A Day in the Lake District

"No more beautiful place hath man seen."  William Wordsworth describing the Lake District, where he was born and spent most of his life. (The village school where he occasionally taught is now a shop that sells gingerbread made from the same recipe since 1854. Of course I bought some....good, but not like any gingerbread I have ever had.) I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but beautiful it was. We were also very fortunate to have good hiking weather: cool and partly cloudy, but no rain.  (People kept telling me that it always rains in the Lake District, so we were prepared but didn't need umbrella or raincoats.... though there was evidence of the recent rain in the muddy trails.)

Wordsworth's house, Dove Cottage.

Though I took many pictures on the 6-mile hike from Grasmere going around Lake Grasmere and Rydal Water, they simply do not do justice to the beauty of the place. Sheep grazing in green fields enclosed with dry stone fences...stone-lined trails around the crystal clear lakes....and some very interesting architecture for the occasional house along the way.

 (I really did hike all day.....and didn't even need the raincoat I carried)

This is where we stopped for our picnic lunch.



The Lake District is a 3-hour bus ride across England to the west coast. We (this was a York St. John organized trip for international students - we had three buses filled) took the southern route through the Yorkshsire Dales and it was a beautiful drive.  Along the way we stopped in a cute little village called Settle for a break. The stone buildings of the Lake District were already well in evidence:



Goodbye to Grasmere!

Wednesday River Walk

After work today, (pricing lecture for Marketing - ugh! For the most part I am enjoying teaching Marketing for the first time, even though it means a lot more prep for every class. However, the topic of pricing strategy wasn't quite as much fun...) we decided to take the York "river walk." It was a crisp, sunny fall day and we had a nice 45-minute walk along the River Ouse.

Along the way we passed Rountree Park, a very large green area

that had playgrounds, tennis courts, skateboard area, and two large, raised green squares with very well tended grass .... we weren't quite sure what they were for.  (We asked some kids from the skate park, but they didn't know either.  Perhaps some sort of lawn bowling???)

We walked as far as the Millennium Bridge (that looked very similar to the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle, though much smaller):

Then crossed over the bridge and walked back to town on the other side - very nice walking and biking paths that are well-used.

Above is the appropriately named Blue Bridge, over which we crossed the River Foss where it joins with the Ouse.  The Ouse is a tidal river and occasionally floods. I'm not sure if you can see in in the picture below, but the banks are built up to contain fairly high river levels. Behind the shrubs in front of the buildings is another wall with steel flood gates that can be closed if the river reaches that high.

There are street lights along the path and it must be a very nice evening stroll in the summer.

A walk like that deserves a reward....

Ripon and the Yorkshire Dales

Saturday came in cool and sunny - a perfect day for a walk through the Yorkshire Dales.  The difference between the dales (west of the city of York) and the moors (north of the city):  Dales are largely a farming landscape, some with deep valleys carved out by glaciers. Great for walks and hikes.  Moors are highlands covered mostly with heather and an occasional green valley.  They also have popular hiking trails, but can be a bit featureless so are not quite as popular.  We chose the dales for our walk and are happy there were other people along the trail we took, since we got a bit lost and needed their help with directions.

We started with a 75-minute bus ride through several cute English towns with names like Green Hammerton, Whixley, Little Ouseburn and Great Ouseburn, Boroughbridge and Skelton to the city of Ripon. Ripon is on the eastern edge of a large area on the map called the "Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty."  The city itself is small (around 17,000 people) known mostly for its cathedral: the first church was built on the site in 660 by St. Wilfred and it is officially known as the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Wilfred. The current building dates from the 11th century with its famous west front built in 1220. A British architectural historian considered the cathedral's west front the finest in England, so here it is:

There was a wedding getting ready to take place, but we got a peak into the interior before it started:

Personally, I liked the south wall the best, along with the interesting cemetery, with the gravestones laid flat on the ground.

