Wonderful Whitby

Sunday on our way home from Durham - well, it was pretty far out of the way - we stopped at Whitby, a historic fishing village on the North Sea coast. The drive to get there was quite calm and beautiful, and took us through the North York Moors, a national park known for its rugged, heather-covered hills. The quaint building in the second photo below is of public toilets at a rest area along the highway!



Whitby was great and a big hit with everyone. It has red-roofed stone houses perched on hills that overlook an inlet full of fishing boats. And up on the hill is an abbey ruin and an interesting parish church. It was even sunny and warm, with almost no wind, which was really strange for the coast. The weather did turn really grey later, but it still wasn't cold and I got all my abbey and church pictures in the sunshine!



Whitby also has all sorts of interesting associations: Captian James Cook lived there for 4 years as a sailing apprentice and Bram Stoker lived there for some time as well. Many Whitby landmarks, such as the parish church, were incorporated into Dracula.

Whitby Abbey was the site of an important church council way back in the 600s, when the local leaders decided to adopt Roman Catholic Christianity instead of Celtic Christianity. It was originally ruled by a Saxon princess named St. Hild and was very rich and important throughout the Middle Ages. Like the others we've visited in England, it met its demise under King Henry VIII's "Dissolution of the Monasteries" in the 16th century.




Next to the abbey ruins is the still-active Parish Church of St. Mary, which is one of the more unique churches I've seen. It has an odd shape to it, and has just one squat, castle-like tower on the end.



Inside are box pews with comfy-looking interiors, an upper loft with more seats, a charcoal stove in the middle, and a pulpit hung with ear trumpets for a 19th-century minister's wife who was hard of hearing.




Next to the abbey is a partially-restored stately home from the 18th century (I think), which now has a small museum and abbey gift shop inside. Clearly, we had a lot of fun in there.



To get from the hill down into the town, you go down 199 historic steps. They are a landmark in themselves, and provide quite a nice view of the town. We felt every 199 of them on our way back up!




The town was really crowded with people, and between all the seafood restaurants, quirky gift shops and arcade games, we all thought it was "like Seaside only quainter." We walked out to the pier at David's request, where we watched some Morris dancers (the traditional dancers we saw in Oxford in May) and saw all different kinds of boats go in and out of the harbor. David went down a ladder to the lower level of the pier, where he chatted with some fisherman about their technique and took pictures of us up above.



Then the long drive home. We arrived home late Sunday night - around 10:00, I think. We stopped for dinner at the Oriental Condor near the train station in Oxford, picked up their luggage from our place, got Carol and William checked back in at the Club, then headed home. Everyone was very ready for bed, especially our weary driver!

Weekend in Durham

My friend from work back in Portland and her son came to visit us in Oxford. David took Friday off and we all spent Friday and Saturday nights in Durham, a city in northeast England city with a university, cathedral and castle.

After much deliberation, we decided to drive (the train prices were horrifying and the car gives more flexibility). It was a long trip with some nasty traffic towards the start, so we all owe great thanks to David for all the driving!

We headed out mid-morning, after Carol checked out of her Oxford hotel and we brought their stuff back to our place. Lunch was McDonalds and KFC at a rest stop, at tables on an overpass over the freeway. Traffic was worse than expected until we got past Leeds, but we eventually got there.

We stayed at the Durham Travelodge, which is a large chain lacking in ambience but with a good price and clean rooms. It was just outside the city center, so about a 15-minute walk to the main sights. Next door was an Italian restaurant called Che Vita, which was really, really good. We ate there both nights! I had the best bread pudding ever, both nights! It was made with brioche (an eggy French bread) and had chocolate sauce in it and warm custard all over it. To die for. This time I wasn't the only one with dessert, and the others were fabulous as well: banana waffles, raspberry tart, hot fudge chocolate cake with ice cream, chocolate caramel pudding...



Durham Cathedral was really nice - better than I remember when I visited as a day trip from Edinburgh six years ago. It is mostly Norman/Romanesque, meaning from the 11th/12th century and with lots of big, solid pillars. It was made of light-colored sandstone and included the tombs of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede, two northern English medieval celebrities.



