It's summer and time for the GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL!  If you're an Anglophile on this side of the pond who's unfamiliar with this event, think of it as Britain's version of Woodstock.  Five days of entertainment featuring some of the top names in contemporary music as well as up-and-coming musicians, dance, theater, cabaret, circus, and comedy.  The event also boasts being the world's largest greenfield festival, with attendance now at 175,000!  If you're lucky enough to have a ticket (the event has now sold out), below is the information and advice you'll need.  

(By the way, there's no parking near the festival.  The easiest way to travel there is to take the train to Castle Cary and then jump aboard one of the special shuttle buses to the festival grounds.  First Great Western, the train company serving Castle Cary, has partnered with the Festival and makes the journey a snap for concert-goers.)  Enjoy!

FESTIVAL DATES: Wed. 6/25/14 - Mon. 6/30/14.
Tickets: £210 ($357 USD)


PLANNING YOUR JOURNEY TO GLASTONBURY

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL WEBSITE

Read The Guaridan's article about Glastonbury Festival's history

  

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Dear Anglophiles: Today's guest post is written by author Jennifer Richardson, an American who enjoyed an expat life in Britain.  She gives us a scrumptious-sounding recipe too.  Let us know if you try it!

Ode to the Pheasant: It's turkey time, but I've got pheasant on the mind
by
Jennifer Richardson

My move to the Cotswolds started in 2007 with a rented cottage for weekends away from London. It only took six months until my husband and I were seduced by the countryside into buying our own place, where we, along with legions of other Londoners, continued the weekend ritual of self-imposed exile for the next year. Then, finally, in 2009, I took a job within commuting distance of our weekend village and left the city behind for good.

It was not, however, my status as a full-time resident that made me finally feel like a local. This, instead, was marked by the evolution of my attitude towards a bird, a feathered creature that dominates the English rural landscape by virtue of both its abundance and airheadedness. I write, of course, of the pheasant.

My early encounters with the creature were marked by fawning. While out on a bike ride I would stop to admire the miniature beasts as they foraged the fields: the male with his crimson masquerade mask over a hood of teal, the female cloaked in a humbler but still handsome pattern of nutty browns. (I couldn't help admiring mother nature for the role reversal from humans in giving the male the responsibility for seducing a mate with his sartorial flair.) But soon my fawning and photographing morphed into annoyance. Too often when caught off guard—which was, apparently, always—the pheasant would panic and scurry toward our bikes rather than away. On the steep downhills of the wolds, the pheasant became responsible for one too many near misses of going head over handlebars. The same was true for driving; these birds are drawn to rather than repelled by headlights. I suppose it was inevitable, but the time finally came when such an encounter ended badly for both bird and car. It happened too fast to be sure, but there, on the steep downhill-side of the Fossebridge dip in the moments before impact, I'm sure I spotted this death-wish-with-a-plume flying straight for the car grill.

Not long after, I had my second encounter with a dead pheasant, this time in a farmhouse kitchen where my husband and I had been invited for Sunday lunch. This weekly gathering is a fixture of English life, and a ritual I had admired since we first moved from Los Angeles to London. Now we had been invited to our first Sunday lunch since becoming residents of the Cotswolds, and we were titillated at the prospect. We joined our hosts and two other guests around a weathered pine table, where the pheasant pie was served in a puff pastry-topped casserole dish, much the same as an American chicken pot pie. When I remarked with enthusiasm to the hostess that it was the first time I had ever eaten pheasant, she dismissed the dish as an excuse to rid her freezer of them. (Hers is a sentiment I imagine is shared by hundreds of other spouses of game shooters all around the English countryside.) Despite this, I enjoyed the meal, relieved to learn there was a savory use for this majestic if dopey bird. The afternoon continued to deliver on all my expectations of a proper English Sunday lunch. By the time snowflakes started dancing outside the kitchen window, I wouldn't have been surprised if Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson had walked through the door and joined us for the cheese course.

My transition from London expat to Cotswold local had been gradual, marked by subtle milestones—the first time I wore tweed without irony, for instance. But it wasn't until I asked for a second helping of pheasant pie in that farmhouse kitchen that I felt like a real Cotswoldian for the very first time. Should you ever be in the position to make use of a pheasant that has met with an unfortunate end, here's that recipe for pheasant pot pie.

