Vacation in the UK-9

Several times when we were near the Tower tube station, we saw portions of the original wall built by the Romans. Amazing.

Wednesday we decided to do the London Walk of the Tower of London. So we were back to Tower tube station to meet our guide, Tom. We'd met him before as he was one of the guides on our walk through Westminster Abbey.

Since we did the tour of the Tower with London Walks we didn't actually get inside any of the buildings within the walls until after lunch. But the walk was full of good information about what was inside as we went by the various places.

The moat was filled in and is used for demonstrations of medieval war machines.

Entry to the Tower grounds.

Tom definitely likes to involve his audience and makes a point of asking direct questions. He told us quite a few stories about the Tower (one about the ravens that live within the walls—if the ravens leave, the Tower of London will fall), included a lot of history (the Tower is the site of many executions since the time of William the Conqueror),

(Traitor's Gate)

and ended with Richard III and the deaths of his nephews in the Bloody Tower, another mystery that has never been solved conclusively as to whether he was or wasn’t responsible for their deaths. Probably something else I’ll never write about, but it’s always interesting to speculate. And who knows? One day, I may work the story into one of my books.

Execution site for the men, actually outside the walls of the Tower and across the street near the tube station.

The women's execution site (Anne Boleyn) inside the Tower walls.

We broke up about 12:45 then, and the first building we went through houses the crown jewels. Our guide, Tom, had said that the British in the group would probably tear up when they saw the film of the Elizabeth II’s coronation. Well, I did, too. *smile* The crown jewels are impressive, including the two largest diamonds in the world.

After seeing the crown jewels, we headed for the café inside the walls for lunch. Over lunch we discussed the other buildings in the Tower walls that we wanted to visit.

Then we headed for the White Tower, which is the oldest building within the walls, and the original tower built by William the Conqueror and the living quarters for him and several of his descendants. Today it is a museum of the armoury, with a big display of armour, weapons, even horse armour. We went to the very top of the building. Interesting features included the indoor bathrooms, garderobes, that William installed on the main living level, which is actually about three stories up. He built a set of wooden steps leading up to that level. The idea was that if the Tower was ever under seige, they could burn the stairs, making it almost impossible for anyone to scale the walls to get inside. William I also put in the first fireplaces in England along the walls rather than in the center of the room.

After the White Tower, we went to see the display of torture instruments in the basement of the Bloody Tower where young Edward and Richard were held and evidently killed by their uncle, Richard the III. We visited Edward II’s living quarters on the South wall and finished up with a walk along the top of the outer wall through another couple of towers and ended up on the east wall.

It was 3:00 by the time we finished seeing everything we wanted to see.

(Tower Bridge)

So we descended into the tube station once more and took a fairly long ride with a connection to another long ride to get to Harrod’s, our final touristy thing on our to-do list. When we came up out of the tube station at Knightsbridge, we were about three blocks away from the store. Once inside the store, we toured a couple of perfume and cosmetic salons before finding the food halls. Oh my! Tons of food of everything edible imaginable. And some things not so edible to me. *smile* Some of it was downright tempting . . . but expensive.

We soon made our way downstairs to the gift shop. And what a shop! Goodness, there was everything imaginable. We bought some gifts and souvenirs. Then we went through the Egyptian lobby to find the escalator back up to the ground floor, then tried to find the exit. Well, we found one, but we were all turned around and ended up walking the entire perimeter of the huge building in order to find the underground station again.

When we got to the Old Street tube station, we called Kathy for instructions of the bus stop we were supposed to go to and the bus number and destination that would place us right across the street from her flat. We didn’t realize until later that we were right across the street from John Wesley’s house and a museum that chronicles the rise of Methodism in England. We had a brochure about it, but it was the one thing we just couldn’t squeeze in today. Next time. *smile*

After an early supper with Kathy, we went back to the hotel to get packed and ready to leave the hotel at 5:30 a.m. We had a taxi coming to take us to Heathrow.

The trip fulfilled a lot of my dreams, and much of the time it felt a little surreal—I couldn't quite grasp that I really was seeing the things I'd only heard and read about for so long. I've asked the Lord to allow me at least one trip to Britain for every year Kathy is there. He provided in amazing ways for this year's trip. We'll see what He works out for next year. *smile*

This week, one of my proofreading projects was Stephen Lawhead's latest book, Tuck, the third in his King Raven series, a retelling of the Robin Hood legend. (Excellent series. I've gotten to work on all three books in this series.) These books are set just before 1100, during the time of William II, William the Conqueror's son. This time I noticed several allusions to places we visited, the main one being the White Tower, now known as the Tower of London. Made the whole story come alive in a new way. Definitely another benefit derived from our adventures in Great Britain.