There were neat Celtic crosses in the churchyard, and inside there was a sign saying, "This is Will," which of course Carol and I had William stand next to for a photo. The sign said you had to be taller than Will to go up the tower, so I guess none of us can go! (And none of us did but William.)



Our explorations of Durham included a nice wooded walk across a bridge to a riverside path that provides a nice view of the cathedral. Despite the worsening weather, it was very scenic and fun.




Durham also has an old castle ("to keep the Scots out and the English in"), of which we had an enjoyable guided tour led by a recent Durham University graduate in history. The castle is now used mainly as student accommodations, which must be pretty nice!



In the basement was a neat surprise - an ancient Saxon chapel that had been forgotten for centuries and recently discovered fully intact. It was very crypt-like, made of gorgeous sandstone, and the capitals were decorated with Saxon pagan-like images including lions, snakes, and even a mermaid.



We all enjoying the sights of Durham, but we pretty much ran out of things to see by Saturday evening. Even the cinema was closed for renovation. In hindsight, we would have spent our second night in Whitby, which we visited on Sunday.

More info on Durham available on Sacred Destinations:

Durham Introduction
Durham Cathedral
Durham Castle

Weald and Downland, Chichester and Winchester

We haven't done any local sightseeing for awhile, mainly because it has been so hot. But the weather has really turned and it is actually cold most of the time lately! Strange. So yesterday we decided to go on a driving day trip south of Oxford.

The main motivation for the trip was the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, which is in the middle of the countryside not far from the coast. David had discovered that this museum's gift shop was the main (or only) retailer in the UK of his favorite Swedish handmade axes and hatchets, so he was excited to go check them out.

Of course we don't have much need for axes and hatchets in our college accommodations, but David collects them like he does well-made knives, just to look at and enjoy and eventually use when we have a real house. We already have an axe and a splitting maul from this Swedish company back at home (the splitting maul is mine!). For some reason, this Swedish company's products are much cheaper in the UK than in the USA.

So we simply had to go, and the fact that there was a museum attached to the gift shop made it all the more justifiable. And I was quick to discover that our driving route would take us past two cathedrals! The drive was pleasant but rainy, and happily the museum gift shop had lots of hatchets in stock.

After careful examination and consideration, David bought two and put them in the trunk. One of them was a "French trade axe" that apparently is like the ones the French traded with Native Americans. It looks like a tomahawk and was presumably influenced by the Indian designs. So David bought a Swedish-made, French-Indian axe in England. Interesting!

The place was interesting to me as well, and it gave me happy feelings of being back in Oregon. The area was surrounded by beautiful countryside and the gift shop smelled of wood and spices. Oxford isn't exactly a big city, but it felt good for my soul to be back in the country!

The open-air museum itself was interesting. It covers 50 acres and includes a working farm with livestock and flour mill. It consists of medieval and Victorian buildings that have been moved from their original locations nearby and reconstructed there, including a tollhouse, a schoolhouse, several cottages, and a market hall.

The market hall was especially interesting, and you could go upstairs to the second level, where we took this timer photo. The top floor was used for council meetings, and the bottom for markets. Under the stairs was a lock-up area for criminals. An upper floor of another building had a small chapel, which was decorated with beautiful flowers and bows for a wedding.

The Victorian cottages had been reconstructed as though people lived there, complete with boots by the door, a ticking clock, a bar of soap next to the kitchen sink, and a sewing machine in the middle of a project. The schoolhouse was neat as well: it was very small and the date on the chalkboard said 1895. There was an abacus in the corner and two pictures on the wall: one of Jesus and one of Queen Victoria. It had a nice Little House on the Prairie feel to it (aside from the portrait of the Queen, of course).

After exploring a few buildings, we had a quick lunch at the Museum Cafe next to the pond. David had a tuna sandwich on a homemade roll and I had a hot bacon roll (an unfortunate British addition to the list of unhealthy foods I like). Since it was also a bakery, we couldn't resist getting sweets too: I had bread pudding and David had a lemon drizzle cake. We ate outside at a picnic bench until it started raining.