PHEASANT POT PIE

Ingredients
3.5 tbsp (about half a stick) butter
1/2 lb. pancetta
4 leeks, cut into large chunks
3 celery sticks, sliced
3 carrots, halved lengthwise and sliced
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp plain flour
1 and 1/4 cups cider
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp double cream
6 pheasant breasts, skinned and cut into large chunks
3 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 package of puff pastry
plain flour, for dusting
egg beaten with a little milk, to glaze

Directions
Heat the butter in a casserole dish and cook the bacon for 1 min until it changes colour. Add the leeks, celery, carrots and bay leaves, and cook until they start to soften. Stir the flour into the vegetables until it goes a sandy colour, then splash in the cider and reduce. Pour in the chicken stock, stir, then add the cream. Season, then bring everything to a simmer. Add the pheasant and gently simmer for 20 mins until the meat and veg are tender. Stir through the mustard and vinegar, then turn off the heat and cool.

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Pour the mixture into a large rectangular dish. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface, place over the dish and trim round the edges, leaving an overhang. Brush the pastry with egg, then decorate with any leftover pastry, if you like. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. The pie can now be frozen for up to 1 month; defrost completely before baking. Bake for 30-35 mins until golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 mins before serving.

GUEST WRITER BIO
JENNIFER RICHARDSON is the author of Americashire:A Field Guide to a Marriage, the 2013 Indie Reader Discovery Award winner for travel writing. The book chronicles her decision to give up city life for the bucolic pleasures of the British countryside.

You can find Jennifer online at:

Americashire.com

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TRAVELER: Vicki Speegle
PLACE: London
JOURNAL ENTRY: The Necropolis


(Aug. 30, 2013)  I heard about the Necropolis on a British radio station.  The narrator described a kind of strange, Victorian, death train that was built in response to the dangerous overcrowding of the cemeteries in London.  Seems to be a theme running through so many of the places I’ve visited – Paris’s Catacombs, Haworth’s wells contaminated by the thousands of decaying bodies in their own graveyard.  In Victorian London, finding a plot to bury your loved one became so difficult that graves were dug up and reused, often leaving bones and body parts strewn over the ground.

Things became desperate when a cholera outbreak killed 15,000 people in the mid-1800s.  But the proposal to build a cemetery in the countryside and link it by train service was highly controversial.  Train travel was still very new and considered to be dirty and unrefined, not appropriate to the dignity of a proper burial.  Charles Dickens himself hated trains.  Nevertheless, The London Necropolis Company was formed in 1852 and the first train rumbled down the track with its unusual cargo in November 1854.  The people gradually came to accept The Necropolis, even jokingly referring to it as “the stiff express.”  But what I find most amusing is that even the coffin tickets for the train were divided into classes!  Each “hearse” was split into three sections, and the most expensive section was more highly decorated and offered better handling of the coffin at both ends of the journey.  Even stranger, while the dead were offered three classes of accommodation, their living relatives were afforded only two!  It’s easy to think of this as completely ridiculous, but we all practice it in varying degrees when a loved one dies, don’t we?  After all, what difference does it really make how nicely-dressed the dead are?  Makes you think.

One great story from the time of the Necropolis involves none other than Mohandas Gandhi - later the Mahatma.  He was 21 years old at the time and studying law at University College in London.  He attended the funeral of Charles Bradlaugh, a controversial free-thinker who championed unfashionable causes like birth control, atheism, and anti-imperialism, including Indian independence from Britain.  After the funeral, while waiting for his return train, Gandhi overheard a noisy argument between an atheist and a clergyman who were deep in furious debate over the existence of God.  There are also stories about golfers who would take advantage of the Necropolis’s lower train fares by dressing up as mourners to get a cheap ride to the golf club!

