eptivity

A very sad thing happens to me—well to you, really—when I do something fun, cool, or otherwise awesome, and then before I get a chance to blog about it, I do something else even more fun, cool, or otherwise awesome, leaving the first event unblogged. A lot has gone down that you’re not even aware of, Internets. I will now attempt to remedy this. Maybe make yourself a cuppa before you start.

First up: Lincoln Castle. We visited this with my mom. It features one of the four surviving originals of the Magna Carta, which was old and interesting, albeit dimly lit. It also has a walk-through Victorian prison reenactment in which you are encouraged to interact with the warden, his wife, and various prisoners (“watch out for pickpockets!”). I just can’t get behind this sort of thing. Just leave me alone! I promise I’ll learn something on my own without the uncomfortable charade! And no guided tour on tape, either.

Just down the hill: Lincoln Cathedral. Amazing architecture, but next time we’ll skip Evensong. It was Stephan’s idea to attend, which seemed like a good idea at the time because that was the only way we got to see some parts of the cathedral, we heard the choir practicing and they sounded good, and we figured it would be short because the cathedral closed in 20 minutes. It turned out to be 45 minutes of a lot of Latin singing—and if not technically Catholicism, then much closer to it than we’re used to. One of us may have succumbed to playing games on his or perhaps his Blackberry, right before we had to stand, face east, and recite the Apostles’ Creed. Does not come up often in Adventism, I can tell you that!

Moving swiftly on to Shugborough Estate. Just up the road from where we live, it’s essentially one giant reenactment of life in 1815: walled garden; working farm including windmill, cheese making, and funny chickens; servants quarters including working brewery; and giant mansion, allegedly with approximately 80 chimneys, that we missed out on because we were too enthralled with everything else to get there before it closed.

Oh, and did I mention the formal gardens and the follies? I think that follies may be one of my favorite ridiculously English things. Having never been anywhere else, I don’t know if they’re a specifically British phenomenon, but I don’t recall many of them back home (Wikipedia: “In architecture, a folly is a building constructed strictly as a decoration, having none of the usual purposes of housing or sheltering associated with a conventional structure. Follies are found world-wide, but they are particularly abundant in Great Britain.”) At any rate, Shugborough has several, including one that was built to look like a ruined Greek something or other, and one with a mysterious inscription that apparently was partially responsible for The Da Vinci Code (incidentally, for which Westminster Abbey scenes were filmed at our friend Lincoln Cathedral, above). Just a few photos from Stephan, and of course this one of me milking a cow that I think has something wrong with it:

Quite a bit farther up the road to the Lake District. Unfortunately, just a day trip, but a lovely one. We fully intend on returning and climbing twelve of Alfred Wainwright’s favourite mountains. They love this guy over here, and rightfully so; I mostly just want to do the climbing because I like the books so much: he did all the research, all the walking, wrote all of the text out by hand, and drew all of the pictures. A very helpful guy we ran into in a place called Cockermouth told us that we have to be careful if we take the books back home because people will nick them just because they’re pretty. Also: it’s very cute the things they call “mountains” here.

Highest mountain in England (Lake District): Scafell Pike, 3,209 feet. Highest mountain in the UK (Scotland): Ben Nevis, 4,409 feet. Fiftieth highest mountain in Oregon (near Burns): Pueblo Mountain, 8,612 feet. I mean, we do refer to those two hikes in the Columbia River Gorge as Dog and Hamilton Mountains, but we don’t actually believe it. Anyway! Lake District! Free-range sheep!:

Other places we’ve been to include Dudley’s Red House Glass Cone, one of England’s last four still-standing glass-making cones (until 1936, men inside the cone worked the glass they pulled from the big furnace in the center) and the Kinver Edge Rock Houses. Essentially, somebody found a sandstone cave and dug it out until they had a room or two and then put in doors and windows. Then somebody else did the same next door, and when one of them left, the other guy just dug out the wall between them and doubled his square footage. They were occupied until the 1960s, but nobody wants to venture a guess (or at least tell me what that guess might be) as to when they were first occupied.

Then off to Warwickshire, aka Shakespeare Country, for Burton Dassett Hills Country Park (featuring a “beacon” that was presumably the base of a windmill built circa 1400) and the Chesterton Windmill, built in 1632. Not that impressive; I mean, that’s a good 12 years after the Pilgrims landed. What else ya got, England? Don’t make us go to Wales:

Whew! I can’t believe you’re still reading, and so tiny of text! Click here for all my England photos and here for a sneak peek of our weekend in Wales.