Chichester Cathedral


It was around 1:30 when we hopped back in the car and headed for Chichester, which was only about 6 miles south of the open-air museum. Chichester is a small market town and Chichester Cathedral is smallish compared to some. It was completed in 1108 so is mostly Norman in style, but the tall spire was added in the late 1800s. My guidebook says the spire can be seen from the ocean.

Chichester Cathedral was pleasant and still impressive despite its comparatively smallish size. We arrived as the choir was practicing for Evensong (held at 3:30 on Sundays), and their voices were beautiful. There was the smell of incense in the air, presumably from an earlier service, and the combination of beautiful sights, sounds and smells was really something.

The cathedral itself is notable for its mixture of modern art with ancient art, which I thought was done well. The modern art was very colorful and abstract but not ridiculously abstract or ugly like it often is, and it included a nice Marc Chagall window (right).

Outside there are large cloisters, delightful gargoyles (including one with glasses), and a huge old bell tower that stands separate from the building.

You can learn more about this cathedral and see our complete photo gallery at Chichester Cathedral on Sacred Destinations.

Winchester Cathedral

Then we moved onto Winchester, which was northwest along the road back home. We took a small country road and it was a peaceful, scenic drive. Winchester is a fairly small town but it was once a major city that ranked alongside London. William the Conquerer was crowned both at London and at Winchester, and it was monks from Winchester who were commissioned by William to prepare the Domesday Book.


Winchester Cathedral (above) was built when the city was big and important, so it is very large and very impressive. It is the longest medieval church in Europe. Our guidebook warned us that the exterior is not too attractive, and we kept joking about the phrasing of their description: it "crouches stumpily over the tidy lawns of the Cathedral Close." I liked the exterior, though. It's not elegant but it's impressive and different.

The cathedral was really beautiful inside, and huge. As at Chichester, there were a few modern-art touches here and there.




Highlights include the tomb and memorial of Jane Austen, who lived not far from Winchester; wooden chests containing the bones of pre-Norman kings like Knut and William Rufus; a Norman (1100s) baptismal font carved out of a beautiful black stone; a huge stone-carved screen with lots of sculptures of saints and kings; and several huge chantry chapels - those fancy tombs of bishops and knights with an effigy and surrounded by a delicately-carved stone wall.




Part of The Da Vinci Code movie was filmed at Winchester Cathedral (as a stand-in for Westminster Abbey), and they've preserved some of the set that was used and have a temporary exhibit related to the book/movie. It mainly consisted of nicely illustrated information boards, but it was interesting.

It was nicely moderate about the issues, with comments like "Leonardo might have chosen to paint Mary Magdalene into The Last Supper, but he wouldn't have left one of the disciples out" and an explanation about why John often appears feminine in art (it's because he was thought to have written the Gospel of John, which was written quite late, so he would have to be young when he was with Jesus).

While wandering around we were approached by a friendly old man who was a volunteer guide to the cathedral, asking if we had any questions. He was enthusiastic and friendly, and showed us some graffiti on the wall that was carved in 1608 by an 18-year-old choir boy who went on to play the organ at St. Paul's Cathedral (photo here).

One unique part of the cathedral was the small crypt, which is often flooded due to the marshy land on which it was built. In the early 1900s, an impressive guy spent five years diving to the bottom of what must have been nasty water to gradually replace the wooden foundations with concrete.

Upstairs in the cathedral there is a small statue of him with his diving helmet and a plaque that says he "saved this cathedral with his own hands." The crypt was dry when we were there, but it has a modern statue by a British sculptor that was made to stand in a few inches of water (see this photo from the cathedral's website).

You can read all about Winchester Cathedral in my article on Sacred Destinations.

After the cathedral, we briefly wandered around the Winchester's streets before heading home. It seems like a nice town, and based on the street signs it looks like it has a castle and a museum, too. It was about an hour's drive home from Winchester, and we were very tuckered out when we got home. But we had cameras full of photos and heads full of nice memories, which is what's most important!