But it was the German Luftwaffe that finally killed the Necropolis.  On April 16, 1941, thousands of bombs rained down on London, killing thousands of people and badly damaging the Westminster Bridge terminus, where the Necropolis train was berthed.  After the war, rebuilding it was deemed too expensive, and the advent of the motor hearse had made it obsolete.  The Necropolis became Brookwood Cemetery.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I boarded the train at Waterloo to visit Brookwood.  Something more than just a cemetery, I suppose.  I got off the train at Brookwood and walked about half a mile through an extension of the cemetery that was developed in the 20th century.  Out of this section and down a busy road to the original Necropolis gates.  Walked through part of the sprawling cemetery and saw many older graves mixed with newer.  There are lots of wooded areas.  All very peaceful and deserted.  I only saw three other people during my entire visit – a groundskeeper busily working, a man who marched past me as if he was in a hurry to meet someone – living or dead, I don’t know – and one of the monks from the St. Edward Brotherhood who now reside in the South Station Chapel.  This chapel is one of only two of the original Necropolis chapels to have survived.

In the end, what once made this place special is now gone.  You can still see bits of the tracks from the old railway line that used to run straight into the cemetery, but the demise of the train service has transformed the Necropolis into Brookwood - just a cemetery like any other.

You can view a short documentary by Adam Leats on the Necropolis and learn more about it on Planet Slade.

 

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TRAVELER: Vicki Speegle
PLACE: Haworth, West Yorkshire, England 
JOURNAL ENTRY: The Search for Penistone Crag (Aug. 28, 2013)

THE SEARCH FOR PENISTONE CRAG (Part 1)

Today I can truthfully say I’ve been from the heights of the moors on Penistone Crag all the way to the heart of London.  I can’t believe as I sit here at the desk in my dorm room, that just a few hours ago I was standing atop a giant rock overlooking the vast empty moors of Haworth.

After doing some digging online, I found a walk to Ponden Kirk that someone had posted, complete with pictures.  I painstakingly wrote down the directions, and this morning I set out again on my search for the kirk that Emily Bronte calls "Penistone Crag" in Wuthering Heights. 

This time I take the bus into Stanbury to save time.  Then I walk down a very steep hill to Ponden Mill.  Completely deserted.  I’m not sure if it’s still a working mill, but it doesn’t look like it.  A little creepy, I have to say.  But at the same time very beautiful.  There’s a stream running alongside the mill, and horses grazing in a field on the other side.  As I walk down the lane toward Ponden Reservoir, I can’t help thinking what a great walk this would be in the autumn, around Halloween.

I reach the reservoir, and it’s here that my directions begin.  Now I’ll find out if I’m going to get lost again, or if I’ll finally find Penistone Crag.  The directions tell me to follow the reservoir around to the west and up a steep hill.  And guess what?  I’m on the very road I was on yesterday before I turned around and headed back up Pennine Way!  Turns out I was going the right way after all.

I climb to the top of the hill and there before me is Ponden Hall – the house that was Emily’s inspiration for Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights.  Dark, brownish stone.  Kind of foreboding but elegant at the same time.  Emily, Charlotte, and Anne had friends here that they used to visit.  And guess who they were?  The Heatons!  I have to wonder if our mason, Joseph Heaton, wasn’t related in some way.  But there’s no mention of him in the history of Ponden Hall that I’ve been able to find.

I continue past Ponden Hall up the hill, pass some old farm cottages.  At the top of the hill is a large, wonderful tree and Height Laithe Farm across the road.  I take the road winding past the tree to the right, up to a metal gate that I have to climb over.  Then along a cart path on which you can still see the ruts of the carts’ wheels in the old stones.

 

THE SEARCH FOR PENISTONE CRAG (Part 2)

Now a lonely signpost directs me to take a left directly onto the moors.  I walk up a heather-choked trail along a crumbling wall until I’m as high as I can go.  Here the wall ends.  I turn and look down and let out a little gasp.  The moors are spread out below me, with a breathtaking view of Ponden Reservoir and the town of Stanbury.

Now I’m well and truly on my way.  I turn and walk deeper onto the moors.  The path winds above a deep valley and before long I can hear the sounds of a stream.  According to my directions, this is a clue that I’m getting closer to Ponden Kirk!

 

THE SEARCH FOR PENISTONE CRAG (Part 3)

I have to look carefully for a safe place to cross the stream.  Last thing I want to do is fall and break my leg out here in the middle of nowhere!  I did pass a couple of hikers on my way up, but I haven’t seen them since I left the wall.  I step across the stream and continue on along the trail.  And there it is, just ahead of me – Emily’s Penistone Crag.  I can’t believe it.  I’m here!  I found it!