God is good!

Vacation in the UK-8

I'm hoping to finish this tonight. I've had a couple of really busy weeks. Not really done with all the deadlines, and I'm terribly far behind on NaNoWriMo, but I plan to write most of the day tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get caught up on that. So tonight I'm going to try to get through the last two posts on our time in the UK.

Tuesday was a very long day. And by the time I checked my pedometer at the end of the day, we'd walked just over eight miles!

We started early, this time going to Waterloo to catch the train to Windsor. We got there about 10:00 and by the time we found the castle entrance, we were surrounded by school groups. But they had a different gate they went through. After buying our tickets we had to go through a security check. Really the only place we had to do that in all our tours. Other than the airports, of course. We then picked up our audio tours where the man handing them out seemed very glad to hear we wanted English. There was also quite a crowd of Asian people.

After getting through the entrance, the crowds of school kids thinned out. We knew there was a changing of the guard at Windsor that day, so we asked one of the docents when it was and where when we came to a place where we had to decide what to do next. He told us it would be in the area in front of the guardhouse at the bottom of the hill . . . in front of the church. So instead of starting the palace tour, we decided to go into the church for a while before getting a spot for the changing of the guard.

Windsor is not only the Queen's official home, it is also home to the Order of the Garter, the knights. The church, St. George's, is where they go through their commissioning service when they are admitted into the Order. Very interesting. The church is a beautiful building with lots of history, as is the case for the entire castle.

We only saw a little of the church before going outside again. Not knowing how many people would be coming to see the ceremony, we were out there in plenty of time. So again we were up against the barriers. But this time we weren't looking through a tall fence. And when the ceremony began, we were standing right behind the new guard as they came on duty. We could hear the commands much more clearly, and I actually felt that I understood much more of what went on. Of course, the ceremony was much smaller, involving less people. But again, it made it easier to follow what was going on. Still had all the ceremony and pageantry of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

After the ceremony was over, Roger took a picture of me with the new guard. Felt a little strange. *smile* Kind of like standing next to a breathing statue.

When we went back into the church to pick up our tour where we left off, it was packed with all those who had watched the changing of the guard. So we worked our way through most of the people to where we'd left off. However, it was never as peaceful as before. So we walked through the rest of the building rather quickly. Then we headed up to the tower and took the tour there. Since this is the official residence of the Queen, we were only allowed in the "public" parts of the castle. But that was still a lot of ground to cover. It was interesting to see how the work on the portions of the castle that were burned several years ago had maintained the flavor of the original rooms.

Lots of armor and weapons in the rooms we went through. Randy would have loved it. One of the rooms, a long gallery, had coats of arms from every knight who had been in the Order of the Garter placed on the ceiling. Some were blank white, meaning that in some way that person had disgraced his position, with criminal activity or some other way, and therefore had been removed. (Think King Arthur and the Round Table.)

After a late lunch at a teahouse, we walked through several shops, buying some souvenirs and books for research on our way back to the train station. Eton is also at Windsor, but while we looked for it a little, we decided not to pursue it when we didn't find it. We knew we were still up for lots of walking later in the day. We caught the 3:20 train back to London, and I got in a nap.

We were meeting Kathy for dinner before our walk that evening, but she couldn’t meet us until at least 5:45, so we decided to check out the Metropolitan Tabernacle where Spurgeon preached and was pastor for many years. It’s still a Baptist church, but Kathy warned us it wasn’t a very good part of town. Not sure how long it would take us to find it, we went to the tube station (Elephant and Castle—love the name!) near there, and came out of the station right across the street from the church. It definitely wasn’t one of the nicer spots in town, and there were tons of people milling around. We took the subway (pedestrian walkway) under the street to get to the other side. Roger took some pictures and we checked to see if the bookshop was still open. It wasn’t, so we headed back to the station and to the hotel to drop a bunch of stuff we’d bought in Windsor before heading back out to meet Kathy at 6:15 at the Tower Hill tube station.

