Making up for lost time

It has been a long time since my last update (10 days or so?), so obviously we've done a lot since i last reported.

We're now back in London for a couple of days before heading off to Paris on Tuesday.

What have we done in the interim?

Well, we left Scotland the day after my most recent post, and we checked out a coastal castle called Bamburgh which was in the borderlands between England and Scotland and was there pretty much to stop the Scots revolting. It was fairly large and had obviously seen some use over the years, but its best feature was its views out to the sea, which was being whipped up into a glorious menace by high winds.

The day following that we drove across to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne which is cut off from the mainlands by the tides about half the day. Dad misread the tide tables before going off for a walk to see the castle there, and we barely got off the island literally five minutes before the tide was due to cut off the island from the mainland, which would have been fun.

We next went to the town of Alnwick which had two main attractions for us. The first was a fairly large and modern garden that Mum was keen to see. It was alright, but it seemed a bit soulless compared to some of the wonderful gardens we have already seen.

The second attraction was Barter Books, one of the largest second hand bookshops in the world. I really liked the place, but actually only found two books i wanted to buy there. One thing i did like was that they had a large model railway set constructed to run across the top of the shelves throughout the whole store, which gave it a very nice feeling.

Actually managed to catch an episode of the new series of Dr Who that night - part 1 of a 2 parter written by Steven Moffat of 'Blink' fame. Very good so far, and the 2nd part is on tonight.

Our next big event was a day or so later - Castle Howard. This was where the BBC series of Brideshead Revisited, which launched Jeremy Irons to international fame, was filmed. It is a sumptuous mansion with a painted dome that made me think of the Sistine Chapel, and huge grounds to match - but little did we know that Castle Howard would look modest compared to a later house we would visit... (cheap suspense building)

The next day was York, where our main objective was to see Yorkminster Cathedral, which is the largest medieval church in Britain. It was very impressive, and we had a tour guide who made the place seem a lot more interesting then most of the other cathedrals we had visited (i feel like such a pleb for looking down my nose at other cathedrals, but there you go). I also had the good fortune to find a particular book that i had been searching for the entire holiday, so i was very happy with York.

Unfortunately our accomodation that night wasn't very good, so while the day had started well with York i don't think anyone was in the best mood to finish the day.

The next morning at breakfast we met a guy who had stayed there overnight and who was in the middle of trudging from London to Glasgow in order to raise money for charity. Given the weather was one step down from torrential we all felt sorry for him and gave him a bit of money - whether to go towards his charity or help him get accomodation in the future we weren't too fussed.

Cambridge was next - we visited the Kings College hall there, which was about as spectacular as a cathedral and had a famous Rubens painting as its centrepiece. We also visited the Fitzwilliam Museum there which i found a bit boring since a large portion of it was taken up with pottery and other similar art rather than paintings, which was the section i enjoyed. Overall i didn't really get much out of Cambridge.

June 5 was Dad's birthday, and to celebrate we visited Coventry Cathedral, which was something he had dearly wanted to do, and which Mum had been less keen on doing.

The story of Coventry Cathedral is fascinating. It was a fairly regular cathedral (i am such a cathedral snob) until the Second World War. Coventry was an industrial centre, and therefore vital to the British war effort. For this reason Coventry was bombed heavily, and the cathedral was one of the many casualties.

After the war there was a determination to rebuild the cathedral as a symbol of England's recovery. An international competition was held to design the cathedral. Basil Spence, who had served in the war, won with a radical design. He proposed that the ruins of the cathedral be left as a monument, and that a new cathedral be built next to the ruins. His design was modern, controversial and wonderfully symbolic of peace, forgiveness and rebirth. One element of the story which my father loves is regarding the statue which dominates the approach to the cathedral - St Michael's Victory Over The Devil, by Jacob Epstein. The gist of the story is that Spence commissioned Epstein's work because he believed him to be the best talent for the job, but that many conservative church officials complained because the artist was Jewish. The statue went ahead.

The interior of the cathedral is wonderful as well - the entrance contains the most wonderful stain glass window i have ever seen. If i were religious i would say that it made me feel like i was in the presence of God - it was such a superb and ascendant piece of art. In addition, the cathedral reflects its strong working class and industrial links, which makes it uniquely modern amongst all the cathedrals we have visited.

After lunch we visited Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Unfortunately we didn't really get too much out of our visit. I have the feeling that because it is such an incredible tourist bait that there hasn't been a proper effort to unify the place and make it engage more with Shakespeare's actual works. So, that was quite disappointing.

The next day was fairly relaxed. We visited a village called Winchcombe where there is a famous pottery shop that my grandfather used to visit every time he was in the UK. Obviously my parents shared that affection, as they spent a long time in the shop and bought a few pieces to have shipped back to Australia. Also in Winchcombe we had lunch at a delightful tea room run by a Japanese family. They obviously have a very good and widespread reputation, as a coach-load of Japanese tourists came in just as we were finishing.

In the afternoon we drove to the village of Bladen which is very near to Oxford, where we were staying. Bladen has a very small church which has a tiny graveyard. In the graveyard is buried, with almost no pomp or circumstance, Winston Churchill. It's lovely that Churchill, who is generally regarded as the greatest Briton of the 20th Century, could be buried so humbly (at his own wishes). You can just imagine the kind of gaudy tribute the Americans would have done for him.

The reason that he is buried in Bladen is that it is where his ancestral home and birthplace, Blenheim Palace, is located. Blenheim Palace puts Castle Howard to shame - it is astonishingly huge even for the upper classes, and the grounds stretch on to ridiculous extent. On the day we visited they were setting up for a triathlon, and the entire triathlon was to be held within the grounds - including swimming through the lake.

We stayed the night at Oxford, and similarly to Cambridge i didn't get a huge amount out of it. We did manage to time it so that our visit coincided with graduations, so the streets were overrun with drunken graduates.