I walk slowly toward the crag, take far too many photos.  I want to capture this moment so I can look back later and remember.  There are actually two stones jutting out from the hillside, but I think Emily’s must be the larger one further up.  There’s a hollow at the base that you can crawl through, and a wonderful legend attached to it – according to tradition, if a maiden passes through the hollowed stone she will marry within a year.  Guess I’ll stay single because there’s no way I’m scooting down to that hollow.  It’s far too steep and a good drop down.  But I walk onto the crag and sit.  Look out over the valley.  I can see Ponden Reservoir from here, just a silver sliver off in the distance.

Wow.  I’m actually here.  I pick a few wildflowers from the crag.  Think about Emily’s story.  I can feel how this place suffused her writing.  How it would begin to seep into my own if I lived here for very long.  It’s hard to get up and walk away, but I have a train to catch.  And it’s pretty lonely up here.  Time to leave.

Back in Haworth, I have lunch at the Black Bull Inn.  Charlotte’s brother Branwell was a regular here.  Sad story.  He seems to have struggled all his life to find a sense of purpose and died an alcoholic and opium addict at just 31.  I wonder if he didn’t feel shadowed by the success of his sisters.

I get the train from Haworth to Keighley, a lovely old-fashioned steam train.  Then back to London.  In just a few days I’ll be heading back across the Atlantic to New York.  And I think I can definitely say that Haworth is the part of my journey here that I’ll treasure the most.

 

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HOW TO GET LOST ON THE MOORS--A DEFINITIVE GUIDE
by
Vicki Speegle

Place: Haworth, West Yorkshire, England
Date: August 28, 2013

I set out today with the intention of hiking to Top Withins on the moors to see the house that’s considered to have been the inspiration for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.  They sell all kinds of walking books in the Visitor Center in Haworth, but I thought I might get some free help at the Parsonage Museum, the old residence of the Brontes.  I walk into the gift shop, tell the lady behind the counter what I want to do, and she says the magic words to me:  “There’s another place that not many people go to that I can tell you about.”  I LOVE discovering off-the-beaten-path places, and this seems to be literally the thing.  She says she prefers this walk because it’s more out of the way and takes you past the house that definitely was Emily’s inspiration for Thrushcross Grange, AND it takes you way out on the moors, to Ponden Kirk – Emily’s Penistone Crag!  Well.  She doesn’t have to talk me into it.  She pulls out a map, shows me how to get there, but I’m not at all comfortable with venturing out on my own without a written set of directions.  I buy a little book that has several walks in it, including one to Ponden Clough, which takes you past Ponden Kirk.

So.  Fortified with an egg salad sandwich and a bottle of water, I set off.  First I have a one-mile walk into Stanbury.  Tough.  Up and down some very steep hills, and most of the way, there is no sidewalk.  The roads are very narrow, so I have to be careful of traffic.  Finally I reach Back Lane in Stanbury, a little road that branches off the main road and runs up alongside the moors.  So far, so good.  I’m starting to get excited.  Then the book directs me to take the Pennine Way.  And it’s here that I start to get very lost.

I come upon a gate with a signpost – very inconspicuous, and the book says nothing about a gate or signpost – but after walking past it a couple of times, I finally notice that the signpost says in faded lettering “Pennine Way.”  I go through the little gate and suddenly I’m on a narrow trail descending steeply through thick grass and trees!  I come out at the bottom of the trail onto a wide road by Ponden Reservoir.  The reservoir was built in the 1870s to supply water to the mills.  I look at my directions again.  Now I'm supposed to be looking for an access road that runs along the base of the moorland.  But I'm clearly not by the moors.  I walk all the way to the end of the road, up a steep hill, and back again.  I go back to Pennine Way and walk all the way back up to the top of the trail – quite a hike.  Retrace my steps.  Maybe I missed something.  Then I see it.  The access road running by the moor!  I walk along it, now looking for a kissing-gate that will lead me onto the edge of Stanbury Moor.  But what's a kissing-gate?  I see a signpost and a little trail leading onto the moor.  Is that what I'm looking for? The problem is the book doesn’t give any kind of distances so you don't know how far you should expect to walk before hitting a landmark, and some of the landmarks are vague.  "A gate leading onto a path by a wall" could describe a dozen or more places in Haworth!