We found a nearby pub where we could grab a quick supper before meeting our London Walks group back at the tube station at 7:15. Wow! We never expected so many people to be interested in Jack the Ripper! We broke into still large groups. Then we were off on our walk through the east end of London where the murders took place in 1888. We stood at the places where each woman was found and the guide included all the gruesome details. J Not that I ever really want to write about anything connected with Jack the Ripper, but I may write something in that time period, and it’s good to know. As we walked we also received quite a few theories of who might have committed the murders, but to this day no one knows. It was quite a walk, probably covered over two miles.

It was a good end to the day. *smile* One more day in London before heading home.

Vacation in the UK-7

I'm going to try to finish up this saga in the next couple of days. But proofreading job and NaNoWriMo is taking up huge chunks of time right now. *smile* So we'll see.

The Sunday we left Scotland and arrived back in London, we had a late lunch invitation with friends of Kathy's—Sarah and Sam Wilde. So we cleaned up from our travels and headed over to their place. Sarah and Sam are the ones who introduced Kathy to St. Helen's Bishopsgate, and they met through a mutual friend, Jessica Barnes, who studied for six months over in Britain. Sarah and Sam made us feel right at home, and we had the added pleasure of meeting one of the vicars from St. Helen's, Andrew Sach. He's cowritten a couple of books that son, Randy, and I are reading. Right now, I'm using his Dig Deeper! in my ladies Sunday school class.

Sarah is also an excellent cook, we were treated to a three-course, very delicious meal. Then just before leaving for church we had tea with another dessert. Yum. *smile*

We were blessed with another wonderful service at St. Helen's. God does answer prayer . . . my prayer for Kathy to find a good church He answered the first full Sunday she was in London. He is so good.

Monday we decided we needed to backtrack to some places we'd already seen and do them a little more in-depth. But first, we went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We got there more than an hour early, but there were already lots of people milling around. I found a spot open right at the fence and told Roger to wander around and get his pictures. He also stopped by the Mews shop and bought me a guidebook for Buckingham (they only do tours inside a few weeks in the summer) and a book on the succession of kings and queens in England. It didn't take long for the spots on the fence on either side of me to fill up. Each time Roger checked in with me, he had to push himself through more and more layers of people. It was neat to see and hear the bands, the guards, the pageantry. But I wished I could have understood the commands better.


After the ceremony was over, we took a walk through St. James Park to near #10 Downing Street. Near being the operative word. Because of the heightened security, it's difficult to get very close, but it was a nice walk through the park. We'd planned to have lunch with Kathy, but she was unable to meet us, so we decided to go ahead with our plans for the afternoon.

We found the tube station and headed off toward the Globe Theatre, to cash in our discount coupon on the tour. We planned to cross the Millennium Bridge, but it was closed for maintenance. So we walked down to the river and walked along it to the Southwark Bridge that had a pedestrian walkway across it, stopping for lunch on the other side of the Thames.

We arrived at the Globe just in time for their tour. Neat place. Fairly new, but an excellent replica of the old Globe. It's off season right now and they were doing some work on the thatched roof, so we had to look around some scaffolding. But actually being inside the theatre,

sitting in the stalls, and walking through the extensive exhibit on Shakespeare, his plays and his times, almost made me wish I was still teaching high school English. What a treasure trove that made the plays come alive for me.

After the time at the Globe, we walked back across the Thames (the Millennium Bridge was still closed) and went by the College of Arms building. But it was too near closing time to make it worthwhile stopping in. We wandered down Fleet Street, noticing there were a lot less people than when we'd walked down it the first day we were in London. About the time we got to the Twinings tea shop, it started raining. The shop is very narrow, very long. And that day it was almost empty, making it much easier to find the gifts and tea I wanted to take home.

From there we walked to the tube station in pretty steady rain and made our way back to the hotel, ready to call it a day. Still raining when we got off the tube near the hotel, I pulled out our umbrellas for the first time since we'd arrived in London. (We really had excellent weather the whole time we were there! So we didn't complain about the rain.)

We rested for a bit at the hotel, talked to Kathy on the phone, and then decided to head out again to find a restaurant for dinner. We went to bed early, knowing we'd be up early to catch a train to Windsor Castle.

