London and leaving

I'm minutes away from hopping out the door and heading to the airport to go back to the US. The end of this trip crept up shockingly quickly, and I'm not entirely ready for it.

Last week I was a bit tired of traveling and feeling ready to keep my stuff in the same place for more than a few nights in a row. Now, though, my mood has picked up. I spent my last two days in London, staying at my friend Joy's flat but only seeing her in the last evening due to some pre-existing commitments of hers. Sometimes London exhausts and annoys me, as all large cities do, but these past two days I've been feeling very positive toward this city. I took a walking tour of "eccentric London," which was great fun. I discovered some amazing, dangerous bookshops. I rode the tube and felt a bit like a blood cell, coursing through the arteries of this marvelous living city. There's a blue police call box parked outside Earl's Court tube station (for real!), and this city is a little bit magical. When I visited the prime meridian in Grenwich, I was struck by the hubris of Londoners basically declaring themselves the center of the world (longitude-wise, at least), but you know, they're not entirely wrong.

Still, I'm homeward bound. Perhaps it's best to leave while it's fun (and while I still have any money in my bank account). I may do a few retrospective blog updates about things I didn't have a chance to write about.

brief post

The entirety of Europe appears to be on holiday in Ireland and filling up all the beds at the hostels where I am trying to stay. Planning is a huge pain. Half the hostels only book by phone and not online, some of the others only book online. I have wasted too much of my time just trying to find a place to be next.

On the plus side, Irish weather is great! That's not sarcasm. So far, all sun (aside from one ten-minute sprinkle) and pleasant temperatures.

Older and in another country

Since I last updated, I have been to Oxford, back to London, and as of this afternoon, Dublin, Ireland.

I'd been expecting to love Oxford, where nerds have gathered knowledge for centuries. Sadly, I was not in love. Partly I got out on the wrong foot just after arriving, misreading my map while attempting to walk from my hostel into town for dinner and walking 20 minutes in the wrong direction. However, when I finally did locate the town center, Oxford redeemed itself by providing the first proper burrito I'd had since arriving in the UK. Yay!!! I've eaten decently over here, but there is a (perfectly understandable) shortage of Mexican food. The next day I set out to tour the city. Unfortunately, I was sort of doomed to have a less than excellent day because I woke up with a hideously painful crick in my neck (still not 100% gone). Still, I determined to enjoy myself as much as possible while not turning my head to the left. There are some really lovely buildings and tons of history in Oxford, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. The colleges that form the university all have their own mini-campuses in the city, and each is surrounded by a wall. Most of them are only open to the public for a few hours in the afternoon. Some charge for admittance. Some aren't open to the public at all. While I respect the need to create an academic space and not have the students and scholars treated like zoo exhibits by the tourists, the result felt way too exclusionary. I am fine with colleges that are exclusive about who gets to be a student and take classes (I went to one), but when other people can't even roam the grounds and see the outside of the buildings, it creates too much of an us vs. them atmosphere. When you are actually inside the walls, they have these impeccably manicured lawns with signs all over warning you not to walk on them. It seemed a sad contrast to Parish Beach, the big, friendly lawn at Swarthmore where students lounged around doing (or pretending to do) their reading on nice days, playing frisbee, chatting with each other, and generally enjoying ourselves. In the evening I saw a community theatre production of Twelfth Night that I enjoyed quite a bit. I think I might have liked Oxford better if I'd visited during term time, when a better student to tourist ratio and the usual university postings about exciting goings-on would hopefully make it feel more like a living community of learning and less of a museum to very smart dead white guys. Still, Oxford has one major insurmountable problem: it isn't Swarthmore, my much-missed alma mater.

Onward to London, where I met with my friend Joy, remarkably energetic after her long flight from Cape Town that morning. It turned out that Joy wasn't going to be able to come with Ireland to me as planned, which I'm pretty bummed about, as she is a truly wonderful person and a great adventure buddy. I delayed going to Ireland so I could spend my birthday with Joy in London rather than alone and in transit. Yep, folks, I'm now officially older.

My birthday was the best one I've had in a while. Joy and I went to the British museum (or a tiny part of it), where the highlight was two rooms of gorgeous and fascinating antique clocks and watches, many still working. We ate Indian food for lunch, then met up with one of Joy's theatre friends and another Swarthmore alum who randomly happened to be in London. We sat around in a park outside Buckingham palace, walked to the science museum and caught a tiny bit of it before closing, then went to a pub for dinner and quiz night. Our team won the pub quiz! We won actual money. (About enough to pay for dinner, but still! We won money!) It was an excellent birthday.