I decide to take the trail and end up walking a long, long way.  At this point I know I'm hopelessly lost, but I don't mind so much anymore.  Kind of cool to be able to say "I got lost on the moors," isn't it?  The wind is kicking up now, so I really feel like a character in a Bronte novel!  And there are sheep everywhere, just wandering around loose.  I can’t help stopping to snap pictures of them, like they’re some kind of woolly celebrities.  Then over the hill, after not having seen another living soul since I set out, I spy two people approaching – an older couple who look like serious hikers.  I wait for them to draw near and ask if they know where Ponden Kirk is.  The man very kindly pulls out a map, and after looking for a few minutes, we find it.  I’m not even close.  Lol…  They tell me they’ve just come from seeing Top Withins, which is just up the hill behind them.  If I go that way, the trail is clearly marked and will lead me straight back into Haworth past Bronte Falls.

Well, I guess this is what I was meant to see all along.  I decide to give up on my Penistone Crag and settle for Wuthering Heights.  Some guidebooks will tell you that Top Withins WAS Emily’s inspiration for the Earnshaw house, and some will tell you that it MAY have been.  Seeing it, I can believe it was.  It looks very plain - a bit mean.  Just a stone shelter sitting forlornly in the middle of the moors.  There are some guys working on it.  Don’t know if anyone lives there now, or what’s being done to it, but I ask them if they know where Ponden Kirk is.  They don’t know.  And now I REALLY want to go there.  If the people who work here don’t even know how to get to it, it must be a pretty rare place.

I hike away from Top Withins and follow the trail across the moors, toward Bronte Falls.  Wow.  Now I feel truly awed and a little scared.  Because I am in the middle of nowhere, and I am on my own.  It’s windier up here, but the sun is out.  Starting to get a bit boggy too, so I have to watch my step more.  I slip a few times.  Lots of rocks and uneven ground.  And as far as the eye can see, nothing but moors.  A large tree off in the distance, a few dots of sheep.  As I get closer to the tree, I can hear the falls.  I’m actually glad I ended up here instead of Ponden Kirk.  Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.  The falls are beautiful, pretty small, but I’m told they used to be more impressive.  I cross the stream and set off back toward Haworth.  By now, I’m really tired and my legs are killing me.  Ready to be sitting down somewhere with a cool drink.  But I still have a long two-mile walk ahead of me.  As I approach Haworth, I see one of those tourist buses you see going through Times Square all the time – the ones with the open tops so people can sightsee.  I laugh to myself.  It’s kind of funny to see one of those out here, especially after having walked probably six miles.  How do you experience the moors from a bus?

I trudge back into the village, get a drink, and go back to my room at The Apothecary House to rest for a bit, make plans for the rest of the day.  I decide to go see the Bronte Parsonage so that I can have tomorrow for trying to find Penistone Crag again.  Just cannot leave Haworth without at least attempting it!

There's a wonderful biography of Charlotte Bronte that was written by her good friend and fellow author Elizabeth Gaskell.  In Charlotte's letters, she describes the parsonage as a very gloomy place, cold.  But when I walk up to it I think, "This is beautiful.  How could anyone not like living here?"  What I'm forgetting is that Haworth looks nothing like it did in Charlotte's time.  There was no running water, sewage in the streets, and the parsonage looked out on an overflowing cemetery that had no trees in it.  The first room I enter is the dining room.  And it’s here that Charlotte, Emily, and Anne would gather in the evenings to write and read their stories to each other, walking round and round the table.  I cannot believe I’m in the very room where Wuthering Heights was written!  Where Jane Eyre was born!  Most of the furniture in the parsonage actually belonged to the Brontes, and the sofa in the dining room is where they believe Emily died.  I wander through the rest of the house – Mr. Bronte’s study, the kitchen, then upstairs to the bedrooms.  On the landing is the grandfather clock Mr. Bronte would wind every night before going to bed.  I see what they call the "Children’s Study" – where Charlotte and her brother and sisters would play and write their “little books.”  They actually have one of these on display – the writing so tiny there’s a magnifying glass hovering over the book so you can read the words.  I see Charlotte’s room, which she shared with her husband during their brief nine months of marriage before she died.  You can also see one of her gowns, her wedding bonnet, her writing desk.  There’s a lot to look at and I feel overwhelmed, so I decide to stop trying to see it all, go back downstairs.  Stand in the dining room once more.  Try to feel what it must have been like.  To really take in where I am.