But on to our walk. We had intended to just take a walk through the dales, but the gentleman at the Tourist Information office said we could walk to Fountains Abbey in around 30 minutes. We had thought Fountains Abbey was something we could only get to with a private tour or by car (it's considered the most complete abbey remains in the country), so decided to take the walk there.  The walk was great - just what we had hoped for - but either we had bad directions or it is a much farther walk than 30 minutes (one couple we met along the way said it was 7 miles from town to the Abbey). Long story short, we got to the Abbey grounds too late to actually go in and tour it if we wanted to catch the last bus back to Ripon and then back to York.  The good news is we discovered one can get to Fountains Abbey from York using public transportation.  Plus we had a nice walk, much of it on a path between two hedgerows:

Along the way we saw lots of deer - and pheasants.

We passed St. Mary's Church (on the Abbey grounds), a beautiful little Gothic church from the 1800s.

It had taken us over an hour to get from town to the gate, above. You can see St. Mary's Church in the distance - which we thought was part of the Abbey ruins. Actually, it was about another mile to the Abbey's visitor's entrance.  This is all we could see of the Abbey ruins from there:

We have great memories of the Whitby Abbey, so if we don't get back to Fountains Abbey I won't be upset. We had the nice walk we wanted.  Here's where we waited for the bus back to Ripon:

And just a random Ripon street near the bus station while waiting for the bus back to York:

We got back to York around 7:00 and had our first real meal at "home." (We tend to do more snacking at night - trying out all the different cheeses they have here, with olives and hummus - and smoked salmon for John.)  Although I can't say I really cooked: Marks & Spencer (a department store with a great first floor food court) has a 10 pound ($16) "dinner for 2" that consists of prepared, refrigerated meals that you just need to bake: you get to choose a main course (we had stuffed chicken breasts on a bed of onions), a side (we chose mixed vegetables with pesto sauce instead of one of the many potato dishes), dessert (raspberry crumble) and bottle of wine (French red table wine). It was great!  (Saved the raspberry crumble for Sunday breakfast - it was a nice coffee cake.)  A nice end to our first month here.

Finally Dried Out...

Things were a little damp this week, but I think we are now back on track: cool and cloudy, but dry.  Except for the fact that my coat and bag never really dried out for two days, the weather didn't cause a problem - it just made it easier to spend time working.  I am enjoying my office-mates: two are professors (one in marketing and the other in leadership) and the other two work in the school's business outreach program.  The head of the program is Mexican (but speaks with a very British accent); her assistant grew up in Kenya, went to boarding school in England, and lived in Turkey for 10 years before coming to York.  So interesting! My Hope students are off to Dublin for the weekend where one of them has a friend who is providing accommodation. They were able to get flights very cheaply - I think their train tickets to the Manchester airport cost more than their plane tickets. I will look forward to their stories.  John and I will likely spend the weekend exploring more of the Yorkshire Dales area while the weather holds.  We'll see how we feel in the morning. 

Rain, Rain Go Away

No Coal in Newcastle

On Saturday the school arranged a bus trip to Newcastle (a 2-hour bus ride north of York, Newcastle is about 50 miles south of Scotland).  I was expecting to see a rather drab, industrial city and figured the school planned this trip mostly as a shopping excursion for students, since Newcastle is a much larger city than York. (And, indeed, most of the students returned to the bus at the end of the day with shopping bags...mostly from a store called Primark...apparently a discount-price store with high quality merchandise.)  I was pleasantly surprised and, despite the rainy weather, we found plenty to do to fill up the 6 hours there.  Most of the pictures are rather cloudy because of the weather, but I'm told that's the way most pictures of Newcastle turn out: because it is situated on the River Tyne (the formal name is Newcastle-on-Tyne) there is often a sort of fog hanging over the city. The constant rain clouds didn't help.  But I'll try to give you a sense of the city in the pictures I did take. 

Our first stop was just outside of Newcastle at this fairly new sculpture called "The Angel of the North" and considered to be the landmark of northeast England.  It stands 70 feet high and can withstand winds up to 100 mph.  It's built of steel and weighs about 150 tons.  You can see the details better in the picture below (which I got off the internet).