Vacation in the UK-5

On Thursday, a week after we arrived in the UK, we boarded another plane, this time for Edinburgh. We "hired" another car, Kathy was our designated driver again, and we drove into Edinburgh, straight for the castle. While it was cooler there, the sun was shining, and we experienced a day just like my grandpa Paton had described when telling us stories.

We noticed right away that the people were friendlier than in London. London has what I call a large city mentality. People are much more reserved and less likely to initiate conversations. Edinburgh is a much smaller city, and everyone we talked to were much more open to initiating conversations with strangers.

We found a car park below the steep, rocky hill the castle is perched on. Then we walked along the side of the hill, up a narrow street to the entrance of the castle. This was officially our first castle we were able to tour. The young lady at the ticket counter asked if we would be visiting any more castles in Scotland during our stay. When we answered in the affirmative, she sold us "explorer" tickets that allowed us into up to five castles in three days for only a few pounds more than the entrance fee into Edinburgh Castle.

Once inside, we all got the audio guides, but soon Kathy and I gave up on them and followed the signs. We all split up and did our own tours, according to what interested us. Every time we did catch up with each other and took some "people" pictures, Roger refused to remove his headphones. So . . .

It was windy up on that hill. And I was very glad for the jacket I was wearing. The view from the ramparts was beautiful, looking across the Firth of Forth wondering where exactly on the other side my grandfather had grown up. From Grandpa's descriptions and from the many books I've read (historical fiction is great for learning the history of an area), I had a sense of belonging which startled me. We wandered in and out of buildings, looking at exhibits.

One of the buildings held the "honours" of Scotland: the stone of Scone, the sword and hilt, the crown, and scepter. This was my favorite exhibit in the castle. I got a little emotional thinking that this was my heritage.

Kathy and I tired of the wind and we joined up again and visited a few of the shops within the castle walls. Finally we sat in the first courtyard and waited for Roger to finish with his audio tour. The crowds thinned out considerably as it was after the time they let in new visitors.

Soon we were joining the people who had wandered on down the Royal Mile. One of the first buildings outside the castle is a woolen mill, still working. What we found inside were a bunch of shops all selling tartans and other Scottish items. One of the shops had free haggis tasting, which we all passed up in favor of seeing the looms working. We could hear them running as soon as we stepped into the building. It was fascinating to watch the automated shuttlecocks move through the looms and see the fabric as it was woven. Only one woman watched two looms, rethreading when the shuttles ran out of thread.

We browsed the displays of kilts, scarves, and hats, and followed the signs to an information area where I talked with a lady about a specific tartan for the Patons. I learned that the Paton family tartan is privately owned by the family, so we wouldn't find that specific tartan for sale anywhere. But she looked up to see what larger clans the Patons would have been a part of and we learned that the Macdonalds and Mcleans would claim them. Soon Kathy and I had found those tartans and we agreed that we liked the Macdonald plaid better, though the Mclean plaid was nice, too. We wandered a little more, but didn't want to buy anything yet, since we planned to return on Saturday.

Outside, we walked a little farther down the Royal Mile before deciding to head for our B&B and some dinner. We took a road toward Prince's Street, thinking we could walk through the huge garden at the bottom of the hill back to our car. But . . . the garden was closed when we got there, and we ended up walking almost the entire perimeter before making it back to the car park. Our glimpses through the fence of the garden were beautiful, and the views back toward the castle were breathtaking.

We found the B&B rather easily and realized we could have stopped there first before going to the castle, as it was right off the main road from the airport to the city centre. Our hostess was very friendly and full of suggestions for places to eat dinner. She handed us her card to use at one place to get a discount. We got the luggage up to the second floor (our third floor), and we found a very comfortable room waiting for us.

After relaxing a little, we decided to walk to dinner. We found the recommended Hampton Hotel and had a delicious dinner in their restaurant. Full and satisfied, we walked back to the B&B and planned what we wanted to see on Friday. Kathy and I had discussed it some on the plane that morning, so we ran our suggestions by Roger, then decided to call it a day.

Friday, after a delicious breakfast, we headed for our first stop: Cowdenbeath, the village where my grandfather was born and raised. I knew from my aunts and mother that the house he grew up in wasn't there anymore, but we do know the name of the street. So we crossed the Firth and followed the motorway to the Cowdenbeath exit. And found ourselves immediately in the town. We found Foulford St. and parked in a small car park near a dentist's office. I wondered if that was where Grandpa's house used to be, but didn't know. We got out and walked up the street a ways. Roger took a couple of pictures to prove we'd found the right street.
Then we piled back into the car.