I’m standing in the room where some of my favorite stories were written.  Stories that made me want to become a writer.

Tomorrow I'll spend my last few hours in Haworth searching for Emily's elusive Penistone Crag!  Will I find it?  You'll just have to check back and see!

 

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Traveler/writer:  Vicki Speegle
Place:  Haworth, West Yorkshire, England

Journal entry:
CHARLOTTE BRONTE HOUSE IN HAWORTH

Aug. 26, 2013, 12:30 p.m.

Just arrived in Haworth, and wanted to get down my first impressions before I go out exploring.  Took the train from Kings Cross in London to Leeds, then switched to the Northern Line into Keighley.  As we drew closer to Keighley, the land became more and more hilly.  Took a taxi from Keighley into the tiny village of Haworth, where Charlotte Bronte lived with her sisters Emily and Anne.  Now there are high hills all around – I guess what they call the moors.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but they don’t look any different to me from hills or meadows.  They’re dotted all over with houses, but I suspect back in Charlotte’s day they were much more open.

The driver drops me off at the bottom of Main Street, which is a very narrow cobbled lane.  It looks like nearly all of the buildings here are made of this very dark stone.  I walk up the steep lane past bed-and-breakfasts, tiny shops, an ice cream place, a little bookstore.  At the top of the hill I reach my B&B – a place called The Apothecary Guest House.  The owners are so warm and welcoming.  Nic asks me where I’m from, and when I tell him Ohio, he asks, “Cleveland?  Akron?”  I can’t believe it!  He’s had people here from Akron.  Such a small, small world.  He leads me up to my room, and it turns out I have a view of the Bronte Parsonage!  I can’t wait any longer, knowing it’s right there outside my window.  Have to go!  More later…

9:30pm

Spent the day just walking around the village, got some ice cream – elderflower and chocolate, yum.  They love elderflower in England.  Seem to use it in a lot of things, especially drinks.  This is the first time I’ve had it in ice cream, and it was delicious – just the faintest hint of a flowery flavor.

I decided to wait to see the Bronte’s place until I can go first thing in the morning.  Turns out today was a bank holiday in England, so there were a lot of people around the village.  I did visit Haworth Church, though, walked around the cemetery.  Charlotte’s father, Patrick, was curate of the church, and the Bronte family tomb is located there, but you can’t see it.  A plaque marks the spot under which it’s located.

In the evening I went on a Ghost Walk tour.  There were only seven people in our party, so it was nice and intimate, like having a private tour of the village.  Our guide told us that 150 years ago, Haworth (pronounced How-worth) was a very different place.  Two thousand people lived here then, and all of them had to share just 69 privies and 3 wells.  The streets were covered in straw and sewage.  The death rate was very high, with 5 to 7 people dying per day.  The cemetery was dangerously overcrowded and run-off from it tainted one of the wells, contributing to the high death rate.  It was in these conditions that the Brontes came to Haworth.  Our host showed us a street in the village where there was a row of what they call "weavers' cottages."  Before the industrial revolution, most people worked from home, as the weavers did.  It was the duty of the curate’s wife to look after the villagers, but Patrick’s wife, Maria, died just two years after moving to Haworth, so Patrick’s daughters took up her duties.  Emily looked after the weavers.  There have been sightings of a ghost called “The Grey Lady” up and down this street, and many people believe her to be Emily.

Then we went to the cemetery and learned a bit more about the masons who cut the gravestones.  The term “grave error” comes to us from the masons!  Whenever they made a mistake chiseling a gravestone, they would simply chip deeper in to erase the mistake – hence the term “grave error!”  Isn’t that great?  Our guide walked us over to one particular gravestone, and it turned out to be one that I had been drawn to earlier and photographed.  It’s the family plot of Joseph Heaton, who was himself a mason.  He and his wife had several children, but none of them lived past the age of two.  All of them were buried in one plot, and in his spare time, Joseph tirelessly worked on their gravestone.  He wanted to make it the most beautiful of all, and he certainly did.  Our guide told us no grass will grow by this grave because of the people constantly walking over to see it.  There were flowers on the grave, too.  There are still Heatons living in Haworth today who visit the cemetery and pay their respects.