Then it was on to Holyhead, Wales, for the ferry connection to Dublin. I didn't manage to get a train early enough for a same-day ferry, so I booked into a guesthouse in Holyhead. I got really lost while trying to find it on foot with all my luggage. In the rain, of course. It sucked. I was so tired out by all the walking with luggage in the rain that I couldn't bear the idea of going out again to look for dinner, so I ate a bunch of trail mix, two granola bars, and some chocolate digestive biscuits that I had with me. It sounds grim, but it filled me up adequately and was much less grim than walking around in the rain for goodness knows how long trying to find anything open in Holyhead (I don't think there was much, and no, I couldn't find any ideas for delivery places).

After a good night's sleep, I took the ferry to Dublin. To my disappointment, the ferry didn't have a top deck. Everyone rode in the interior, which greatly resembled an airport that swayed slightly and had sea-view windows. As we got to Ireland, the sun came out. I found my hostel with minimal getting lost: go me! Dublin's a large city with a cosmopolitan feel, and I will describe it more later as I have just noticed that if I'm not off this computer in a moment the counter will click over and charge me another euro.

Whitby: for those who want to suck blood or milkshakes

Wanting to get out into the countryside again, I made the somewhat spontaneous decision to head for Whitby, a town on the Yorkshire coast that inspired Bram Stoker when he wrote Dracula. It's an odd combination: part seaside resort (more ice cream parlors than you can shake a stick at), part magnificently Gothic. On a hill overlooking the town and the steep sea cliffs, there are several structures, the most relevant being a splendid ruined abbey, an intact church with a small but jam-packed graveyard, and the hostel where I'm staying. It's a somewhat insane hill to climb with full luggage, but the views are superb. You can look out over the North Sea and imagine a ship sailing in through a storm, carrying an unholy passenger. Tomorrow, I'm going off hiking, probably along the coast (and probably in the rain...whee!).

Assuming, of coarse, that Dracula doesn't get me in the night.

Amazing vanishing Sparrow

I have not been successful at updating this blog. Sorry, loyal followers! I've been spending lots of time with my friends and staring at the glowing rectangle of a computer monitor has been even less of a priority than usual. I'm back on my own for a few days, but a serious update isn't going to happen tonight because I've already spent a lot of time online trying to plan my onward journey and internet cafes ain't cheap. However, here is a list of places that I have been since last I updated this blog:

-Aberystwyth (for Sonia's fabulous wedding, and again for Danny's graduation)
-London, where I went to small portions of several museums, saw Troilus and Cressida at the Globe, and much more
-Telford, home of the amazing Danny and his many cats
-Stonehenge, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped but still interesting
-the Lake District, which is stupendously, astoundingly gorgeous, though rainy (hence the lakes). I want lots more time there.
-Liverpool, home of the super Sonia and her family, plus interesting public art and annoyingly muddy beaches (Those were my cleaner walking shoes, darn it!)

Now, I'm in York, which I really like. The cathedral alone ate much of my day. More details about all of this later, possibly. Or not.

Dorms for grown-ups with green thumbs

Overall, I'm really enjoying my stay here in Herefordshire at Canon Frome Court. This farm is actually a community. There are a bunch of people sharing a big, old house and its outbuildings and running an organic farm for their own consumption. It would not be quite accurate to call it a commune, since many people also have outside jobs and all the families own their flats within the estate, their own possessions, and they only eat one meal a week together, but it's definitely a more communal lifestyle than the norm. In a way, it reminds me of an adult version of living in Mary Lyons, my beloved college dorm, where everybody has their own things to do but they socialize and help each other out. They make group decisions by consensus, just like Swatties prefer. (Unsurprisingly, I met one woman here who's Quaker.) I don't know if I could live here or a place like it permanently, since the farm work, food prep, and upkeep mean that you don't seem to have a lot of truly free time, but it's a majorly idyllic place to visit. They get all their own milk from two cows and several goats, and much of the cheese, yogurt, and ice cream are homemade,n as is the jam. The fresh produce is really good. I'm feasting on odd English fruits like red currants and gooseberries. Kids run around, climbing trees and generally having the sort of freedom and space that very few have these days. There are a number of ridiculously friendly cats of the sort that get so happy you are petting them that they start drooling. There are also lambs and goat kids, currently making a racket because today was weaning day.

