the different villages that uses two of these beautiful 1910s trolleys.

We went over to the Georgian village, which uses a real old farmhouse that had been on that site. Couldn’t go in the farmhouse as there was roof work above, but enjoyed these gardens, especially with the nice set dressing of the costumed interpreters taking a break on the level above.

Also in the Georgian zone was a waggonway with a model of an early experimental steam engine (named Puffing Billy). These were first used for colliery rail, to move huge and heavy wagons of coal around. Later they started carrying passengers, first as a novelty, then eventually the rail network we know and love today.

We did some more wandering around and riding conveyances, and eventually found this absolutely enormous steam shovel!

A last look down into the valley out of time before we caught the bus back to the present.

And, a last place name that made me laugh out loud.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Out and about in Durham

Boy did we get around town today!

We started by meeting up with Emily for a nice river walk around the U bend the river forms around the castle and cathedral.

We ran across this (modern) chair decorated with many gargoyle faces, so we had to join in.

We stopped by some cool exhibits at the Durham College library, one about local archaeology (with lots of bonus fun conservation facts from Emily!), and one about a Shakespeare First Folio that got stolen from Durham University, and then found again a decade later!

The exhibit was in a library room that also housed a whole lot of other rare books, which was also cool to look at!

After lunch, Emily had to go finish up some last lab business for her conserved objects portfolio, so Meda and i went to check out Durham Cathedral, an enormous and beautiful Norman cathedral.

Most of the cathedral is in the Romanesque (rounded arch) style, predecessor to the more common gothic style of cathedral. This means that the cathedral feels very solid and weighty, and has some absolutely enormous columns holding it up from the inside. The cathedral is also famous for being the final resting point of Saint Cuthbert, after his long posthumous journey around the north.

After that we went on a tour of Durham Castle, now in the possession of the university and used as student housing! We got to see a couple historic parts of the building since we joined a guide, but otherwise it was full of students just hanging around living life, in their Norman castle dorm rooms!

Another piece of Norman Romanesque style is this beautiful rounded arch inside the castle, with several rows of decoration around it.

Our tour ended in the great hall of the castle, which is now a student dining hall!

We had another nice dinner and pleasant evening hangout in Emily’s dorm kitchen, then we made our way back across Durham in the twilight to get to our hotel.

[isabel-does-blogging]

Arrival Durham

We arrived in Durham yesterday evening to a glorious view of the cathedral.

After dropping bags at our b&b, we met up with our friend Emily who is studying here! It’s delightful to see her again and to hear about life in the UK and what she’s up to in her object conservation school program. We got some groceries together and headed up to her place to make dinner and continue catching up. All very enjoyable, but not very photogenic!