Mr. Bronte himself lived to see his entire family die around him – his wife Maria, daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and his son, Branwell.  But he suspected that the high death rate in Haworth might be due to the unsanitary conditions, and he was instrumental in bringing about improvements to the water supply.

Tomorrow I’m going to go for a long walk on the moors.  There’s a 4½ mile hike that will take me past some places that were inspirations for Emily Bronte when she wrote Wuthering Heights!

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NARNIA IN OXFORD
by
Vicki Speegle

Oxford, England, August 20, 2013
If there’s a mecca for me as a writer, it’s C.S. Lewis’s home in Oxford.  I’ve always wanted to visit.  To wander through the home of the man who wrote the most moving words I’ve ever read on faith, love, death, doubt – on life.  No one else has ever been able to put into words for me how I feel about God, what it means to be Christian.  Trying to describe faith to someone – WHY you believe what you believe – is like trying to describe the sound of a shadow, or what laughter looks like.  Impossible.  And yet Mr. Lewis has done just that.  His writing on grief helped me through the loss of my mother.  His writings on faith continue to inspire me on my journey closer to God.  And even more than his Narnia tales, I love his science fiction trilogy – Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.  Soooo good.  Like Narnia for grown-ups.

Lewis’s home is called "The Kilns" because it’s on the site of an old brick-making place.  What’s wonderful about it is that it is NOT a museum.  You can’t just go there on any day and see it.  You have to make an appointment, and they keep the parties very small.  When I arrive, there are only 15 people in ours.  The house now functions as a residence for students and artists, so they only show it once a week or so.  Our guide is Amanda, a student in residence, and she starts the tour in the garden by giving us a brief history of Lewis’s life.

Then we step inside the house.  I just can’t tell you how incredible it feels to be moving among the same spaces as the person who penned so many of my favorite words – surreal, moving, and comforting all at the same time.  Like being wrapped in a big warm blanket.  One of the lovely things about the tour is that Amanda shares personal stories with us about Lewis and his life in the house.  When Lewis and his brother had the house to themselves, before his wife, Joy, moved in, it became a real bachelor pad.  Both of them used to smoke but there were no ashtrays in the house.  They instructed guests to just tap out their ashes onto the rug and grind them in with their heels.  Lewis claimed it kept the moths away.  Or the story about Lewis’s old cat, Tom.  Once Tom had lost all his teeth, Lewis’s housemaid suggested they have him put down.  Instead, Lewis instructed her to go to the market every other day and buy a fresh fish, mash it up, and give it to Tom.  Lewis told her Tom had taken care of them all his life by keeping the house free of mice.  Now it was their turn to take care of him.  “He’s a pensioner now.” Lewis said.

After seeing the house, I walk down a wooded path to what’s now the Lewis Nature Reserve.  There’s a pond where he used to swim every day, and a bench on which he used to sit with his friend and fellow author J.R.R. Tolkien.  Many people don't know that it was partly through his conversations with Tolkien that Lewis became Christian.

Then I catch a bus into Oxford’s city center.  Walk around the most ancient university town in the English-speaking world.  See the Bodleian Library, one of the oldest in Europe – beautiful.  See the spot on Broad Street where Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake for refusing to renounce their Protestant beliefs.  But it’s when I leave Broad Street that I see something strange.  After wandering among so many ancient buildings, I turn the corner and suddenly I'm in the midst of a thoroughly modern shopping center.  There’s a KFC, Burger King, Clark’s shoes, some clothing stores, and even more fast food chains.  Weird.  Proof that time marches on, and nowadays, all roads eventually do lead to a McDonald’s.  Even in Oxford.

Ugh.

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Dear Anglophiles: As many of you are aware, I am taking a sabbatical from blogging due to my mother being critically ill.  I expect to resume blogging in September.  Until then, I am very excited to announce that guest writer Vicki Speegle will be sharing her travel journal with us!   Vicki traveled by ship to England and is now in London for the first time and will be touring the U.K.  Warning: Her posts will make you want to drop everything and fly across the pond straightaway!  Feel free to make comments or ask her questions. --Zella

CAMBRIDGE

Cambridge is the second-oldest university in England, next to Oxford, and the third-oldest surviving university in the world!  My niece and I drove there from Mildenhall, in Bury St. Edmunds.  I kept thinking we’d gotten the wrong directions at first because even when we were supposedly just a mile or so from the university area, everything looked so modern, kind of ugly.  Then we got a glimpse of what we’d been looking for – a very beautiful, old building – and suddenly every street we turned down was filled with them.  We were in Cambridge proper.