I was almost glad when I heard about a group meeting that turned somewhat contentious about certain issues. Before that it seemed almost too perfect, and I was beginning to suspect that there must be some really serious catch like a yearly human sacrifice or something. So far, no sign of that.

Anyway, I've been doing a mix of jobs: weeding, clearing patches of nettles and poison hemlock, washing off the front of a flat in preparation for painting, picking and sorting fruit, digging up a pile of muck and leveling the ground in preparation for new compost bins, and hacking my way through a jungle of holly and ivy in an attempt to cut the ivy off at its base to keep it from overrunning an outbuilding. Some of it has been hard, but the berry-picking has been nice and low-key. The people are very hospitable and interesting, and I've eaten with a different family every night, so the company is varied. I especially enjoy this 75 year-old lady who has lived all around the world and still works in the garden.

The house is a handsome Georgian mansion, retrofitted into quirky flats with multiple levels and brightly colored walls. I have my own room with a window seat, plus a wee kitchenette so I can do breakfast on my own. This suits me fine, since I'm not much company at breakfast anyway (unless, of course, you like people who grunt and glare a lot). There's a church on the grounds, independent of the community, with a small but interesting graveyard. Much of the garden is walled in to shelter it from wind and rabbits. I'm enjoying myself here, although today I tired myself out with too much digging. Later, while I was trying to plant spinach, it started pouring down rain. That was fun, though I got rather thoroughly soaked before admitting defeat and heading inside.

My last blog entry didn't get to my trip from Abergavenny to here. I went through the town of Hereford, where I owe eternal gratitude to the nice lady in the tourist info office who let me stow my luggage so I could go look at the cathedral. In the cathedral, they have something called the Mappa Mundi, a big medieval map showing the known world. Out at the unknown edges, it has things like dragons, people with their faces in their chests, and other such craziness. It was neat, although they have the map mounted too high, so you can't see the top part. They also have a chained library, a collection of books chained to their shelves because when they were collected books were so valuable that they had to be guarded from theft that way. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld and all the books in the library that had to be chained up to protect people from the bloodthirsty books. Sadly, I saw no orangutan librarians in the Hereford Cathedral, just aggressively informative volunteer ladies.

I'm here for a few more days, then I head north and get to see my fabulous friends. Yay!

Fourth of July in England: No fireworks

I'm in England, staying at a farming community called Canon Frome in Herefordshire. It's near the Welsh border. It's rather idyllic here, but first let me discuss a bit about what's happened since my last blog post.

After leaving Cardiff, I took a train up to the Welsh town of Abergavenny. It was a hot and humid day, more suitable for Georgia than the UK we imagine. I didn't get in and check into my hostel into mid-afternoon, too late for any of the neat mountain walks around Abergavenny. Luckily, the tourist info office pointed me down a 4.5 mile, largely flat hike that was doable in the time I had. Part of it was along a canal, through woodlands, and quite nice. Before that, though, I had to cross a roundabout of pedestrian peril. Throughout, it was really hot and humid. I had loaded a bit too much stuff in my daypack, and my feet were not getting along with my boots. At one point, I thought, this hike will be really fun when I'm done with it! And so it was. I did see a neat some neat old-fashioned canal boats, and the decidous forests in the sticky weather reminded me of home.

The next day, I set off on bus to the ruins of Tintern Abbey, made famous by a poem by William Wordsworth, "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (or something...I can't be bothered to doublecheck that title right now). Getting there involved two bus rides. On the second, I was the only passenger. The driver was new, and an experienced driver was leaning over his shoulder to consult on the route. They spent the first part of the bus ride having a rather loud conversation about the new driver's divorce, his new fiance, and comparing the frequency and quality of sex with the ex and the new fiance. Later, they decided to talk with me and asked me why I wasn't traveling with a boyfriend. I think I am capable of riding a bus without a man. I hate it when people act so shocked that I'm traveling alone. You can bet they wouldn't be so surprised if I were male. We are in the 21st century, for crying out loud! In a developed country! Grr, sexism.

Anyway! Tintern Abbey was gorgeous. The ruins are close to a road and quite popular with tourists, but on a weekday they weren't so overrun that I couldn't have bits of time alone with the ruins. It must have been beautiful when it was whole, but I liked it even better ruined. Swallows swooped among the towering pointed arches, and the lack of a roof gave it a marvelous lofty feeling. It's a cathedral for the birds and the sky.

Anyway, I haven't described anything about the farm I'm at, but I should really get off of this borrowed computer. More later.