The weather that morning was quite damp, though it wasn't raining at the time. The clouds were breaking up, but the breeze was still pretty stiff and definitely cold. So we didn't spend a lot of time outside the car. Kathy had a thought she wanted to pursue, so she and Roger got out the maps and turned on the NavSat to see how far it was to St. Andrews. Only 38 miles from Cowdenbeath. Really close to these Americans. So we decided it would be foolish to pass up going there and we programmed the NavSat and took off.

Kathy had told us that what would seem to us Americans a very short trip, or detour in this case, was long to many people in the UK. And we found that people who learned of our circular tour we took that day definitely thought we were crazy. But by this time we were used to cramming as much as we could into one day, and we did.

Driving into St. Andrews, we learned that there was a ruined castle and cathedral that were part of our Explorers pass. So after driving through some really, really old arches and very narrow streets, we parked on one of the streets near the shops and walked back past the university buildings to the shop and entrance to the castle. We had our passes validated and we went outdoors to what was left of the castle. After we wandered about there for a while, we walked down the road to the cathedral remains. The "new" cathedral is now in another part of town, but the original cathedral and castle were built right on the coast line. There is a tower still standing that visitors can still climb to the top, so Kathy and Roger got the needed tokens from the cathedral shop and climbed up. I sat in the ruins of the chapter house to wait and waved at Roger when he peeked over the top.

From the top they found the golf courses and they returned with a general idea of the direction to go. We found some lunch at a sandwich shop and headed back to the car where we ate before setting off again. Kathy wanted to visit the golf shop to pick up some gifts. But we couldn't find a parking place very near the old course. Finally we found one spot in a car park next to the British Golf Museum, and I waited in the car while Roger and Kathy headed to the course pro shop. They didn't find what they wanted there, but took a few pictures before heading back to the museum shop.

Before leaving St. Andrews, we drove on to where the road dead-ended at a car park near the clubhouse for the new course. Then we were on our way to Stirling and a visit to Stirling Castle. We drove through some rain, but mostly had sunshine with lots of clouds. After stopping for some petrol and snacks, we drove on into Stirling, right to the castle, which again dominates to top of a hill. Here we could park right at the entrance to the castle. We had our Explorer passes validated, and Roger picked up an audio tour. Kathy and I left him to his own tour, and we took off to explore on our own.

We were a little disappointed that we couldn't get into the living quarters of the castle because it's being restored. But we saw plenty of other interesting sites—the great hall, the kitchens—and walked on the castle walls in several places. My mom's cousin Barbara had told me, via my aunt, that a John Paton had a commendation somewhere within the castle. Thinking that the military museum might have something like that, we finally found the room that memorialized many soldiers and contained many of the medals they'd received for valor. We didn't have any problem finding the commendation to John Paton on the wall, complete with his medals, including a Victoria Cross. Kathy took pictures, and we saw a book on a table near a large display cabinet. It listed all the soldiers for whom they had medals and gave the location in the cabinet where family members could find the medals. We learned that very few men actually had their commendations on the walls in that room. So we felt very special. *smile*

Before we left the castle, we checked out the live tapestry demonstration where they are making several large panels of tapestry reproductions of a unicorn hunt. One lady was there patiently following a very detailed sketch behind the frame that held the tapestry. Very slow work from watching her. But they have one panel done, and it's beautiful.

We met up with Roger outside the shops and headed back to the car and dinner in Glasgow. Before we left Stirling, we visited the memorial on the Bannockburn battle site, still a very open spot, very peaceful.

Once in Glasgow, I wanted to see a cathedral (St. Giles, also called St. Mungo's). We found it easily, and parked in a car park across the street from it. It's a fantastic building, closed so we could only circle the outside of it. The churchyard is huge and split several places with city roads, but the cathedral itself is an architectural marvel dating back to the 1200s. I was interested in it because it's the setting for a series of historical mysteries I've been reading by Pat McIntosh. The stories are set in the late 1400s, and the church has already been there a long time. Wow! Seeing the church made the stories come alive in my mind even more than before.

We drove to the city centre then in search of dinner, which we found inside a shopping mall. After dinner, we drove the final leg back to Edinburgh. By the time we arrived back at the B&B we'd driven about 250 miles. A good, full day.