What we really came to see is what they call “The Backs” – a stretch of the River Cam that some of the colleges “back” onto, with lovely little bridges arching across.  We parked in a garage and walked to Silver Street where it looks over the River Cam near Queens College.  And there was the view we’d come for – the river winding its way through tree-filled meadows and ancient buildings.  Reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of the canals in Venice in a way.

The frustrating thing is, unless you’re a student or have permission, you cannot access any of those lovely bridges or walk along the grounds.  It’s all private property belonging to the colleges of Cambridge University.  However, one way to see some of the grounds and get a view from a bridge is to pay for a tour of one of the colleges.  I think it was the Kings College tour for £2.50 that would have given us access to the bridge you see in my photo.  Kings College was founded in 1441 by Henry VI, and you can listen to their world-famous choir when they broadcast A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols every year on Christmas Eve.  They've been performing this service since 1918!

Anyway, we decided not to do the tour, but the guide there very kindly advised us that we could have a lovely walk along the river if we just went further along Silver Street, away from The Backs.  But we’d been walking for some time, and my little niece Scarlett was hungry, so we decided to be satisfied with the beautiful view we had.

You can also take a boat – or a “punt” as they call it in Cambridge – on the river, but this is expensive.  At least it was to us.  £14 per adult to row yourself, or £70 total if you want a punter.  I have to say, I found all of these restrictions a bit depressing.  So much natural beauty should be free for all to see, but instead, they've turned part of Cambridge into a tourist trap.  And even on a Tuesday morning, tourists were swarming the place.  Still, we enjoyed our visit.  Had lunch at The Anchor on Silver Street, with a table right by the river so we could watch the punters.

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Dear Anglophiles: As many of you are aware, I am taking a sabbatical from blogging due to my mother being critically ill.  I expect to resume blogging in September.  Until then, I am very excited to announce that guest writer Vicki Speegle will be sharing her travel journal with us!   Vicki traveled by ship to England and is now in London for the first time and will be touring the U.K.  Warning: Her posts will make you want to drop everything and fly across the pond straightaway!  Feel free to make comments or ask her questions. --Zella

MILDENHALL & THE U.S. AIR FORCE

This week, I’m visiting my niece, her husband, and my great-niece in Mildenhall, in Suffolk, England.  He’s in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed here recently.  The U.S. has three bases in the area, the largest being Lakenheath.  Turns out Mildenhall is part of Bury St. Edmunds, an ancient market town.  We’ll be going to visit the gorgeous Abbey Gardens there tomorrow, so come back and have a peek!

Since Mildenhall houses the Air Force, I was expecting to see a lot of gray government-type buildings, a smart efficiently laid-out neighborhood – strictly boring.   But Mildenhall surprised me.  This little town is made up of cozy old cottages, sprawling meadows filled with sheep, cows, and horses, and winding, tree-lined roads.  And Mildenhall has a very rich history.

The town's lineage goes back to Anglo-Saxon times.  The Domesday Book records Mildenhall as being well-established in 1086, with a church, a mill, 64 families, and 1,000 sheep.  A real swinging hotspot!  :)  My niece and I decided to go to afternoon tea, and as we walked through the town, we passed an ancient-looking structure that we later discovered is called the Market Cross.  It’s been the site of the Mildenhall Market since the 1400s, and also where the abbot of Bury St. Edmunds had criminals hanged.  During the 1381 Peasants’ Uprising, John de Cambridge, the prior of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, was murdered on Mildenhall Heath.

Traces of settlement from the Old Stone Age onward have been found in the marshy fenland of Mildenhall, and the Romans had a ring of farmsteads around the fen edge.  The fabulous Mildenhall Treasure - thirty-two pieces of silver tableware from the Roman period, now in the British Museum - was discovered near one of these farmsteads during the Second World War.

We had afternoon tea at a lovely place called The Riverside Hotel.  My first official British teatime!  Sooooo yummy and fun.  We sat outside in the garden, by a little stream.  Heaven.  So today, I’m posting pics of our tea.

See you tomorrow in the Abbey Gardens!

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