But on to Newcastle.  Actually, our stop was in Gateshead, the city on the opposite side of the river from Newcastle.  Much of the newer construction is taking place in Gateshead, including the stunning new concert hall, below, that is open all day and has cafes and shops as well as the concert venue.  Though formally called the Sage, locals refer to it as the Slug....

Next a walk down the hill to the Baltic, a contemporary art museum in an old grain storage building.  Unfortunately, most of the galleries were in transition setting up new exhibitions, so we stopped at their cafe for a late breakfast (our first of three different Newcastle cafes) and went to the top floor for some great views of the Tyne River and the bridges crossing it. The bridges are Newcastle's most recognizable feature - here are a few:

The award-winning Millennium bridge is the newest. It is a walking and bike bridge that opens up like an eyelid to let ships pass. 

The Tyne Bridge is recognized as the symbol of Newcastle. It was opened by King George in 1928 and was the longest "two-pin steel arch" bridge in Britain with a span of 531 feet.  The red and white bridge in the foreground is the Swing Bridge, which pivots in the middle to let ships through.  There are more bridges (I took the above picture from the one below), but we'll move on to other things.

This the Norman castle, constructed in 1080. This castle "keep" is all that remains of the "new" castle that gave the city its name.  

And St. Nicholas' Cathedral....one of Britain's smallest cathedrals, there are remnants of the original 11th century Norman church on which the present 14th-15th century structure stands.

I was quite impressed with Newcastle's Victorian city center. It is a short walk up from the river (the castle, cathedral and other historic buildings are built near the river bank), the streets radiating out from a large monument to Earl Grey. One guide book describes the city center: "supremely elegant, lined with fine classical buildings, it is undoubtedly one of the country's finest."  Who would have expected it to be Newcastle!

Here, the interior of the Victorian shopping gallery:

And the pedestrian shopping street leading to Newcastle University (I couldn't talk John into venturing into the crowd):

We stopped at another cafe and another art museum and then a late lunch/early dinner before walking along the quayside (a very nice boardwalk that would be quite pleasant if it hadn't been raining), back over the Millennium Bridge, up the riverbank, through the Sage to catch our bus home.  Another great day.

The view from the Newcastle quay looking over the Tyne to Gateshead.

Our New Normal

We have now fallen into a routine of work and classes.  I find that working in a 5-person office is quite pleasant and I look forward to going in each day - it's been much easier to get to the point of feeling part of the school and city than it was when I was in Poland and had a private office.  The weather has returned to "normal" - cool, rainy and windy - more what we had expected, but we do miss the warm sun.  I spent Wednesday afternoon at the dentist after trying some of the famous Harrogate toffee, which pulled out one of my fillings.  The dentist was able to just cement it back in, but it doesn't feel quite right.  Dr. Stratton will not be happy with me when I return....

Part of our routine is going to Evensong at the Minster on Tuesdays and Thursdays after class.  Here are some photos of the interior of the awesome Minster (built mainly between 1220 and 1480) - they don't do the place justice by any means.

The south entrance, with the rose window commemorating the union of the houses of Lancaster and York, which ended the War of the Roses and began the Tudor dynasty.

The "Great West Window" from 1338, known for its stone tracery as the "Heart of Yorkshire"

The the "Five Sisters" - the grisaille windows made in 1260 before colored glass was produced in England and the nave leading to the west window.

The central tower (reconstructed 1420-1465 after it collapsed in 1407).  Probably why there is no spire on top of it.

The choir screen (separating the choir and the nave) is a 15th century stone screen depicting all the kings of England from William I (the Conqueror) to Henry VI (during whose reign it was carved in 1461).

The gorgeous pipe organ (visible above the choir screen from the nave and from inside the choir).

And the inside the choir (or 'quire') itself, with finely detailed wood carving, where the Evensong is held.  No pictures are allowed during the service, so I can't show you the delightful choir boys who sing the services - they are from the Minster school which goes all the way back to the 8th century.  Below is the pulpit - which one of my students said looks like something out of Harry Potter...

And, just for fun, the view from the table at the restaurant in town where we had dinner afterwards (with a reflection in the window of the interior of the restaurant, it seems).