Aug 8, 2019
When I was much younger and knew everything, I could not have imagined voluntarily going on a bus tour, which is exactly what we did today. The idea of a preplanned day with other people (who would not be like me, and who I probably wouldn’t like) was an anathema. An older, and clearly much smarter, me chose a bus trip for today so that E could sleep if she was still jet lagged. Off we went into the country-side, to a couple of my favourite places in the country. While other people took care of the driving, the parking and tickets so we could skip the lines, E slept and I watched the world go by.
Our guide, Rob, was great. A former engineer who specialized in restoration, he told us lots of good stories and lots of trivia: Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest continuously occupied castle in the world. George IV was England’s largest ever monarch. He weighed about 280 pounds and had a 56-inch waist, and is buried at Windsor. He is the source of the nursery rhyme, “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie…” Rob also pointed out Alfred Hitchcock’s house; E asked “Grandma, do you know him?”, and the London Pride brewery and pub where Shakespeare reputedly drank. If nothing else, this trip is a good reminder that children lack a great deal of general knowledge. E thought that Shakespeare was a singer…
The trip took us up into the Cotswolds. It is the part of England that you often see pictures of in calendars – rolling green hills divided by stone walls and dotted with sheep. 75% of the land surface in England is still agricultural, but it is an activity that occupies only about 2% of the population. Sheep farming is still a major industry, with about 2 sheep for every person in the UK. One of the reasons that Britain became so famous for sheep and wool in medieval times was that they had hunted wolves to extinction, so the sheep grew bigger and produced more wool. 50% of the exports in medieval times were wool, traded to Europe for oil and wine, spices and other things that wouldn’t grow here.
Our first stop was the City of Bath, my favourite city in England, and possibly in the world. According to the story, around 800BC, Prince Bladud went travelling to Athens, where he got leprosy. When he came home, his father had him locked up. He escaped and became swineherd. One day he noticed his pigs rolling in the mud, and he couldn’t get them out, even though he tempted them with acorns…A little more investigation revealed that the reason they wouldn’t get out was that the mud was warm and made their skin problems heal up. In he hopped, his leprosy was cured, and the rest is history.
We had a wander around, skipped visiting the Roman baths, and ate ice cream.
On the way into town we passed a herd of particularly pretty cows who were peering over the fence at us, and watching the world go by. They belonged to Marshfield Dairy, which makes ice cream. Therefore, our mission was to search out a source for this ice cream. It was pretty amazing, since, as E pointed out, we had practically met the cows that made it. I had rhubarb flavour, so now I’m wondering why, in a country where rhubarb grows everywhere, we don’t have rhubarb ice cream. (BTW, did you know that Roman baths had a special room for armpit hair plucking…apparently no Roman soldier of any consequence wanted to be seen in polite company with hairy armpits.)
In Bath you can see where buildings were repaired after the WWII bombings that damaged much of the town. The Luftwaffe had a plan to bomb all of the towns identified by the Baedeker guides as rating 3 stars or above for cultural or historical importance – a kind of tourism in reverse, intended to wipe out cultural history. As they worked their way through the list, though, they spared Salisbury because the spire was so useful for navigation.
Off we went to Salisbury, where you can look at one of the four remaining copies of the original Magna Carta. We didn’t…it doesn’t have much meaning when you don’t have any context. I’ve seen it before, so we looked for things that would interest an 11-year-old. At the top of the spire, the tallest in western Europe, there is a red light to stop planes from hitting it because it is much higher than anything else around. The light bulb needs to be changed, however, and near the top there is a little door where a man climbs out and climbs to the top to change the lightbulb. This led to lots of questions: how did he get this job, what does he do the rest of time when he’s not changing lightbulbs and how much money does he make. According to the trusty Rob, you can look on the website for a video of him changing the lightbulbs.
We had a traditional afternoon tea at the Cathedral = amazingly delicious. One of the major debates depending on which part of the country you come from is whether you put the cream or the jam on the scone first. I do it the way my mother did…cream first, then jam. E invented her own method by swirling them together.
Last stop for the day: Stonehenge. E really liked it, and judged it to be so pretty – the part that continues to fascinate me is the question of why they did it. The motivation must have been huge to distract that many people from their daily lives of farming and getting by to move a bunch of big things around and stand them up. There are now quite good theories of how it was done, but any discussion of the purpose is simply speculation. Nonetheless, about 1.5 million people visit it each year; 15-20 thousand of them for the solstice.
When the Romans got here, they had a policy of trying to adapt local culture to the changes they were making. They consistently named things with local names. The Celts, who were living here at the time, didn’t have the practice of naming things, so whenever a roman arrived at a river and asked the name of it, he was told Avon, which is the Celt word for river. The Roman politely recorded the name of the river as Avon, which is why there are so many Avon rivers in Britain…good intentions, but flawed implementation.
Back to London and time to look for dinner. Fish and chips was on our list of things to do, so we went to a pub. What sensible drinking laws…children can go in and eat, they just can’t drink until they are 18. Apparently children here aren`t damaged by seeing people drink.
I definitely want to try rhubarb ice cream!
It was amazing…Im going to try making it.